I know that I briefly turned my attention away from the current state of the Orioles; I continued to watch and/or follow the games, but I had taken a break from writing about the mostly-depressing goings on. But suddenly, I have something positive to talk about, and his name is Rhyne Hughes!He was called up prior to Saturday's game and played 1B both Saturday and Sunday. Oh, and he has only gone 4-9 with a double, 1 run scored and 2 RBI. Not a bad way to make his Major League debut if you ask me. And since Garrett Atkins wasn't exactly tearing it up at the plate, is it possible that Hughes is the full-time first baseman? I say that anything can happen considering how the season has gone so far!
Now, if you have been following this blog over the past few months, this is far from the first time you have heard Rhyne's name. I did a post dedicated to him in February when I was profiling all of the Minor League Members of the Orioles 40-man roster. At that point, I did not have his autograph, but was lucky enough to catch up with him in Spring Training, so you might have seen the card at the top of the post then. Rhyne announced his arrival to the organization in the O's first Spring Training game on March 4th, when he went deep twice against the Rays.
Rhyne had been feasting on AAA pitching so far this year (he was hitting .353, with 3 HRs, 11 RBI and an 1.088 OPS before getting called up) so his success at the plate isn't much of a surprise. But it is nice to see a player succeed immediately during his first action at the Major League level. The main negative about him is that he strikes out about 25% of his ABs, but if he can hit the other 75% of the time, I won't have anything bad to say about him.
Let's Go O's!
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