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By Sam Neumann on

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Jim Palmer has spent more than six decades in and around the Orioles, and apparently that still isn’t enough to get a text back from the team’s new manager.

Appearing on the Bmore Sports Podcast, the Hall of Famer and MASN analyst recounted reaching out to first-year Orioles manager Craig Albernaz in February with a suggestion on how to unlock Colton Cowser, only to be ignored for months and then brushed off when he finally brought it up face-to-face.

Palmer began by praising Albernaz, calling him “a really smart guy” who had surely done his homework, before laying out the problem he saw with Cowser, the 2024 American League Rookie of the Year runner-up. From Palmer’s vantage point in the broadcast booth, the outfielder’s flaws were that he struggles against left-handed pitching, strikes out too often, and has trouble hitting with runners in scoring position.

“So I said, you know what, send it in a text. I said, I don’t want to interfere, but maybe spring training for Colton should be getting the normal conditioning and playing,” said Palmer. “But watching Cody Bellinger, who hit .359 against left-handed pitching last year, .298 the year before, and .319 the year before, watches at-bats.”

Bellinger has been one of the more reliable left-handed hitters in baseball against southpaws, and Palmer wanted Cowser to study exactly how he does it, from the counts Bellinger gets himself into to the path his bat takes through the strike zone. Palmer said he texted the idea to Albernaz in mid-February, shortly before the start of spring training.

The text went unanswered.

Spring training came and went, and so did most of the regular season, without any word from Albernaz. It wasn’t until roughly five weeks remained on the schedule, with both men on the field before a game in Houston, that Palmer finally raised the message in person. According to Palmer, Albernaz brushed it aside as something from “a long time ago,” then looked at him and remarked that it’s a lot easier to talk about something than to actually do it.

“I said, well, I’ve been around over 60 years, and I said, you know what my experience tells me,” Palmer recalled. “If you don’t talk about it, there’s no chance of doing it.”

Cowser finished the season batting .226 with a .687 OPS, 13 home runs and 121 strikeouts in 392 plate appearances, and a strikeout rate north of 30 percent. Against left-handed pitching, he was nearly helpless, hitting .132 with a .406 OPS and striking out 27 times in 65 plate appearances.

Perhaps a few hours studying Bellinger’s at-bats in February wouldn’t have been such a bad idea after all.

About Sam Neumann

Since the beginning of 2023, Sam has been a staff writer for Awful Announcing and The Comeback. A 2021 graduate of Temple University, Sam is a Charlotte native, who currently calls Greenville, South Carolina his home. He also has a love/hate relationship with the New York Mets and Jets.

View all posts by Sam Neumann