Banner is 41, a Brooklyn native, and he has spent 18 seasons in baseball operations. He was the Cubs’ Assistant General Manager, a job he’d held since 2024 after running their Player Development department from late 2021 through 2023 and arriving in Chicago as Vice President of Special Projects in December 2020.

Before that, two years with the Mets as Executive Director of Player Development. Before that, eleven years with the Red Sox – a fellow in 2007 who became a Player Development Assistant, then Amateur Scouting Coordinator, then Assistant Director of Player Personnel, then Vice President of Player Personnel, overseeing professional scouting in Japan, Korea, Taiwan and Mexico. Boston won the World Series in 2007, 2013 and 2018. He was there for all three.

He played four years of outfield at Amherst, captained the team in 2007, and got into the game because his college coach knew Ben Cherington, who had played for the same coach eleven years earlier.

That’s a real resume. But the more interesting thing about Monday’s announcement is the job description.

Read The Title Carefully

From the Orioles’ statement, Banner will “lead the organization’s player development, coaching and performance efforts, while also partnering with Elias on strategy, staffing, and talent acquisition.”

Player development. Coaching. Performance. Those are his. Strategy and acquisition he shares.

Now put that next to the rest of what’s happened in that building over the last six weeks.

Matt Blood is gone. The Vice President of Player and Staff Development, a longtime and well-regarded executive, mutually parted ways with the organization in September.

Sig Mejdal has been moved. Elias’s first hire after leaving Houston, the Assistant General Manager who built the analytics department, is no longer overseeing it. He’ll now oversee “the research of emerging technologies and innovative practices across baseball operations,” which is a real job and also not the job he had.

And now a General Manager has been hired whose primary portfolio is player development.

Mike Elias has looked at an organization that went 79-82 after finishing last in 2025, and he has concluded that the thing that broke is the machine that was supposed to turn prospects into major leaguers.

He’s right.

The Evidence Was On The Field All Year

Baltimore hit the ball harder than the league average in 2026. Team exit velocity of 89.9 mph against an MLB mark of 88.8. A hard-hit rate of 42.6% against 38.6%. A barrel rate of 8.7% against 7.7%.

Their expected wOBA was .323. Their actual wOBA was .313.

They hit it harder than almost anybody and scored less than they should have. Meanwhile Colton Cowser, Coby Mayo, Samuel Basallo, Jackson Holliday and Dylan Beavers – four first-round picks and the best catching prospect in baseball – produced exactly zero seasons of a 110 wRC+ between them.

At some point that stops being five separate coincidences and starts being an organizational result.

The Orioles had the No. 1 farm system in baseball four years running through the 2023 preseason. Eight Top 100 prospects that spring. Six were position players. Gunnar Henderson became a star. Jordan Westburg became a very good player when healthy. Joey Ortiz is in Milwaukee. The rest are 24 to 26 years old and still being described in terms of what they might become.

The rebuilding playbook worked right up until the part where the players were supposed to turn into a winning team. That’s the gap Banner has been hired to close, and the Orioles are telling you so in the press release.

And there’s a more specific version of the mandate, which came out of our playoff preview and is worth putting in front of him on day one.

Of those eight Top 100 prospects in 2023, only two were pitchers: Grayson Rodriguez and DL Hall. Both have been traded. Hall threw a 1.91 ERA out of Milwaukee’s bullpen this year. Tyler Wells had a 1.50 ERA for Tampa Bay after the deadline. Cedric Mullins started in center for the Rays because of his glove, and Adley Rutschman was the best defensive catcher in the field.

Every team that earned a bye got there by keeping runs off the board, and they did it with arms they grew. Cleveland’s 2023 Top 100 group had Gavin Williams, Tanner Bibee and Daniel Espino; the Guardians turned that into a 109 ERA+. Milwaukee took Jacob Misiorowski in the second round in 2022 and he posted a 1.80 ERA this year.

Baltimore’s system is back to No. 7, and for the first time in this era three of its four Top 100 prospects are pitchers: Anthony Eyanson, Joseph Dzierwa and Caden Hunter.

That’s the job. Not “improve player development” in the abstract. Turn those three into Orioles starters rather than trade chips, and don’t repeat what happened with Rodriguez and Hall.

What He Actually Brings

Two things, and the second one is less obvious than the first.

The Player Development background is the headline. He ran the Mets’ farm system and the Cubs’ farm system, and he came up inside a Red Sox organization that was an early adopter of things that are now standard. Jon Meoli wrote this week about interviewing Xander Bogaerts in Frederick years ago and being told the kid had to finish his vision training first – a crude laptop program where a dot crossed a strike zone and hitters had a fraction of a second to react. That was Boston in the early 2010s, pushing at the edges while traditional coaches ran everything else.

Banner’s own description of the work is worth reading, because it isn’t what you’d expect from an analytics hire: “I don’t think you want to move to any one side. I think we do try to stay grounded in the evidence, but at the end of the day, they’re human beings. There needs to be a human touch, a care, a belief in each other and a culture created.”

He’s also said, in a long Executive Access Q&A with MLB.com, that 2021 was the year he stopped believing he could just look at a player and know. That’s a useful instinct in a front office that’s been accused of the opposite problem.

But the credential that actually matters is Pete Crow-Armstrong, and it isn’t for the reason you’d assume.

Banner is credited with the Cubs’ acquisition of Crow-Armstrong from the Mets in the 2021 Javier Báez deal, and Crow-Armstrong is the likely National League MVP. Fine. Plenty of executives have a trade on their ledger.

The relevant part is what happened next. Crow-Armstrong arrived in Chicago as a prospect and got better — through the exact player development department Banner was running in 2022 and 2023. A kid came in with a grade on him and left as the best player in his league.

That is precisely the thing Baltimore has not been able to do. The Orioles have been excellent at acquiring prospects and have spent two seasons watching them arrive at 24 and 25 and hover. If you’re looking for the single data point that justifies this hire, it isn’t the Báez trade. It’s that one of the best players in baseball was developed on his watch.

Now the part that complicates it. During Banner’s time in Chicago, the Cubs did something Baltimore has never done: they spent their system. Fifteen players traded away who now appear on other organizations’ Top 30 lists, a farm ranking that fell from eighth to 28th in eighteen months, and a playoff berth at the end of it.

I’ve argued all fall that the criticism of Elias is no longer about talent evaluation but about conviction – an executive who accumulates and doesn’t convert. So on its face, hiring from an organization that converted is exactly right.

Except look at what the conversion actually bought. The Cubs got swept out of the Wild Card round. Two games, and then the winter. That is the entire return on eighteen months of selling the farm.

They weren’t alone in it. When we previewed the playoff field, the four worst farm systems in it belonged to the Yankees at 27th, the Cubs at 28th, Houston at 29th and San Diego at 30th. All four had made October. None of them reached a Championship Series. Houston is the loudest version: 29th on five straight lists, $246 million in payroll, a division won at 81-81, and then a home sweep at the hands of a White Sox club that spent less than half as much.

The four teams that earned first-round byes — the Rays, Guardians, Brewers and Dodgers — had the four best average farm rankings in the entire field. They turned out to be, exactly, the four teams that played in a Championship Series. Three of them got there on bottom-four payrolls: Cleveland at $70 million, Tampa Bay at $90 million, Milwaukee at $125 million.

Spending the farm buys a seat in the tournament. It does not buy a run through it.

So Baltimore has hired a development executive from a club that won by trading away its development. Both things are on his resume – a player he developed into a star, and a system he watched get spent. Only one of those models was still playing in the second week of October. Which one walked through the door with him is the question, and the answer probably depends less on Banner than on the man he reports to.

