With the All-Star Game in the rear view mirror, your American League East-leading Baltimore Orioles are currently enjoying one final day of rest before embarking on the season’s second “half,” beginning tomorrow night. Coincidentally, the O’s will do so in the same ballpark where several of them just competed in said All-Star Game, as they take on the Texas Rangers for three games in Arlington. Though the Birds managed a dramatic walk-off win (thanks to some Yankee errors) to cap their first half on a high note (and in first place in the division) it would be dishonest to say they were doing anything but sputtering into the break, losing the first five games of their final homestand and scoring a total of just four runs in those losses.
Despite the fact the bats were uncharacteristically cool over that stretch, the Birds still lead the majors in home runs, the AL in OPS, and are ninth in MLB in batting average. The overwhelming feeling is that, while they hit a rough patch, the home runs, and in turn, the runs, will return in short order. The extremely terrible luck with runners in scoring position (2-for-39 on the homestand) will turn around due simply to the law of averages, though a change in approach would be nice to see. Some of the Birds’ big bats, who seemed to all hit a wall around the same time a few weeks ago, like Adley Rutschman, Jordan Westburg, Gunnar Henderson, and Ryan O’Hearn, will certainly heat up again. We’ve seen how streaky Ryan Mountcastle can be over the years, and he’s also due to carry the club for a few games.
And if those guys don’t start hitting again? Well, then any Mike Elias/Brandon Hyde machinations (say, calling up Coby Mayo or playing Heston Kjerstad more often when he returns) will amount to nothing more than shuffling the deck chairs on a sinking ship.
So, for the sake of argument, let’s assume the Birds’ top-3 team OPS and home run rate continue well into football season.
The problem then becomes one of pitching.
While they rank seventh in MLB in starting pitcher ERA, Corbin Burnes and Grayson Rodriguez are doing a lot of the heavy lifting there, and much of Birdland is quite uncomfortable with the arms of the rotation beyond those top two. There’s no sense driving ourselves mad envisioning Kyle Bradish and John Means backing up those two in October. But the idea of Dean Kremer, Albert Suarez, Cade Povich, or Cole Irvin starting a playoff game is enough to send us into a spiraling bout of anxiety.
Those pitching concerns have Birdland scouring the trade market, and one name that’s been hot all week is Detroit’s Tarik Skubal. A glance at the Twitterverse (yup, we’re still calling it that) reveals many of the usual fan fantasies. On the one hand, you have Tigers fans completely undervaluing O’s prospects, and demanding two or three of Jackson Holliday, Samuel Basallo, and Coby Mayo to even consider a deal. On the other, you have Orioles fans pretending it’s MLB the Show and you can just keep adding on lower-level prospects until the computer considers the deals “equal,” without giving up any of those three.
Great idea, if the aim is to make sure Detroit never answers Elias' calls againhttps://t.co/GwL4qNN77j
— Eutaw Street Report (@EutawStReport) July 17, 2024
Skubal, 27, is a southpaw who throws 100 with devastating secondary pitches. He’s 10-3 and has struck out 10.9/9 over 116 IP so far in 2024, with a 2.41 ERA, 2.57 FIP, and 2.71 xFIP, and his Statcast numbers back all of that up nicely. He isn’t a free agent until after the 2026 season, so the Tigers are well within their rights to demand a package reminiscent of the one that sent Juan Soto from Washington to San Diego a few years ago. In that deal, the Padres sent C.J. Abrams, James Wood, Mackenzie Gore, and two other young prospects to the Gnats for Soto and Josh Bell. Abrams is an All-Star, Wood just passed Holliday to become the game’s number one prospect (on some lists), and Gore is a solid back-end starter with the potential to be more.
Here’s the thing about that trade: the Padres currently look like the fools. They were bounced from the postseason that year in the ALCS by the Phillies, missed the playoffs in 2023, and now Soto is in pretty much the worst place he could be for our purposes – New York, wearing pinstripes.
While Skubal’s star is rising, he is nowhere near the potential inner-circle Hall of Famer Soto appears to be on track to become. But dominant left-handed starting pitchers are quite a commodity, especially for a team that has huge rotation questions, and which saw their World Series dreams promptly extinguished a season ago largely due to poor performances by the guys toeing the rubber in the first several innings.
However, it isn’t necessarily fair or instructive to focus on the one bad trade that sticks out in all of our minds. There have been plenty of good ones as well. Just last year, the Texas Rangers sent a couple prospects to the St. Louis Cardinals in exchange for rental Jordan Montgomery. We all know how that turned out for them. Again, you’re giving up a lot less for a rental.
Tom Verducci tossed the match that ignited all the debate over the break earlier this week. Writing for SI, he listed the Orioles and Dodgers as the teams most likely to pry Skubal from the Tigers’ paws. Now, the O’s have three prospects in the top 15 on MLB Pipeline, but LA’s highest is at number 48. If it really becomes a bidding war between the Birds and Dodgers, Elias should be able to blow the competition out of the water, should he so choose.
Which isn’t to say that’s the direction I’d like to see the Warehouse take. While Burnes-Skubal-Rodriguez is quite the formidable playoff rotation to dream on, there are no guarantees. The way we’ve seen relatively mediocre teams get hot in October and find themselves in the World Series recently (Wild Card teams Texas and Arizona in 2023, Wild Card Philly in 2022) makes me want Elias to keep this competitive window open as wide as possible for as long as possible.
While we have to imagine Holliday is a non-starter, keeping that window open also means allowing Mayo and Basallo the opportunity to don THIS shade of orange and black while crushing tanks at OPACY for summers to come. I could, perhaps, talk myself into a trade that involved Basallo as the headliner, along with guys such as Connor Norby, Kyle Stowers, Jud Fabian, Dylan Beavers, and/or Enrique Bradfield Jr. Beyond a package such as that though, I’m out. Your mileage may vary.
Don’t get me wrong: it would indeed be malpractice for Elias to not bolster both this rotation and bullpen ahead of the deadline. Norby and Stowers, especially, need to find new homes, and there should be trade partners out there to take them in exchange for arms with less shine than Skubal currently possesses. But adding a Jack Flaherty from those same Tigers, or an Erick Fedde from the Chicago White Sox would require the kind of prospect haul with which I’m much more comfortable conceding. Other names that have been floated include some AL East arms like Zach Eflin and Yusei Kikuchi. Personally, I’m against giving division foes anything that could be used against us in the future, but again, your mileage may vary.
But the bottom line is that the Orioles absolutely need to make at least one trade, but probably two or three.
When you have a surplus of prospects that are blocked, as the Orioles do, teams know it and demand more. That’s just the double-edged sword Elias finds himself holding. It’s also why I don’t expect anything to get done until we are bumping up against the deadline and teams become desperate/get sick of playing chicken.
Until then, enjoy the rumor mill. And don’t expect to be watching Tarik Skubal pitch for the Orioles this fall.
