Baltimore Orioles and the Curious Demotion of Chance Sisco

The Baltimore Orioles are in the middle of a lost season, and on Sunday evening decided to demote a player who has actually been one of their best at getting on-base, something they are terrible at.

The Baltimore Orioles franchise is baffling. I’m not breaking any new ground with that statement.

You have the Ned Colletti rumors and current Baltimore Orioles General Manager Dan Duquette’s rebuttal, the benching of Chris Davis and the way it is being handled, and those are just from last week.

Add in the lack of moves so far, the multi-tiered management, and the franchise screams dumpster fire.

Now, Chance Sisco is back at Triple-A Norfolk.

To go with that, we have this…odd quote from Buck Showalter, courtesy of Roch Kubatko at MASNSports.com:

"“Just, I’m afraid he’s coming down with … He hasn’t slept in two or three days,” Showalter said. “A lot of our guys. And just talking to him before the game, his energy level. He was ready to go, just didn’t think it was in his best interest, with the off-day tomorrow. But we’ll see. A lot of factors. That was the principal one. He just hadn’t slept any. Hard enough to play this game when you have.”"

Well, that’s interesting, and I’m not sure what to make of it. What is Sisco coming down with? The sickness the team is passing around? What is going on?

I’ll be honest, we likely won’t find out the answer to this mystery. What we can dissect is whether this move is a smart one or not. Yes, Sisco has been struggling.

More from Baltimore Orioles

He is hitting .218/.340/.328 on the year with two home runs, seven doubles, 16 RBIs and 12 runs scored in 141 plate appearances. He also has been hit by a pitch 10 times, which is second in baseball.

His WAR is 0.5, with one error defensively and 14 wild pitches while he is behind the plate. He has thrown out 10 of 36 attempted base stealers, good for a 28 percent caught stealing rate. The league average is 27 percent.

Those numbers aren’t great, but aren’t horrendous, either. The last month has been tough. In 16 games, Sisco is hitting .200/.407/.225 with just one extra-base hit. He also has thrown out just one of the last 18 attempted base stealers.

Returning to the offensive numbers briefly, Sisco has the third best on-base percentage on the team, getting walks while the rest of the team doesn’t know what a walk is.

However, he isn’t getting consistent at-bats and is being used in a platoon situation where maybe he doesn’t need to be.

At the start of the season, it made sense to platoon he and Caleb Joseph. But, once Joseph was sent down because he wasn’t hitting and Andrew Susac was promoted, why keep platooning?

When Austin Wynns was promoted and Susac sent back down, why keep platooning?

Now, there could certainly be more to it than meets the eye.

Maybe Sisco is stressed from struggling and needs to go to Triple-A Norfolk and regroup.

If his on-field performance is affecting his sleep, and his health, then sending the 23-year-old to Triple-A to regroup makes sense.

From a performance aspect, this doesn’t make sense.

Sure, Wynns has a better batting average than Sisco, but the sample size is small.

Sisco has had his flaws defensively, but nothing that he shouldn’t be able to work on with Joseph and John Russell. Sending him to Triple-A now leaves him without a bench coach who knows what it is like to catch, and also takes away Joseph as a sounding board for him.

Next: Orioles’ Zach Britton Gaining Trade Interest From Astros

More and more, each decision this franchise makes leads to more questions. Sending down one of the players of the future, whether for good reason or not, opens the door to a number of questions for a team that is clearly going nowhere.

Home/Baltimore Orioles