What It Says About Elias

Elias was promoted to President of Baseball Operations before the 2025 season, quietly, with no announcement. He’s been carrying both titles ever since, and he said in September that he wanted help:

“We have a small operation. It has been. I’ve seen in some metrics it’s like 29th in the league in terms of size in baseball operations… And there’s parts of our baseball operation that I think I could use some different voices and ideas in more than others.”

Then the tell: “I don’t know that I want to get into it here on the stage, but you’ll probably be able to see as these hires come in where we’re looking for some impact.”

We can see. He told us where to look and then looked there.

I wrote a piece on August 3rd under the headline “Yeah, Time For Elias To Go.” I took the headline back in “The Winter Ahead” and said the critique of the process still stood.

Ownership has now given its own answer, and it’s neither of mine. They didn’t fire him and they didn’t simply back him. They made his department bigger and handed a third of it to somebody else.

I’d note two things about that. The first is that it’s genuinely to Elias’s credit. Handing the Player Development department to an outside hire with his own resume and his own constituency is not the move of a man protecting his territory. He identified the weakness as his own and gave it away.

The second is that it’s a hedge, and everybody involved knows it. Elias has had eight years. The farm is loaded again, the books are the cleanest in the sport, and the team has finished under .500 twice in a row after an AL East title in 2023. If 2027 goes badly, there is now an experienced, well-regarded executive sitting one chair over who was a finalist for the A’s top job this month and who interviewed for other lead roles.

That’s not a prediction. It’s just how front offices work. You could argue that Elias is placing a potential scapegoat in-front of him, but I don’t think that argument has a lot of merit.
If things don’t improve for the O’s in ’27, Banner won’t be out the door before Elias.

What It Says About Rubenstein

David Rubenstein and Michael Arougheti authorized a franchise-record $170 million payroll last winter – 16th in baseball, ahead of Milwaukee, Tampa Bay, the White Sox and Cleveland, three of which earned first-round byes this month – and got a losing season out of it.

Their response was not to fire the President of Baseball Operations. It was to make his department bigger.

Elias said the owners “are looking to build” and have been “very supportive.” Meoli’s point this week is the right one: Banner’s job isn’t only development, it’s capital allocation. The Red Sox teams he came up in didn’t just carry high payrolls, they pressed advantages wherever the rules let them — most famously by blowing past everyone on draft bonuses before the pool system existed.

That specific lever is gone. But the question of where else to deploy Rubenstein’s money, beyond the major league roster, is exactly the kind of thing a 29th-ranked baseball operations department has never been able to ask.

What It Means For The Two Offseason Plans

We laid out two versions of this winter a few weeks ago. Option 1 runs the group back — re-sign Rogers, add a catcher who plays, find Mayo at-bats in right field. Option 2 is the wholesale one – Rogers walks, Holliday and Beavers go out in a package for a controllable arm, Varsho in center, Basallo catching 110 games.

The Banner hire doesn’t pick between them. But it bears on both.

Go back to the “Best Case, Worst Case, Likely” exercise. Basallo at 3.0-3.5 wins. Cowser at 2.5-3.0. Westburg at 2.5-3.0. Holliday at 2.0-2.5. Mayo at 1.5-2.0. Beavers at 1.0-1.5. Add Alonso and a Henderson bounce-back and the position group lands somewhere in the low twenties, which I called sufficient rather than good.

Every one of those likely cases is a development assumption. The best cases – Basallo as a 5-win All-Star catcher, Cowser as a 4.5-win center fielder – are the difference between 87 wins and 92. I wrote at the time that you can’t build a 95 win team by waiting for four of them to hit their ceiling simultaneously.

Banner’s actual job is to make that less true.

Which creates one real tension with Option 2. That plan trades Holliday and Beavers. You could reasonably argue the Orioles just hired the person whose entire brief is figuring out why those two haven’t developed fully, and that selling both in his first winter is the organization answering a question before its new answer-finder has unpacked.

I don’t think that should stop a good trade. But if Baltimore is going to move young position players in December, somebody should at least ask the new guy first.

Does This Put Seiya Suzuki In Play?

It’s an obvious immediate question.

Suzuki is a free agent after five years with the Cubs, which means Banner was in that building for every one of them. And it isn’t only the Chicago overlap. Banner’s last two years in Boston, 2017 and 2018, were spent overseeing professional scouting in Japan, Korea, Taiwan and Mexico – which is to say he was working that market while Suzuki was establishing himself with Hiroshima. He scouted the player before the Cubs signed him and then watched him for five seasons from inside the front office.

That’s an unusual amount of proprietary information about one free agent.

Suzuki is coming off of a 4.6 fWAR season, and he’s an exceptional fielder.

Both of our offseason plans said every available dollar goes to run prevention and none of it goes to more offense. Suzuki is the rare player who doesn’t force that choice – he’s a run-prevention signing that happens to carry a 134 wRC+.

He’s also right-handed, which addresses the structural hole in both plans. Cowser bats left-handed and struggles against lefties. Beavers bats left-handed. Basallo bats left-handed. Henderson bats left-handed. In Option 2, Varsho bats left-handed too. CBS made the point this fall that there are shockingly few quality right-handed hitters in the game right now. The Orioles need one badly.

Where he’d play is clean. Put Suzuki in left, keep Cowser in center, leave Mayo in right. That swaps out Beavers and his -9 Outs Above Average for one of the best corner-outfield gloves in the sport and a middle-of-the-order bat, and it does it without disturbing the Mayo-to-right-field plan which I think will get consideration from the O’s.

A 134 wRC+ with Gold Glove defense in a corner is a $25-28 million a year player, even at 32. And the qualifying offer figure for this winter came in at $23.15 million. Suzuki will get one, is expected to reject it, and whoever signs him forfeits a pick.

Our Option 1 budget was $66 million total: Mize at $18M, Rogers at $21M, Jeffers at $19M, Robert at $6M, a depth outfielder at $2M. Suzuki at $26 million costs you roughly the catcher and the fourth outfielder. For a team whose catching spot donated a lineup slot twice a week last season, that’s a genuinely hard trade, and I’d probably still take Jeffers.

Which means Suzuki is a $200-million-payroll conversation. He’s not an alternative to one item on the list. He’s an argument for the list getting longer.

Now, does Banner’s presence change the odds? At the margin maybe.

What the connection buys is the stuff you can’t scout – makeup, work habits, how he responds to coaching, medical history that never makes a report. In the room, when somebody asks whether the age 33 and age 34 years are going to hold up, Baltimore now has a first-hand voice instead of a folder. That’s worth something real.

What it doesn’t buy is a discount. Banner’s portfolio is player development, coaching and performance; he partners on acquisition. Elias runs acquisition. Familiarity has never once won a bidding war.

And it cuts both ways, which people forget. Banner may know exactly why the Cubs let him walk to free agency instead of extending him. The most valuable thing that relationship produces might be Banner telling Elias not to.

My read: Suzuki is a legitimate fit on the merits and would make the Orioles meaningfully better. Whether Banner knows him is close to irrelevant to whether they sign him. Whether David Rubenstein will go past $200 million is the only question that matters.

The Caution

This is a process hire. It does not add a win in 2027.

The actual list is still sitting there, and it’s still Elias’s to execute. The Orioles need a starting pitcher at the top of the rotation – and as we worked through in the playoff preview, a team that’s 60% to win a given game still takes a best-of-three only about 65% of the time. You’d need something like a best-of-75 to be 80% sure the better club advances. An ace is the closest thing to cheating those odds, because he pitches twice in a short series. Baltimore’s four most-used starters finished between 3.56 and 4.12. That’s innings, not an edge.

They also need to decide what to do about Trevor Rogers before the December 1st lockout. They need a catcher who can take 50 to 70 starts without being an automatic out. They need outfield defense. They need to settle on Gunnar Henderson, who has two years of control left.

None of that gets easier because a General Manager was hired in October. Front Office moves are the most applaudable thing an organization can do in an offseason, because nobody can tell you for two or three years whether they worked.

