The young lefty made his MLB debut last season playing in 34 games and amassing 98 plate appearances where he had a .253/.306/.418 slash line which was a slightly above average OPS+ measuring at 104. The 25-year-old will make the league minimum this season and will have six years of team control remaining including 2023 meaning he will not be arbitration eligible until the 2026 season unless he is eligible for super two status. The lefty slugger was drafted in the second round of what could go down as the greatest draft class in Orioles history behind Adley Rutschman and Gunnar Henderson and in front of current top-100 prospect Joey Ortiz and Darell Hernaiz who was traded for Cole Irving.
In his cup of coffee last season the lefty slugger put up a -.1 WAR according to baseball reference while Fangraphs was kinder measuring his war as a .2. His weighted Runs Created Plus was above average measuring at 107 but not as high as you would like to see considering he is predominately a bat-first corner outfielder shown by his amassing a -2 Outs Above Average in the outfield in his limited playing time to go along with his below average(43rd percentile) sprint speed. During the past two seasons in the minors, Stowers put up 46 home runs over 219 games(798 at-bats) and a near .900 OPS at three levels from high A to AAA ball. The big problem Stowers has had over his minor league career is his strikeouts as he amassed 171 over 124 games in 2021 but has improved on those a bit as he only struck out 25.6% of the time at AAA last season compared to his 34.4% rate the year prior at the same level. Brandon Hyde has been reluctant to throw him in the lineup against left-handed pitchers as he only got four plate appearances against lefties compared to 98 against righties, though it is worth noting that he did reach base 3 of those four times against lefties with one home run. Furthermore at AAA Norfolk last season his OPS was over 100 points higher(.977) against lefties than righties(.849) so I would expect him to get a lot more playing time against lefties but as many Orioles, fans would remember there was a lot of disagreement over the lineup towards the end of last season as players like Rougned Odor and Jesus Aguilar got playing time over the youngsters like Stowers and Vavra.
Going forward I do not expect him to hit for a high average but his biggest tool is his above-average power and if he is going to emerge as an everyday contributor his power will be the main reason. The question will be how much playing time he gets this season as there are at least six players projected to make the opening-day roster that can play the outfield (Mullins/Hays/Santander/McKenna/Frazier/Vavra) along with top 40 prospect Colton Cowser waiting in the wings at AAA. It will also be interesting to see how the banning of the shift will benefit Kyle Stowers as he had a weighted On Base Average of .415 without any shifts compared to his .319 with the shift and was shifted against 83 of his 94 plate appearances (88.3%) this number like his stats against lefties should be noted that they are small sample sizes and thusly should be taken with a grain of salt. Currently, ZiPS has him projected for 14 home runs and a slash line of .234/.307/.422 over 371 plate appearances next season measuring a 107 wRC+ and a .6 WAR with the overall WAR number being hurt by his anticipated below-average defense. There is a lot of uncertainty next season with what to expect from the 25-year-old with him only having limited playing time in the bigs but I think his power plays and if he can get everyday at-bats he could easily be a 2-3 war player with his ceiling being a middle of the order power bat, but he also has a low floor and could not hit enough to make up for his defense so it will be interesting to see how much consistent playing time he will get and if he can limit his strikeouts.