Baltimore Orioles: Christian Walker of Trey Mancini?

If the Baltimore Orioles can’t re-sign Chris Davis, they could begin to rebuild on two younger, cheaper first base options in Christian Walker or Trey Mancini.

Your stove may be hot as you’re cooking Thanksgiving dinner, but Major League Baseball’s hot stove is still relatively cool. Yes, there have been some trades made, but none of the big-name free agents have been plucked off the market. The offseason will heat up in the coming weeks as the Winter Meetings begin on Dec. 7, and by then the rumors should be at full boil.

The Baltimore Orioles have one of the most urgent shopping lists in all of baseball, let alone the American League East. With first baseman Chris Davis, reliever Darren O’Day and starting pitcher Wei-Yin Chen exploring free agency, the Orioles have a significant amount of production to replace. Davis, though, is priority number one, as he’s led baseball in home runs two of the past three seasons and averaged 40 homers over the past four.

The Orioles may also be looking to sign an outfielder such as Yoenis Cespedes or Justin Upton, and if that doesn’t leave the team with enough money to re-sign Davis, lower cost options such as Mike Napoli, Justin Morneau or even Daniel Murphy could be targeted, but Davis would be the preferred option.

If the Orioles don’t re-sign Davis or a lesser option, there are two younger and even cheaper options in their minor league system that they could build on for the future. They each had impressive seasons in 2015, as both were named Organization All-Stars while one of them was named the Orioles’ Minor League Player of the Year.

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One is Christian Walker. He made his MLB debut in 2014 but spent almost all of 2015 in Triple-A, hit .257 with a .324 on-base percentage and .423 slugging percentage and 18 home runs before being called up to the majors in September. That slash line doesn’t tell the whole story, though, as he hit only .250/.310/.344 with two home runs through June 19 but hit .262/.336/.490 with 16 home runs the rest of the season.

The other option is Trey Mancini. Mancini had a career year in 2015, hitting .341/.375/.563 with 21 home runs between High-A and Double-A. He had career highs in batting average, slugging, home runs, isolated power, walk rate and total bases. Even though he is considered the lesser prospect of the two by MLB Pipeline and Baseball Prospectus, his 2015 was a pleasant surprise.

Walker is obviously the more big-league ready of the two prospects, but Mancini is at almost the exact same level of production as Walker was at the same stage is his career—Walker was drafted in the fourth round in 2012 out of the University of South Carolina while Mancini was drafted in the eighth round in 2013 out of Notre Dame. Here is how their numbers compare through the first three seasons of their minor league development:

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As you can see, the numbers are strikingly similar. The chart focused on power numbers, because Walker or Mancini would be called upon to replace the power production of Davis. At first it doesn’t appear either one will develop Davis’ pop. Here is that chart again, but with Davis’ minor league numbers added:

[table id=24 /]

Davis clearly had more power, even at that stage. Mancini and Walker have lower strikeout rates—Davis struck out in 25 percent of his plate appearances while Mancini and Walker were at 16 and 18.8 percent—and could grow into more power as they mature, but that’s not enough to replace Davis’ value in 2016.

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The determining factor will be if Davis suits up for the Orioles next season. If he doesn’t, the Orioles must decide if they want to win now or build for the future. They have run into big problems developing pitching in recent years, so if they do build on prospects, it may have to be on position players such as Walker, Mancini, D.J. Stewart, Chance Sisco, Mike Yastrzemski and Ryan Mountcastle.

Stats from Baseball-Reference and FanGraphs