But this one is aimed at the right target. The Orioles did not get worse because they ran out of talent. They got worse because the talent stopped getting better, and they have just spent six weeks restructuring the department responsible for that.

One last note worth recording. With Houston’s firing of Dana Brown, Jared Banner is the only Black General Manager in Major League Baseball. He’s talked publicly about wanting young African Americans to follow the path he took – keep learning, keep meeting people, keep growing the network. He’ll have a platform here to do something about it.

Welcome to Baltimore. The work starts immediately, and the hard part isn’t the part he was hired to fix.

The post The Orioles Hired A General Manager. Look At What He’s Being Asked To Fix. appeared first on Baltimore Sports and Life.

That’s one path. Maybe you win in the high 80’s.

Here we give another option.

This scenario assumes the front office reaches a harder set of conclusions this winter:

• Rogers isn’t coming back. He tests the market and someone pays him more than Baltimore will.
• They aren’t relying on Bautista and Helsley. One high-leverage arm gets acquired, whatever it costs.
• They don’t believe Beavers rebounds defensively.
• They want a plus glove in the outfield every day. Either an everyday left fielder who can really defend, or an everyday center fielder with Colton Cowser sliding back to left.
• They trade for a controllable starter. Another Shane Baz – quality arm, years of team control, acquired rather than signed.
• They’re done with Jackson Holliday at second base. He’s made available. Blaze Alexander is penciled in at second, with Jeremiah Jackson taking a bench spot.
• Westburg’s health gets settled in Sarasota. 
• Samuel Basallo catches 110 games and DHs 20. He’s the catcher, full stop.
• Mayo gets the bulk of the DH at-bats, which means he isn’t playing right field.
• They eat Tyler O’Neill’s contract. Sixteen and a half million dollars, released, gone.

That’s a substantially different team. Let’s build it.

What Changes First

Two of those premises cascade through everything else, and it’s worth seeing why before we start spending.

Basallo catching 110 games eliminates the Ryan Jeffers plan. In Scenario 1, Basallo catches 80 to 90 and the other 70-plus starts go to a $19 million co-starter. At 110, the backup catches roughly 50 and can be a $4 million veteran. That frees $15 million immediately.

It also opens the designated hitter spot, which is exactly what Mayo needs. Basallo takes 20 DH days instead of 50, Mayo takes the bulk of the rest, and the entire right-field problem from Scenario 1 disappears.

But Mayo at DH means right field is empty. Beavers is traded. O’Neill is released. Cowser is moving to left to accommodate the new center fielder. There is nobody in right.

So Scenario 2 doesn’t need one outfielder. It needs two.

The Moves Out

Jackson Holliday. The most consequential decision in this scenario, and the one I’d argue about. He’s 23 in December, controlled through 2030, and coming off a season where his exit velocity sat at 87.0 mph against a league mark of 88.8. The case for moving him is that the contact quality hasn’t improved in three years and Alexander is right there. The case against is that you’re selling the first overall pick at the absolute floor of his value.

If you’re trading him, trade him for something — he’s the headline piece in the package for the controllable starter, not a salary dump.

Dylan Beavers. A 25-year-old corner outfielder with a 24.1% chase rate, a 24.5% whiff rate, six home runs and -9 Outs Above Average. Somebody will buy the approach. In this scenario, the Orioles have decided the glove isn’t coming back and they’d rather be a year early than a year late.

Tyler O’Neill. Released, with $16.5 million eaten. This one costs money and saves nothing – it’s a roster spot, not a payroll move. You do it because a 94 wRC+ and a shoulder that won’t stay healthy shouldn’t block anyone.

Leody Taveras, Ryan Mountcastle, the Eflin option. Same housekeeping as Scenario 1.

And Trevor Rogers, but extend him the qualifying offer anyway. MLBTR projects it at $23.1 million. He’s said he’s excited to test the market and he’ll almost certainly decline – at which point Baltimore collects a pick just after the first round when he signs elsewhere.

The Moves In

Trade for the controllable arm

This is the centerpiece and it’s the hardest thing on the list, because controllable starting pitching is the most expensive commodity in the sport.

The Baz template is the right one: a quality arm with multiple years of control, acquired from a club that’s either rebuilding or has a surplus. Seattle has been the name floated on our board. Tampa Bay reloads this way constantly. Miami, Pittsburgh and Cleveland all have arms and needs.

The package starts with Holliday and Beavers – two young major league position players with control, which is exactly the currency that buys young pitching with control – plus prospects from the tier below the top. Not Anthony Eyanson, Joseph Dzierwa or Caden Hunter, but possibly guys like Trey Gibson, Boston Bateman, Luis De Leon.

Budget roughly $7 million for an arbitration-eligible starter’s salary.

Sign the plus glove in center

Daulton Varsho is the archetype, and he’s available.

He posted +7 Outs Above Average in center field in 2026, with a 91% catch rate against an 89% expectation. He’s played center essentially every day. And because Toronto traded him to Houston at the deadline, he isn’t qualifying-offer eligible — no draft pick, same as Skubal and Mize.

Be honest about what you’re buying. He hit .221/.281/.355 with 12 home runs, a 86.8 mph average exit velocity and a 6.8% barrel rate. His splits were bad in both directions, a .615 OPS against lefties and .644 against righties. FanGraphs wrote a piece this summer noting his sprint speed had fallen from the 28-29 range to 27.2 and his jumps had regressed to average. He turns 31 next season and finished the year on the injured list with wrist inflammation.

This is a glove-first signing at a lineup spot, and that’s the point. He made $10.75 million in 2026 and is coming off a .636 OPS. Two years and $24 million should get it done.

Cowser moves to left, where he’s better anyway, and Baltimore’s outfield defense improves in one move more than every idea in Scenario 1 combined.

Bring back Luis Robert Jr. for right field

Decline the $20 million option, pay the $2 million buyout, and re-sign him at $6 million with playing-time incentives.

Career line against left-handed pitching: .285/.360/.498. Gold Glove center fielder in 2020. Still running 28.9 ft/s. In a lineup that now has Basallo, Cowser, Henderson and Varsho all hitting left-handed, Robert is the right-handed bat that keeps the thing from falling apart against a good lefty – and he’s a plus defender in a corner.

The risk is the same as it was: roughly 113 games a year over four seasons, with a herniated disc and a hamstring in 2026.

Buy a high-leverage arm

We argued against going out and getting a high leverage reliever in Option 1.

Here we say go ahead and target one of Adrian Morejon or David Bednar, at roughly $14 million. Morejon is qualifying-offer eligible, so there’s a pick attached; Bednar isn’t the pitcher Morejon is but comes clean.

The argument for spending here, which I rejected last time, is simple in this scenario: if you’ve decided you can’t plan around Bautista’s shoulder and Helsley’s elbow, then you can’t plan around them. Helsley was shut down September 19th when his throwing program stalled. Bautista’s 2026 was a September cameo after two surgeries. Treating $18 million in committed salary as a bullpen is how you end up patching in June.

Bautista and Helsley become upside rather than relied on.

Sign a backup catcher and a starter

A veteran backup catcher at $4 million who can handle 50 starts and not be an automatic out. Carlos Narvarez finished with under a .500 OPS in 237 at-bats. If you don’t believe his bat rebounds (42 xbh’s in 2025), then go get someone you believe in a bit more. My guess is Narvarez is back.

And a free agent starter. Same conversation as Scenario 1: bid on Tarik Skubal, sign Casey Mize when that doesn’t work. Mize at 3 years and $54 million with an opt-out.

The Money

At $190 million against roughly $126 million committed, there’s about $64 million available.

$61 million, which lands payroll around $187 million.

