Where the Baltimore Orioles stand as the Hot Stove begins to kindle

Where do the Orioles go from here?

The biggest question surrounding the reigning American League East champions’ offseason is how aggressive general manager Mike Elias will be and how willing Baltimore ownership will be to add resources to a team with legitimate World Series aspirations.

The O’s, who have an enviable collection of young position players — many who debuted in the last year or two — will try to get at least one starter and a backend reliever. However, the preference is to get multiple rotation candidates and two late-inning arms. The roadblock, Elias said at last week’s general managers meetings, won’t be payroll as much as competition. As multiple executives noted in Arizona, it feels like a winter in which more teams than usual are going for it. Whether it was the advent of the sport’s third Wild Card or the ripple effect of watching an 84-win Diamondbacks team advance to the World Series, this winter — headlined by superstar Shohei Ohtani’s free agency — could be a wild one.

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“Almost all of these (teams) have a ‘we’re competing’ sign lit up right now,” Elias said. “So this is going to be competitive and interesting.”

But not many teams are coming off the year Baltimore had, a 101-win season that will end with a likely Manager of the Year (Brandon Hyde) and confirmed Rookie of the Year (Gunnar Henderson) that ended with a three-game sweep by the eventual World Series champion Texas Rangers. Baltimore also has the top prospect in all of baseball, Jackson Holliday, and arguably the game’s best farm system despite numerous graduations.

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Elias — who added trade deadline duds Jack Flaherty and reliever Shintaro Fujinami — reiterated that the price of making the team significantly better in July was too high for the potential return. That calculus could change this winter, particularly in a year when there isn’t a wealth of top-tier free agent starting pitching and many teams in the market. Blake Snell, Aaron Nola and NPB player Yoshinobu Yamamoto are the top free-agent arms and figure to have numerous suitors and land lucrative deals in an offseason where agent Scott Boras said, “There is a frenzy for pitching.”

Other free agents include Marcus Stroman, Eduardo Rodriguez (a former Oriole prospect), Jordan Montgomery and Lucas Giolito. The Orioles’ rotation currently has Kyle Bradish — who is coming off a breakout season — along with Grayson Rodriguez and Dean Kremer. John Means, who returned from Tommy John surgery at the end of the season, should also be penciled in if healthy. The team could use a frontline starter to go with Bradish, particularly one who misses bats, as they ranked 18th in K/9, 11th in ERA and 11th in H/9. The team’s relief corps — which will be missing All-Star Félix Bautista, who underwent Tommy John surgery in early October — had similar issues without a high-strikeout guy.

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Milwaukee Brewers starter Corbin Burnes, the Chicago White Sox’s Dylan Cease and the Cleveland Guardians’ Shane Bieber are guys who could potentially be traded this winter, and the Orioles have a prospect surplus that figures to keep them in a multitude of hot stove rumors.

“We rightly have a high value on those guys,” Elias said of the team’s prospects. “I’m happy that we kept them (at the trade deadline) because I could see us tapping into that this winter if the right opportunities present themselves.”

While Baltimore has historically had difficulty selling free-agent pitchers on short deals to the hitter-friendly confines of Camden Yards, they have a few things working in their favor now. The sport’s more balanced schedule means less grueling games against the American League East and the Orioles changing the park’s dimensions to make it more pitcher-friendly has led to encouraging results. Departing free agent Kyle Gibson had an identical offer from another team last winter and chose the O’s. That the team is seen as on the rise can be a difference maker for players who want to win, assuming the money is close. The interest from free agents on the pitching side is up again this winter.

While Baltimore’s young hitters have created envy around the league — “I’d love to know what their secret sauce is,” a rival executive said — the pitching part of their rebuild hasn’t been as robust. In that vein, Chris Holt will assume director of pitching duties and not be the team’s major league pitching coach next season, a move that will enable him to focus more on the organization’s development and pitching lab. Assistant pitching coach Darren Holmes will also not return in 2024.

Under previous — less successful — regimes, the thought process was “grow the arms, buy the bats.” Under Elias, who was honored as Executive of the Year by his peers at the GM meetings, it has been the opposite. The challenge for the Orioles to stay in a competitive mindset year in and year out will be to plug their pitching holes without inhibiting a top-ranked farm system that serves as the organization’s lifeblood.

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Rival executives believe the Orioles may be in the mix for some of the sport’s bigger names. But any massive deal would have to be approved by ownership. As such, it’s unlikely the team will overextend itself on payroll — owner John Angelos told senior baseball writer Tyler Kepner earlier this season: “I don’t think you should run losses. I think you should live within your means and within your market.” Baltimore’s last mega-deal for Chris Davis was a disaster. Davis, who retired in 2021, was the Orioles’ highest-paid player this season at over $14 million.

Certainly there has to be a lot of wiggle room between Davis’ $161 million deal and what the Orioles can do this winter. The O’s have a payroll of roughly $62 million, more than $56 million that factors in 17 arbitration salaries, as projected by MLB Trade Rumors. Last year, they had an Opening Day payroll of $60 million. The team’s season attendance of 1,936,798 was their most since 2017, and there’s optimism they can hit the 2 million-plus mark consistently if the team is competitive. (The Orioles have not drawn more than 2.5 million in a season since 2005, the Washington Nationals’ first year, and last hit 3 million in 2001.)

In 2011-18, the Orioles had payrolls in the middle of the pack, reaching as high as $164 million (10th) in 2017, a year in which the team failed to make the playoffs. Asked about the team’s payroll and the room for it to go up, Elias said the franchise has had a lot of significant things going on over the past five years.

“The ownership structure has been in transition. The baseball side just flat-out hit a wall and kind of bottomed out on an organizational level (after 2018). We spent our time rebuilding that. There has been the (Camden Yards) lease, MASN, there’s just been a lot,” Elias said.

“The last few years have been kind of murky where our rebuild was going, where a lot of these situations were playing out. And it’s clarified. The attendance has been up the last few years, the revenues are up, the wins are up, I think it’s all growing in a positive direction. But we’re being responsible about it, and kind of taking it one step at a time.”

Pressured further on if he thinks the Orioles could again get to a payroll that is more in line with the league median and not the bottom of baseball, Elias said: “Anytime something’s happened in the past, it’s a good indicator that it’s possible again, in the future. I don’t see looking at that number from whatever year and saying, ‘We need to sprint to that spot. No matter who the players are, and what the contracts are.’ I think there are ways to grow that don’t involve bringing that number (up), but the fact that (bigger payrolls have) happened before means it’s a possibility for us.”

(Top photo of Mike Elias: Gail Burton / AP Photo)

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