The trade deadline has come gone, and the question that is burning in all Orioles fans’ hearts is, did they get better?
Well, yes, they did. That’s the simple answer. They got another reliever to help a tired bullpen and another starter to help cover the innings for a team going to the playoffs.
It wasn’t the flashiest deadline, and this team didn’t use any of their eight top 100 prospects to get a true difference-maker in the bullpen or rotation, though it wasn’t for lack of trying on the part of Mike Elias.
He was in on several pitchers, including big names like Justin Verlander, Eduardo Rodriguez, and Dylan Cease. If you believe some reports, the Orioles were even among the last two teams in on some of these guys. This is probably why the trade deadline came down to the wire for the Orioles. They were trying to get bigger deals done, but they all fell apart for one reason or another, and Elias pivoted, releasing he couldn’t sit on his hands and do nothing (which is correct).
Verlander had a no-trade clause and wanted to go back to Houston. He also cost the Astros two of their top four prospects. Cease is a name that would have fit well because of his years of remaining team control. Still, the White Sox apparently asked for Jackson Holliday plus more, and Elias probably hung up the phone within seconds of hearing that. Rodriguez was supposed to get traded to the Dodgers until he turned them down using his no-trade clause, so it doesn’t seem like he was ever really on the market.
All of this is to say that there wasn’t a lane for Elias to get that true shutdown guy. The options were either blocked by no-trade clauses or cost a generation’s worth of talent.
Even for the available guys, they were all rentals and, once again, cost an arm and a leg to get. To see some of these returns on these players were just ridiculous. The Orioles have the system to get these players, but the prices were outrageous. Elias instead waited it out and still got a starter.
Understandably, fans wanted more, and looking at other teams making more significant moves hurts when you have the system to outbid anyone in baseball. This isn’t a one-year thing. At the bare minimum, Elias has six to seven years of a window where they are constantly competitive, and risking that for one year would be foolish.
If the White Sox wanted Holliday and Coby Mayo plus more for Cease, giving in would have been foolish.
Even in a market where the prices were outrageous, the O’s still did make the team better.
Elias’s first move was done well before all the drama of the trade deadline started. Perhaps getting a sense of the market, he jumped at getting a reliever with little to no name value for basically nothing.
Shintaro Fujinami was a name on no one’s radar because of his poor stats with the A’s. Fuji had better numbers in July since he got moved to the bullpen and has been very up-and-down for the O’s thus far.
He gave up a bomb to Jose Siri in his first game but then settled down. His second game was ruined by poor defense by Jorge Mateo and a bad umpire. Since that Rays series, Fuji was great, going multiple innings in two of three outings until last night, when his control – and Mateo – again did him in.
Fuji has insane stuff. If the team can get more of the Fuji that can control the stuff – somewhere in the strike zone – he will be an important piece in September and October.
Fuji also cost nothing, as Elias gave up only Easton Lucas, a 27 y/o left-handed reliever for the Tides.
The Orioles waited until the last second to make their other significant move, with another lesser move thrown in there.
There isn’t a take on the Eduard Bazardo trade; he stunk for the Orioles, and if they can find an undervalued guy through the nerd cave they have, then good for them.
The real move they made was getting Jack Flaherty. Flaherty was once seen as one of the better pitchers in the game and was well on his way to being that after the 2019 season. Then a string of injuries killed that, and he hasn’t been the same since. His stats this year aren’t the best, but one thing gives hope that his numbers will come down: a very high BABIP. This means that he is getting unlucky, and while the Cardinals’ defense is usually good, they are bad this year.
Flaherty has been much better in his last couple of starts and has gone at least five innings in all of his July starts. Flaherty will, for now, take Tyler Wells’ spot in the rotation while the Orioles figure out what happens with him. The cost was a bit high, but the market predicated that.
The worst piece to lose was, by far, Zach Showalter. He was doing well and had just gotten called up to Delmarva, where he continued to impress. He is a young pitcher with a ton of potential, but he is a very long way away and wasn’t helping the Orioles for another three years. The other Prospects given up were Ceaser Prieto and Drew Rom. Other pieces blocked these guys; while they are fine prospects, there wasn’t enough room for them.
Ultimately, it wasn’t the flashiest deadline, but Elias didn’t let his team down. He got them reinforcements while not leaving them in the water and resting on the laurels of being ahead of where the organization thought they would be. Considering that the market was insane and the other teams were trying to get bigger returns than they should have gotten for their players, this was a fine deadline.
Now it is all about one thing at this point for the Birds: winning this division and getting to the playoffs.