That’s three million under Scenario 1, which is the part worth sitting with. Not signing Jeffers and not signing Rogers frees $40 million, and that $40 million buys a controllable starter, a closer, a Gold Glove center fielder and a backup catcher.

Swap Skubal in for Mize and it’s $78 million, or roughly $204 million in payroll.

And O’Neill’s $16.5 million is already inside the committed figure. Releasing him doesn’t cost anything new.

The 2027 Roster

Rotation: Mize (or Skubal), Bradish, Baz, Young, the traded-for arm

Bullpen: Morejon/Bednar, Cano, Rico Garcia, Wolfram, Sanders, Hoppe, Walker, with Bautista and Helsley as upside rather than plan

Against right-handed pitching: Basallo C, Alonso 1B, Alexander 2B, Westburg 3B, Henderson SS, Cowser LF, Varsho CF, Robert RF, Mayo DH

Against left-handed pitching: Basallo C, Alonso 1B, Alexander 2B, Westburg 3B, Henderson SS, 4th OF LF, Encarnacion-Strand DH, Robert CF, Mayo RF

Bench: backup catcher, Encarnacion-Strand, Jeremiah Jackson, a fourth outfielder

Thirteen position players: Basallo, the backup catcher, Alonso, Alexander, Westburg, Henderson, Mayo, Encarnacion-Strand, Cowser, Varsho, Robert, Jackson, and a fourth outfielder.

What Has To Go Right

Option 2 could be the more coherent plan. It’s also feels riskier.

Basallo catching 110 games. This deserves more scrutiny. The O’s have to decide how many games they want him catching. If the workload wears down his bat – which is the normal outcome for young catchers pushed to 110 games – you’ve degraded your best young hitter. If he gets hurt and misses real time you don’t have a great option behind him.

Alexander at second base every day. He hit .302 with a 120 wRC+ in 2026, which is why this feels safe. It isn’t. He ran a .385 BABIP, which is not a repeatable number. In this scenario is he a really good bench guy being asked to be a starter?

The offense gets worse. I think the first option we presented gives the O’s a better offense.  Here you are punting some offense to buy run prevention.

Westburg’s arm. If spring training reveals he can’t make the throw from third, he moves to second, and the chain resolves without much trouble: Alexander slides to third, where he started games in 2026 anyway, and Encarnacion-Strand and Mayo are both behind him. That’s three answers for one hole. Alexander started at six different positions last season, and being the piece that moves is arguably his best use.

With Holliday traded, the infield becomes almost entirely right-handed: Alonso, Alexander, Westburg, Mayo and Encarnacion-Strand, with only Henderson hitting from the left side. Cowser, Varsho and Basallo keep the overall lineup balanced, but there’s no left-handed answer left on the dirt.

Other thoughts.

Trading Holliday and Beavers for a controllable starter is swapping control for control, albeit less unless prospects also come back alongside the arm.

Do Holliday and Beavers by themselves land a good controllable starter? Two uncertain young position players with upside but questions. If they’re not enough, that’s when the O’s would have to add sweeteners.
Should also be noted that the positional depth thins out a bit if you trade both.

Also, have to think about the attrition rate of pitchers. Converting position-player control years into pitcher control years is a genuine transfer of risk, because pitchers break more often and more permanently. This organization needs no reminder of that.

None of that makes the trade wrong. It makes it a bet on a specific arm rather than a bet on a category. Get the evaluation right and Baltimore is deeper in 2029 than it is today.

Which One

Option 1 feels like the more likely plan to me. It keeps the young position players, it fixes the catching, and it gets Mayo his at-bats without giving anything up.

Option 2 might build a better baseball team. The bullpen adds a real weapon, and the outfield defense goes from a liability to a strength. If Basallo holds up and Alexander is real, that could be a 90 win team.

I said the priority should be building a team that looks like it should win 90 to 95 in March.

Do either of these options get you there?

The post The Orioles Off-Season; Early Thoughts – Option 2 appeared first on Baltimore Sports and Life.

Some early thoughts on the off-season for the O’s.

The Diagnosis

The Orioles were average, literally average: 4.46 runs scored per game against a league mark of 4.48, a 101 OPS+, a 100 ERA+.

They finished five wins behind the 84-win White Sox for the last American League playoff spot.

Here’s where those five wins went.

They gave away outs. Baltimore converted .688 of balls in play into outs against a .699 league average. The Rays were at .724, the Dodgers .720, the Brewers .712. Spread an .011 gap across a full season’s worth of balls in play and you’re looking at something like 45 to 50 extra hits allowed. At roughly three-quarters of a run per hit-instead-of-out, that’s on the order of 30-plus runs, or about three wins.

Some of that is gloves. A lot of it is a staff that allowed too much hard contact, because defensive efficiency credits a defense for a lazy fly ball exactly the same as it does a diving stop. That distinction matters for where the money goes, and I’ll come back to it in Phase Four.

They had no one who could win a game by himself. Every team with a first-round bye has a Game 1 starter you’d pick against anybody: Misiorowski at 1.80, Messick at 2.56, Rasmussen at 2.67, Yamamoto at 2.53 with Skubal behind him. Even the Wild Card teams have Schlittler and Sale.

Baltimore had Brandon Young at 3.56, Rogers at 4.03, Baz at 4.11, Bradish at 4.12. That’s a functional rotation. It is not an edge. In a five-game series the better team wins about two-thirds of the time, and a true No. 1 is the closest thing to cheating those odds, because he pitches twice.

Bradish is undergoing surgery to repair a sports hernia, but should be fine for Spring Training. After pitching just 71.1 combined innings over 2024 and 2025, it shouldn’t be surprising to anyone that he looked tired down the stretch here in 2026. The important thing is that he logged 29 starts and 155 innings, and it’s completely reasonable to believe he takes a step towards being the ace he was pre-injuries in 2027.

And the money wasn’t the problem. Baltimore opened at $170 million, 16th in baseball, ahead of Milwaukee ($125M), Tampa Bay ($90M), the White Sox ($84M) and Cleveland ($70M). Three of those four earned byes.

Meanwhile the bar didn’t move. The AL East went .558 against everyone outside the division, the best mark of any division, and sent three teams to October. Its two Wild Cards won 93 and 87. The AL West went .424 against the other divisions and its champion finished 81-81.

Average is not the goal.

The priority for O’s General Manager Mike Elias should be building a team that looks like it should win 90-95 games come Spring Training.

What The Core Actually Projects To

Our estimate on what’s likely for this group in 2027:

Call it 13 to 15 wins from those six. Add Alonso at something near four, Henderson at three or three and a half in a bounce-back, Blaze Alexander at a win and a half, and the position-player group projects somewhere in the low twenties.

That is a playoff-caliber offense. Not a great one. A sufficient one.

Basallo’s best case is a 5-WAR All-Star catcher and Cowser’s is a 4.5-WAR center fielder, but more likely is a group of two-to-three win regulars.

Every Available Dollar Goes To Run Prevention, Not The Offense

The bats are already here, they’re cheap, and they’re controlled. What isn’t here is the pitching and the defense that turned Cleveland’s $70 million and Tampa Bay’s $90 million into byes.

There’s a warning in Baltimore’s own history on this. Through the 2023 preseason the Orioles had the No. 1 farm system four years running, with eight Top 100 prospects. Six were position players: Henderson, Holliday, Cowser, Westburg, Kjerstad, Ortiz. Two were pitchers: Grayson Rodriguez and DL Hall. Both pitchers have since been traded, and Hall just posted a 1.91 ERA in Milwaukee’s bullpen in October.

The system is back to No. 7 with four Top 100 prospects, and this time three of them are arms: Anthony Eyanson, Joseph Dzierwa and Caden Hunter.

Do not trade those three.

