'Parking Lot Ced' takes power to ASG

BALTIMORE -- Of all the elements of Cedric Mullins’ All-Star first half, the most surprising -- from the outside anyway -- is probably the power.

The hit ability, the standout defense, the playmaking potential: that was always there, so much so that Mullins jumped from Class A to Double-A during his first climb up the Orioles’ system. The power showed up some -- double-digit homers in the Minors each year from 2016-19 -- but it was overshadowed, whether by his smaller stature or his difficulties driving the ball from the right side of the plate, or a combination of both.

• MLB All-Star Game presented by Mastercard: Tuesday on FOX

Those who know him best, though, have always seen it.

"It’s what I’ve watched him do his whole career,” said longtime teammate Austin Hays, now Mullins’ everyday companion in the Orioles’ budding young outfield. “I watched him do it in Double-A, I saw him do it at Low-A. He’s always been able to hit for power. People are surprised that he’s hitting home runs, but he’s always been a little bit of a thumper.”

• Mullins headed to first All-Star Game

The watershed moment, according to Hays, came at Double-A Bowie in 2018. The exact date is unknown. The precise details, spotty. But Hays remembers Mullins batting left-handed and connecting, and the ball “went past everything, it disappeared” into the woods beyond right field at Prince Georges Stadium.

“That’s why we call him ‘Parking Lot Ced,'" Hays said. “It’s fun seeing him do what I always knew he could do in the big leagues and showing everybody what he’s always done.”

“Parking Lot Ced" is not Mullins only nickname, with former Orioles manager Buck Showalter revealing recently on MLB Network he used to call Mullins “The Toy Cannon” -- which also happened to be the nickname of Astros legend Jimmy Wynn, who was actually listed as an inch taller than Mullins' 5-foot-9.

(In an unrelated note, “Cedric” is actually Mullins’ middle name; his legal first name is “Boyce,” after his father).

Yet “Parking Lot” survives in the Orioles’ clubhouse. The nickname migrated to Baltimore during Summer Camp in 2020, when Mullins, less than a year removed from struggling so badly he was demoted back to Double-A, began peppering the right-field seats during intrasquad games. He wound up hitting the Orioles’ longest home run of the 2020 season -- a 427-foot shot off Yankees righty Michael King -- and 16 through 88 games so far in 2021.

“I adapted to it pretty quick,” Mullins said, chuckling. “It stuck -- because of my stature and being able to hit balls as far as I do.”

These days, the secret is out. Mullins will participate in his first career All-Star Game on Tuesday night at Coors Field, leading the Orioles in just about everything, including, yes, homers. His 16 long balls are one more than Home Run Derby participant Trey Mancini, and his four leadoff homers are tied for fifth-most in the Majors. He was one of only four players in baseball with at least 15 homers, 15 steals and an OPS+ above 150 entering Sunday. Fernando Tatis Jr., Trea Turner and Ronald Acuña Jr. are the others.

“He’s doing a little bit of everything right now,” O’s manager Brandon Hyde said.

It makes his production even more impressive when presented against the backdrop of Mullins’ past struggles, and the risks he took to overcome them. Debuting down the stretch in 2018 as the heir apparent to Adam Jones, Mullins hit .094 without a homer over 22 games in 2019. By midsummer that year, he found himself back in Double-A, zapped of confidence, passed on the depth chart and nursing two broken swings (one from each side of the plate).

That winter, Mullins flew from his North Carolina home to St. Louis to work with private hitting instructor Rick Strickland, who introduced him to Blast Motion technology. They rebuilt Mullins’ swing from the ground up, introducing a leg kick to his left-handed swing during two weeks of grueling two-hour sessions. The work bore fruit in 2020, but there was still something missing. Mullins hit .305/.348/.448 as a left-handed hitter in ’20, but just .171/.216/.286 from the right side, mirroring his stark career splits.

The reality became clear: Switch-hitting wasn’t keeping Mullins in the lineup, it was keeping him out, wedging him into a platoon with the right-handed Hays in center field. So he made the difficult decision that winter to scrap switch-hitting, which Showalter first suggested years prior.

“He basically said, straight up, if I wasn’t able to figure out my right side, then I’d go left-on-left,” Mullins said. “I was in agreement with him. It felt like he was going to make the best choice for my career, and I was going to work my butt off to do what I needed to do to continue to be competitive.”

The impact was immediate. When Mullins arrived at Spring Training this year and informed the Orioles of his decision, it had been a full decade since he’d faced a left-handed pitcher as a left-handed hitter in a game setting. The last time was his junior year of high school; he is 26 now, and hitting .298/.355/.491 with five homers in 114 at-bats against southpaws. His 34 hits off lefties are fourth in the Majors among left-handed batters. Prior to 2021, he’d managed just 14 career hits off lefties as a right-handed batter in nearly the same number of plate appearances.

The difference is massive: between fighting to stay in the Majors and starring this week in Denver.

“Growing up as a kid, I used to watch the All-Star Game every single year,” Mullins said. “It’s awesome being amongst the top in baseball, and to have that self-recognition that you are a part of that group. It's a great feeling, because it's about all the hard work that you put in, the hours that people don't see outside of the field.”