The Orioles are coming off a tough four-game series vs the Blue Jays, the team that is directly ahead of them in the Wild Card race. The season isn’t over yet but the fat lady is warming up. That being said, I want to take a look at the offseason and the overall thought process I am hoping the team has.
Before I look into the future, I want to look in the past. The 2022 Orioles remind me, in a lot of ways, of the 2012 Orioles. The 2012 Orioles came out of nowhere and made the playoffs. They won 93 games and finished in second place in the AL East. It was a fun season that happened because of defense and pitching – unexpected amounts of both. However, my focus isn’t on the 2012 team, it’s on the offseason after that season.
For all intents and purposes, the Orioles returned basically the same team in 2013 as they ended the year with in 2012. Now, they brought up Manny Machado in August of 2012, so they were going to have him for a full year. Nick Markakis, who missed the playoffs and the last month of the season (thanks again CC) was going to be back. They moved Tommy Hunter to the bullpen. Chris Tillman was going to give them a full season worth of starts. They knew they had Kevin Gausman as a guy who could contribute in 2013 as well.
That said, they also lost Mark Reynolds and their biggest offseason acquisitions were basically Freddy Garcia and Danny Valencia. This was a team that was a middling offense and were 21st in starting pitching ERA. There was room to improve for sure. Yes, they did make a few moves at the deadline bringing in Scott Feldman and Bud Norris but overall, they did very little to improve the team. The Orioles made assumptions that their young players would get better and the team would produce the same magic as the year before. The 2013 team was still good and they won 85 games, but that was a team that always seemed like they were going to be on the outside looking in, which of course they ultimately were.
Now, let’s jump to the 2014 team. That team was the best in the AL all year long and faltered against KC in the playoffs. It happens. They had a top 10 pitching staff and a top 10 offense in terms of runs scored. They lost Manny & Matt Wieters due to injury during the year, so they knew they were coming back, which was an obvious plus. However, they also lost Nelson Cruz, who was arguably the team’s MVP and had to know that Steve Pearce, another candidate for team MVP in 2014, wasn’t likely to repeat his season. They also were losing Andrew Miller, who took their already excellent bullpen to an even higher level after acquiring him at the deadline.
So, what did the O’s do in the offseason to capitalize on that magical 2014 season? They let the aforementioned players walk and traded for Travis Snider and then, when it was obvious they weren’t good enough to be a playoff team, they traded Zach Davies for Gerardo Parra, which was a terrible trade at the time and looks even worse in hindsight. It was the same thought process as we saw after 2012: the one that assumed these guys would just keep playing over their heads and the young players and guys returning from health issues would elevate the team. As the old saying goes, the rest is history. The O’s finished with a .500 record in 2015 and were never much of a challenger for the playoffs.
Since 1997, the 2012 and 2014 Orioles were the two best teams the organization has had. They had a lot of momentum and fan excitement. They had good young talent coming up in guys like Machado, Jonathan Schoop, Chris Tillman, Zack Britton, et al. It was fun but the team didn’t capitalize on the success.
Let’s now fast forward to 2022. This team has many of those same things going on; they’re exciting, with a lot of ascending young talent that can play defense and promising pitchers. The 2022-3 Orioles cannot make the same mistake as assuming that what they have will just ascend and go to the playoffs. They can’t just say, well our system works, so all of these guys who have come out of nowhere to produce at a high level, after never really doing it in their pro careers and being of “advanced” age, will just keep performing at above average levels.
We can go back and forth on what moves they should make or who should be replaced, traded, etc.
I believe the Orioles can attack this offseason in many ways. They have a lot of talent to trade from, they have a lot of money to spend and they have a lot of long term flexibility with which to work. I also know that Mike Elias has said they will TRY to be aggressive this offseason and he seems to know they must add to the talent of the team.
However, I am not worried about Elias. I am worried about ownership. What do they think? What will they allow? What will the budget be?
I don’t think the team has to go out and have a $100M+ payroll next year. They have a lot of cheap pieces that should be playing a lot and that will keep the payroll down. I also think there are a lot of spots on the team, say the last 10 players or so on the roster, that they shouldn’t be spending a lot of money on. They should be able to develop role players as opposed to signing guys for $3-8M a year to give them league average, at best, production. Those facts alone should help keep the payroll down, but the team can and should add some significant talent.
It doesn’t have to be major free agent signings. It could also be adding younger, cost-controlled players as well. What the team can’t do is sit on their hands and make assumptions. This offseason should be a tone setter for years to come. It also should be an offseason that signals to the fan base that they are serious about winning in 2023 and trying and sell some tickets. Fans have lamented at some of the crowds in recent games but you have to understand that almost all tickets are sold before the season starts and, for at least the last 20 years, the Orioles have always averaged about 3000 fans per game in terms of day of game, walk up sales.
I mention that because you want to get revenue up and you want to start packing OPACY. If you want to do that, you have to give the fans something more to be excited about outside of the young talent in the organization. Ownership needs to show the fan base the commitment they want to see. There are still plenty of fans that don’t believe in or trust the Angelos family and showing a real commitment this offseason will help alleviate those concerns.
We, as a fan base, have a lot to be excited about. It’s up to the Orioles organization to capitalize on that and show us, once and for all, that they want what we all want…a World Series title.
The foundation is there for this organization to accomplish that.
Now it’s time for them to finish it off.