The playoff field makes the case better than I can. The four teams with byes had the four best average farm rankings in the entire field, and three of them did it on bottom-four payrolls: Cleveland at $70 million, Tampa Bay at $90 million, Milwaukee at $125 million. The Dodgers are the only club doing both at once, and they’re back at No. 1 in the system rankings even after trading two Top 100 prospects for Skubal.

The teams that spent big and let the system thin out are the ones who had to survive a best-of-three. Houston has ranked 29th on five straight lists and spent $246 million to go 81-81. San Diego is 30th. The Cubs have traded away 15 players who now appear on other clubs’ Top 30 lists and fell from eighth to 28th in eighteen months. The Yankees went 13th to 27th.

Two things are true about that at once, and the second one matters for Baltimore. Those trades are also what built the bullpens and lineups those teams brought to October. They got in. What they don’t have is cushion. So “trade prospects” isn’t wrong – it’s a bill that comes due later, and a team that has finished fourth two years running while sitting on a top-ten system is exactly the team that should be willing to pay it.

Pay it from the surplus. Position players, depth arms, blocked bats. Not the three pitchers.

One more line from the ledger, since it settles an argument I was having with myself in August: Boston fell ten spots, from 14th to 24th, after sending three of its six best prospects to Baltimore for Adley Rutschman. That same deal moved the Orioles from 13th to seventh. Whatever else is true about that trade, Elias got paid.

The Blueprint

Phase One: Housekeeping, before December 1st

The CBA expires at 11:59 p.m. on December 1st and a lockout is widely expected. Everything in this section is free and has to happen regardless, so do it early.

• Decline Luis Robert Jr.’s $20 million option and take the $2 million buyout — then try to bring him back cheaper. See Phase Four.
• Decline Ryan Mountcastle’s $7.5 million option.
• Decline the Eflin mutual option, $2 million buyout, and leave the door open on an incentive deal.
• Non-tender Leody Taveras in his third arbitration year.
• Tender Henderson, Bautista, Westburg and Cowser.
• Assume Helsley opts in at $14 million. He will.

That leaves roughly $126 million committed once the roster is filled out.

Phase Two: Buy the top of the rotation

This is the whole offseason. Everything else is a supporting move.

The swing: Tarik Skubal is not qualifying-offer eligible, because he was traded in-season. No draft pick, just money. If there is one winter to find out whether this front office will actually convert payroll flexibility into a player, it’s the one where the best pitcher alive comes without a compensation tax.

Be clear-eyed about the odds. The Dodgers sent two Top 100 prospects to Detroit for him, he put up a 2.36 FIP in ten starts for them, and they are back to the No. 1 farm system in baseball anyway. A two-time defending champion that just paid that price and still has the game’s deepest rotation is not letting him walk quietly. Baltimore would be bidding against the sport’s biggest checkbook* for a player that checkbook already traded prospects to acquire.

*(Maybe that is no longer the case?)

Bid anyway. Make him turn you down.

More realistically: Casey Mize, whom CBS has already identified Baltimore as a landing spot for. The projected contract is in Phase Six.

And either way, re-sign Trevor Rogers. He’s 28, he’s had success here, he’s said he wants to stay, and the Orioles are not obtaining two pitchers better than him. A rotation of Mize, Rogers, Bradish, Baz and Young is a real one. Add Skubal instead of Mize and it’s outstanding.

Phase Three: Don’t spend another dollar on the bullpen

This is the phase where I’ve already changed my mind.

If Orioles owner David Rubenstein gives Elias an unlimited checkbook, sure, go get an Adrian Morejon or a David Bednar.

Assuming there are limits to what Rubenstein will spend, I think you’ve got to look to allocate these would-be dollars elsewhere.

The money is already spent. Ryan Helsley will opt in at $14 million. Félix Bautista is in his final arbitration year at something like $4 million. That is roughly $18 million allocated to two high-leverage arms before anyone signs anything.

Neither is a comfortable bet. Helsley’s season was wrecked twice – the injured list in May, a brief return in June, a reaggravation, and then a shutdown on September 19th when the throwing program stalled. Bautista got back to the majors in September, which is genuinely encouraging after two shoulder surgeries, but it’s a September cameo, not a body of work.

The one real piece of good news is that Helsley’s MRI showed an intact UCL. No Tommy John. He spends the winter rehabbing with a target of being cleared by February.

Nobody should love relying on that. Here’s the argument for doing it anyway, and it’s stronger than “the money’s committed.”

Relief pitching is the one need with a reliable in-season solution.

High-leverage bullpen arms are the single most available commodity at every trade deadline, every year, in quantity. Half the sport sells them.

So the December problems and the July problems are different problems. Solve the ones that only December can solve.

Add to that what’s already in the building: Yennier Cano is signed for two more years at $7.5 million total and posted a 3.22 ERA with a 2.71 FIP. Grant Wolfram ran a 2.85 FIP behind an ugly ERA. Cam Sanders had a 2.28 FIP. Alex Hoppe hasn’t given up an earned run. Rico Garcia made 68 appearances.

That’s not a finished bullpen. It’s enough to open the season with, and it’s enough to see whether Bautista and Helsley are real before committing another $12 million to the most volatile asset class in the sport.

Milwaukee had ten different pitchers record a save this year. Depth, not names.

Everyone is going to want Morejon and Bednar, and both will have spent October pitching in high leverage for contenders – Morejon in what may be the deepest bullpen in the field in San Diego, Bednar closing for the Yankees. Both clubs will bid to keep them. Baltimore would be paying a premium, plus a draft pick in Morejon’s case, for the privilege of stacking a third expensive arm behind two it’s already committed to.

The money you potentially save here might be the difference between settling at the top of the rotation and not. Those are the same dollars. More on that in Phase Six.

Phase Four: The outfield, and the Mayo question

The current expectation inside the organization is that they’ll try to find regular at-bats for Coby Mayo in right field. He has the arm, he moves adequately, and 21 homers have to go somewhere.

Installing a converted third baseman in a corner runs against everything else in this plan. But do the at-bat accounting and the objection mostly collapses.

Where else does Mayo play?

• First base. Alonso is there for 150 games. That’s maybe a dozen starts.
• Third base. Westburg, if healthy. His likely case is 110-120 games, which leaves 45 or so — and Encarnacion-Strand and Blaze Alexander both want those, and both are better defenders there than Mayo is.
• Designated hitter. This is where it really breaks down. Basallo needs 60 to 70 DH days if he’s catching 80-90. O’Neill needs DH days. Encarnacion-Strand needs DH days.

Add it up and Mayo gets somewhere around 65 to 80 starts without an outfield glove. Call it 300 plate appearances for a 24 year old with a 91.5 mph exit velocity, a 48.5% hard-hit rate, four years of control, and real second-half progression.

That’s not a roster decision. That’s waste.

His position is “bat.” Right field is the only door wide enough to get him 450-500 plate appearances, and getting him those plate appearances is worth something real.

So I’ll concede the move and hold onto the consequence: he is likely below average out there, which means the outfield defense probably does not improve in 2027 and may get worse. That has to be paid for somewhere, and I’ll come back to where.

The mitigation you’d want is exactly the obvious one – pull him for a defender in close-and-late situations. It isn’t a full fix. You’re recovering maybe a quarter of his defensive innings. But those innings are the highest-leverage ones on the schedule, so the value is worth more than the raw count suggests, and it costs nothing but a roster spot.

Beavers gets left field, and the Orioles hope the glove comes back. That’s the likely plan. Is it defensible? Here’s what the Statcast record actually says:

Two things jump out, and they point in opposite directions.

The discouraging one: 2025 was the smaller sample. Sixty-nine attempts is about a third of a season’s workload, and OAA is noisy at that size. The -9 this year came in 182 attempts. And the gap is identical in both corners, -5% in left and -5% in right, which undercuts the “he was out of position” explanation.

The encouraging one: He ran 28.9 ft/s this year, 88th percentile, with a plus arm. OAA for a corner outfielder is mostly jumps and routes, not raw speed. A player whose athleticism is intact while his outs aren’t is failing at the coachable part. That’s a very different problem from a slow outfielder who simply can’t get there.

So: Beavers in left, with a real contingency rather than as an article of faith.

The bigger issue is what this outfield looks like against left-handed pitching. Cowser bats left-handed and has struggled against lefties. Beavers bats left-handed. Basallo bats left-handed. Mayo demolished lefties beautifully. Encarnacion-Strand crushed LHP, and I expect him back in part for that. O’Neill was hitting LHP this year before his most recent injury.

So you want a platoon right-handed outfielder who hits left-handed pitching and can cover center or left. Someone who can give both Cowser and Beavers a day against tough lefties without the defense collapsing, or replace Mayo in right field in close-and-late situations.

A right-handed hitter who can genuinely play center field, handles lefties, and doesn’t need to face righties.

Which describes Luis Robert Jr., who was on this roster for four days in September.

You can’t have him back at $20 million. At $5-8 million there’s real value. His career line against left-handed pitching is .285/.360/.498, he won a Gold Glove in center field in 2020, and he ran 28.9 ft/s this season. That’s the right-handed bat against lefties and the late-inning glove for Mayo in one roster spot.

The risk is availability – he’s averaged roughly 113 games a year over four seasons, and a herniated disc and a hamstring are exactly the injuries that eat a center fielder’s range. Sign him at the bottom of that band with playing-time incentives, and keep a glove-first depth outfielder at Norfolk who can actually cover center.

Going back to Mayo and team defense overall. If the 2027 outfield is Beavers coming off -9 OAA in left, Mayo converting from third base in right, and one proven glove in center, the defensive gains are not coming from out there.

Which means they have to come from somewhere else, and there are only two places left: the infield and the rotation.

The infield can get better on its own. Westburg at third for a full season is an upgrade over the Mayo/Encarnacion-Strand/Alexander rotation.

The rotation is the one you pay for. It can be reasonably argued that a team that concedes outfield defense by design needs its pitching to be better than “Mize and Rogers.” Every ball that isn’t put in play is a ball Mayo doesn’t have to catch. Which is the strongest case for going after Skubal.

Phase Five: A catcher who actually plays

A conventional backup doesn’t solve this.

The Orioles are not likely to give Basallo 110-plus starts behind the plate, and shouldn’t — he’s 23, he’s 6-foot-4, and his bat is too valuable to grind down. But if he’s catching 80 to 90 games, the other 70-plus can’t go to an automatic out. Carlos Narváez hit .083 over 69 plate appearances and finished under a .500 OPS in 237 at-bats. To be fair, he did have 42 extra-base hits in 2025.

What’s needed is closer to a 1A/1B than a platoon: a catcher who can start 70 games, catch well, and hit enough to bat seventh without the lineup collapsing.

Ryan Jeffers is that player. Tenth-best free agent in this class per CBS Sports, 29 years old, an .814 OPS this year, and productive against both left-handed and right-handed pitching. Quality catchers essentially never reach the open market. What he’ll cost is in Phase Six.

Phase Six: Make the money fit

At $190 million against roughly $126 million committed, there’s about $64 million to spend. Five line items, because Phase Three removed the sixth.

The realistic version, with actual contract projections rather than round numbers:

$66 million — the Robert buyout is a separate $2 million already inside the committed figure — which lands the payroll at roughly $192 million.

That’s a rotation of Mize, Rogers, Bradish, Baz and Young, a catching tandem that doesn’t donate a lineup spot, and a fourth outfielder who gives you a right-handed answer against lefties. It’s a good winter. It probably wins 87.

The version that’s actually worth having

• Tarik Skubal — roughly $35M
• Trevor Rogers — $21M
• Ryan Jeffers — $19M
• Robert Jr. and a depth outfielder — $8M

$83 million, which puts payroll near $209 million.

And the trade lever is still there, unspent. You’d have the internal depth to address in-season needs that arise. Not looking to trade Eyanson, Dzierwa or Hunter. But others could certainly be available.

Where those numbers come from:

Mize, 3 years / $54 million with an opt-out. He’s a former No. 1 overall pick who turns 30 in May and opened 2026 looking like an ace. Then San Diego traded for him and he posted a 7.46 ERA over 44.2 innings, gave up 21 earned runs in 21.2 innings in September, and finished on the injured list with a sprained ankle. Full season: a 3.96 ERA over 131.1 innings. He also has Tommy John in his past, missed all of 2023, and had a groin stint this year. The going comps are Luis Severino at 3 years and $67 million and Sean Manaea at 3 and $75 million, and Mize’s second half says he doesn’t reach either. The opt-out is the bridge: it’s how a pitcher who believes in his first half signs with a team that watched his second. His Baseball Savant page doesn’t look that attractive.  His overall numbers with the Padres were poor obviously, including 13 homers allowed in those 44.2 innings.  He’s a flyball-heavy pitcher, with below-average swing-and-miss capabilities. Despite that, 3 years $54M looks pretty realistic to me. His 16 starts with Detroit were excellent. He showed consistent release points across his 5 pitch mix, and ability to paint the edges. If the O’s go after him, they’ll be of the belief that his first half can be replicated if they adjust his pitch sequencing. In the current landscape, $18M is the baseline rate for a mid-rotation starter.

Rogers, 4 years / $84 million. He finished with a 4.03 ERA over 169.2 innings and 30 starts with a 3.64 FIP and about 3.3 fWAR. Over 43 starts as an Oriole he’s at a 3.35 ERA and a 3.31 FIP. There were more hits allowed and a much higher home run rate in ’26, but he’s a left-hander entering his age 29 season with 170 innings in the thinnest starting pitching market in years. Yusei Kikuchi got 3 and $63 million at 34. Rogers is five years younger. If two clubs engage, this goes to five years and past $100 million.

Jeffers, 4 years / $76 million. He posted a 128 wRC+ in 2026, which is remarkable for a catcher, and he’s the best one available in a class Minnesota’s own beat writers describe as underwhelming. Bidding is expected to be aggressive, with the Yankees an obvious suitor after Austin Wells’s season. J.T. Realmuto’s 3 years and $45 million last winter is the floor comp, and Realmuto was five years older. The caution: a mid-May hamate fracture cost Jeffers two months and held him to 92 games.

And the draft pick math, which I’d left out entirely.

Rogers is qualifying-offer eligible – MLBTR projects the QO at $23.1 million. Jeffers is expected to get one from Minnesota too, and Morejon is eligible as well.

Extend Rogers the qualifying offer no matter what. He’s said he’s excited to test the market and is unlikely to accept, but if he does, the Orioles get a 3 WAR starter for one year at $23 million with no long-term risk. If (when) he declines and signs elsewhere, Baltimore collects a pick just after the first round. That’s the same mechanism that produced Wehiwa Aloy when Anthony Santander left.

So: signing Jeffers costs a pick, Rogers departing returns one. Roughly a wash. The version where Baltimore keeps Rogers and signs Jeffers is the one that costs a pick outright, and it’s still the right move.

One scheduling note that matters more than usual. The Orioles get five days of exclusive negotiating rights after the World Series, and the lockout arrives December 1st. If they want Rogers, you would like to make it happen in that window. Maybe not realistic, with Rogers surely wanting to test the market at this point.

What You Don’t Do

Don’t trade Gunnar Henderson. Two years of control, coming off the worst season of his career, is selling at the bottom. Run it back. If he rebounds and the team doesn’t, you move him next summer exactly the way you moved Rutschman.

Don’t trade Holliday or Mayo for prospects. Holliday’s value has never been lower and he’s 23 in December with control through 2030. Mayo hit 21 homers with a 91.5 mph exit velocity and has four arbitration years left. Neither of those is a sell-high. Some people are willing to just give Holliday away at this point and install Alexander – or Westburg, if his arm can’t handle third – at second. I don’t like Holliday’s baseball instincts, but I just can’t see giving him away when his value is at a low. I’d rather run it back and hope the light bulb goes fully on. Would expect more power next spring, a full year removed from his surgery.

Don’t buy offense. Not a bat, not a DH, not a corner outfielder signed for his OPS. The lineup projects to be sufficient. Runs allowed is the problem.

Don’t sign a closer. You’re already paying two of them. Use the money you’d hypothetically spend there on a starter.

The 2027 Roster This Produces

Rotation: Mize (or Skubal), Rogers, Bradish, Baz, Young

Bullpen: Cano, Rico Garcia, Wolfram, Sanders, Hoppe, Walker, plus Bautista and Helsley

Against right-handed pitching: Basallo C, Alonso 1B, Holliday 2B, Westburg 3B, Henderson SS, Beavers LF, Cowser CF, Mayo RF, Jeffers DH

Against left-handed pitching: Jeffers C, Alonso 1B, Alexander 2B, Westburg 3B, Henderson SS, O’Neill LF, Robert Jr. CF, Mayo RF, Encarnacion-Strand DH

Bench: whichever of Basallo/Jeffers isn’t starting, Alexander, Cowser or Beavers against lefties, Encarnacion-Strand, O’Neill, Robert Jr.

That’s 13 position players and it’s tight: Basallo, Jeffers, Alonso, Holliday, Alexander, Westburg, Henderson, Mayo, Cowser, Beavers, Robert, O’Neill, Encarnacion-Strand. The glove-first depth outfielder is Norfolk insurance rather than an Opening Day lock, which is fine – you’d want him the week O’Neill’s shoulder or Robert’s back acts up, and one of them probably will.

I said above the priority for Elias should be building a team that looks like it should win 90-95 games come Spring Training.

Is that this team? Maybe not.

It does look like a team you can argue into the high 80s with normal health, primarily with Henderson rebounding, and into the low 90s if two of Basallo, Cowser and Westburg reach their best case rather than their likely one.

There are multiple ways to build a team. This path is one option.

Next time we’ll look at scenarios where there is more wholesale change, and what that could look like.

The post The Orioles Off-Season; Early Thoughts appeared first on Baltimore Sports and Life.

Last winter saw Pete Alonso signed for five years and $155 million. Ryan Helsley for two and $28 million. Shane Baz in a trade. Zach Eflin, Taylor Ward, Leody Taveras. Payroll to $163 million, the highest in franchise history. David Rubenstein opened the checkbook and Mike Elias spent it.

They’re 18.5 games behind Tampa Bay.

So the winter ahead matters more than the last one did. There’s a thread running on the BSL board right now where a dozen people have laid out their wish lists, and I want to start by saying something that isn’t a criticism of any of them: everybody already knows what the needs are. Top-of-rotation starter. Outfield defense. Two bullpen arms. A catcher who isn’t an automatic out. Decisions on Holliday and Mayo. Every list in that thread has most of those, in roughly the same order.

I’m assuming two things for the rest of this: Elias is back, and there will be baseball in 2027. Neither is guaranteed.

The Calendar Problem

The collective bargaining agreement expires at 11:59 p.m. on December 1st.

The owners want a salary cap, which has never existed in this sport and which the union has opposed under every executive director it has ever had. Bruce Meyer, who took over as interim head of the MLBPA in February, has said flatly that the union’s position isn’t changing. Most people who cover labor in this sport expect a lockout.

What that means practically: free agency may open, run for a few weeks, and then freeze. Transactions stop during a lockout. The 2022 version lasted 99 days and pushed Opening Day back a week.

I’m assuming it gets resolved. But it changes how you read everything below. Teams that want to do business may try to do it fast, in November, before the door closes. Teams that would rather wait now have a structural excuse to wait.

A front office that has been criticized for years for being too patient has just been handed the best alibi it will ever get.

The Money

Per FanGraphs’ RosterResource, the Orioles have $74.3 million in guaranteed money on the books for 2027. They spent $162.8 million in 2026.

Here’s what’s actually committed:

• Pete Alonso — $33.5M, and it stays there through 2030
• Tyler O’Neill — $16.5M
• Kyle Bradish — $10M, the first year of a five-year, $90 million extension
• Shane Baz — $7.8M, year two of five years and $68 million
• Yennier Cano — $2.75M
• Samuel Basallo — $1.625M
• Zach Eflin buyout — $2M

That’s the list.

Coming off the books: Chris Bassitt ($18.5M), Andrew Kittredge ($9M), Trevor Rogers ($6.2M), Zach Eflin ($8M), Keegan Akin ($3M).

Now add the things that aren’t in that $74.3 million. Ryan Helsley holds a $14 million player option and there is no chance on this earth he declines it after throwing 15 innings. Gunnar Henderson goes to his second arbitration year off an $8.5 million salary. Félix Bautista, Jordan Westburg, and Colton Cowser all enter arbitration.

Call it roughly $124 million of realistic commitment once you tender everyone and fill out the roster. At a flat $163 million payroll, that’s about $39 million of room.

The luxury tax isn’t a factor in any scenario. Their 2026 CBT number was around $215 million against a $244 million first threshold.

1. Land Casey Mize, and Re-sign Trevor Rogers

Trevor Rogers is a free agent — he’s second on the Orioles in fWAR this season at 3.3. He’s thrown 157 innings, posted a 3.64 FIP, and cost $6.2 million.

That leaves Baz, Bradish, Brandon Young, and two openings.

You can make the argument that the O’s should be pursuing Tarik Skubal. He is not qualifying-offer eligible, because he was traded in-season to the Dodgers. No draft pick. No international money. Just cash.
I’ve made the point plenty of times over the years that the O’s being built as they were gave them payroll flexibility.
You’d like to use that flexibility the one Winter where one of the best pitchers alive is available with no draft-pick tax attached.

Living in reality, let’s forget about the Skubal pipe dream, and set our sights on Casey Mize.
CBS Sports recently identified Baltimore as a potential landing spot for Mize, and he’s someone that does seem reasonably obtainable.

I’d also like to re-sign Rogers. He’s had success here, he’s talked about wanting to stay here. I don’t see the O’s obtaining two pitchers better than him.

A Bradish, Mize, Rogers, Baz, Young rotation looks capable.

2. Decide On Gunnar Henderson

Two years of control left. Arbitration in 2027, arbitration in 2028, free agent after that.

Personally, I don’t think there is a lot to decide here.

He’s the most talented overall player on the roster, and 2026 was overall a down year.

If his 2026 season looked like his 2024 season, I think there would be a strong argument for moving him this Winter – if the O’s know an extension isn’t happening.

But given the season he’s had, I’m not real interested in moving him this Winter.

Run it back for ’27.  If he and the team rebound, great.
If he rebounds, and the team doesn’t; then you can move him next Summer like you did with Rutschman at the Trade Deadline this year.

The only logical contrarian point of view would be if the Orioles don’t believe there is any circumstance where they contend next year.
If they don’t believe they can contend, then you could say you’re better off trading him with 2 full years of team control remaining vs. 1.5, even coming off a down year.

3. Fix The Outfield Corners — Not The Outfield

Several people want a whole new outfield with Cowser on the bench. That’s not going to happen.
He’s been strong defensively in CF, and it’s highly likely that’s where he is to begin ’27.

What do you want the O’s to do with LF and RF?

How do you evaluate Dylan Beavers?
He runs well, he throws well, but this year his defense has been poor (-7 Outs Above Average).
Last year he graded right around average.
This Spring Orioles Manager Craig Albernaz said Beavers had all of the tools necessary to be an above average defensive OF.

What do the O’s believe about Beavers now?
If they don’t believe Beavers can be average defensively, then maybe the O’s go after a corner OF like Daulton Varsho, or Seiya Suzuki.

Should also be noted that the O’s have the $20M team option on Luis Robert Jr, or a $2M buyout.

Heston Kjerstad has gotten back to the Majors after spending nearly all of ’26 at AAA.
Tyler O’Neill is on the IL with a shoulder injury. He’s owed $16.5M next year.  He was hitting LHP well before going to the IL, but the O’s would still have to eat most of his contract to move him.
Do they think Coby Mayo can handle RF?  He’s got the arm, and a short RF at-least at OPACY.  Is Mayo in RF even on their radar?

Enrique Bradfield has continued to slide down the Orioles Top 30 Prospect list.
Currently the 2023 1st round pick is the O’s 18th overall top prospect according to MLB.com.
Bradfield played in 108 games in 2024, 76 games in 2025, and 94 so far in 2026.
He’s got a .705 OPS in 302 ab’s at AAA this year.
Even if you wanted to pencil in Bradfield’s defense and speed in CF next year, and move Cowser to LF; Bradfield hasn’t shown an ability to stay available.
Also, if he’s a .600 OPS guy in the Majors, could the everyday lineup sustain that even with excellent CF defense?

4. Sign Ryan Jeffers

Jeffers is the tenth-best free agent in this class per CBS. He turned 29 in June, and has an .856 OPS for the year – hitting both LH and RH pitching.

I don’t think the O’s are real excited about giving Basallo 110+ starts behind the plate.
If that’s the case, than you need less of a backup and more of a guy that splits Catcher with Basallo.

Maybe the O’s believe Carlos Narvaez will rebound?
He’s got a sub .500 OPS this year over 237 ab’s, but he did have 42 xbh’s in 2025, and he is a quality defender.

I could see the O’s believing a Narvaez rebound is a better utilization of the money they have available vs. an investment in Jeffers.
That’s fine if that’s the calculation, but the O’s have to get that call right.

If Basallo is only going to catch 80-90 games, they can’t have a complete no-hit backup behind him.

How much would Jeffers cost? $15M a year for 2-3 years?

5. Can You Obtain At-Least One High-Leverage Bullpen Arm?

Andrew Kittredge is a free agent. Helsley opts in at $14 million after 17 appearances. Félix Bautista hasn’t thrown a major league inning all year – he and Helsley each worked an inning at Norfolk on Saturday, Helsley’s first appearance since June 27th.

Bautista is in his final arbitration year in 2027 and a free agent after it. The Orioles get one season to find out what The Mountain is after two shoulder surgeries and two lost years.

Yennier Cano is signed for two more years at $7.5 million total and has been the best reliever on the team. Beyond that it’s Rico Garcia, Grant Wolfram — whose 4.75 ERA hides a 2.74 FIP and a quality strand rate.
Can also talk about Anthony Nunez, Alex Hoppe, Cam Sanders, Josh Walker.  Maybe they bring Kittredge back.

If one of Helsley or Bautista is back next season and All-Star caliber, that goes a long way.
If their both effective, that would obviously be huge for the O’s.

I feel reasonably good right now that they could contribute to the O’s in ’27.
But if I’m the O’s, I go into the off-season not planning on relying on either.

I can buy Skubal as one of the games best starters being priced out of any realistic scenario for the O’s.

I’d like to think they could make a strong offer to one of the games better relievers like Adrian Morejon.
Clearly Morejon will be in-demand by many. Maybe you can’t convince him to come to Baltimore.
You can make him turn you down.

Another Free Agent option would be David Bednar.

Obtaining either in Free Agency would move the needle.

If you can’t obtain one of those two in Free Agency, then you have to consider moving one of your internal positional players via trade for a reliable high-leverage arm.

6. What Do The O’s Want To Do With The Infield?

Pete Alonso has 1st for years to come.

I’d probably keep Jackson Holliday.  He’s 23 in December, and he only has 1,100 career ab’s. Controlled through 2030. Walk % continues to go up. Has plus sprint speed.  and I know I’m in the minority. He’s never going to be great at 2nd, but I think he has improved. Still below average, but closer to average. His contact quality needs to improve, as does his baserunning. I believe there is more there vs. what we’ve seen, and I wouldn’t want to move him for what I’d expect they’d get for him. His trade value has never been lower and never will be lower. Selling the first overall pick at his floor, coming off a hamate injury, doesn’t seem ideal to me. I wouldn’t completely rule out a trade though, if he carries more value than I expect he does.

We talked about both Henderson and the backup catcher above.

So, what about 3rd?

I like Jordan Westburg a lot. The O’s believe he will be ready next Spring.
I’ll be excited to see him back in an O’s uniform.
But after being limited to 85 games in 2025, and missing all of ’26; he’s going to have show he can stay in the lineup.
Even if the O’s are optimistic about Westburg for ’27, you can’t go into the Winter putting his spot down in pen, right?

Blaze Alexander will be back, and he’s an option at 2nd and 3rd.  Ideally he’s your UTI guy, but if you got to Memorial Day and Holliday hasn’t taken a leap, maybe Alexander is taking his playing time?

What if Westburg is generally healthy next Spring, but after the elbow-surgery says 2nd is a better option for him than 3rd?
In that case, I’d still want to come to Spring Training with Holliday still on the roster, and make Westburg prove he was healthy.
If it’s next March, and it’s clear that Westburg can only play 2nd, than maybe you’re more likely to talk me into a Holliday trade.

We mentioned Alexander, and of course have to again mention Mayo.  If Mayo can’t get at-least sometime in RF, than he’s limited to 1st / DH / 3rd.
He’s always going to be below average at 3rd.
If Basallo is DHing for 60-80 games, that factors.
If O’Neill is on the roster, and DHing some, that factors.
Mayo’s production the last few months also has to factor. He’s got four arbitration years left, and he’s got a .754 OPS for the year – having absolutely crushed LHP.

Encarnacion-Strand has done enough over his 160 ab’s with the Orioles to want to see him back in some capacity next year. Particularly with him also crushing LHP.

7. The Offensive Approach

The Orioles are 12th overall in runs scored, 16th in on-base %, and 23rd in slugging.

They haven’t slugged as expected this year, and they’ve scored less than they should have.

For a nearly top 1/3 overall offense, there are too many nights where just can’t get anything going.

The hit the ball harder than most (team exit velocity, hard-hit rate, barrel rate), but they’ve struggled to manufacture runs, and haven’t hit enough homers for an offense that was built around their expected power.

Most of baseball has a three true outcome offensive approach (walk, k, homer).

I know nobody wants talk about batting average in 2026, but being 27th overall in batting average (.234) feels limiting.

8. The Housekeeping

Luis Robert Jr.’s $20 million club option – decline. He played three games and pulled a hamstring. A free lottery ticket in August is a $20 million mistake in November.

Ryan Mountcastle’s $7.5 million club option – decline. Fifteen plate appearances this year.

Leody Taveras in his third arbitration year – non-tender. An 81 wRC+ in 444 plate appearances and an unplayable right-handed side. His final numbers look bad, but will say he gave the O’s a reasonable option a lot of nights this year.

And the thing nobody can fix: Again, O’Neill is owed $16.5 million in 2027 off a 94 wRC+ and a shoulder injury.

9. The Payroll Has To Jump Again

A wish list that doesn’t balance isn’t a plan, so let’s do the math.

Roughly $124 million committed before you sign anyone. At a flat $163 million, that’s $39 million of room.

Plan to take the payroll to approximately $185-$190 million, and that’s $61 to $66M to play with to address the needs identified above.

Payroll again going up after another losing season would be good to see.

I do believe you could build a contender with payroll being flat, or even moving back.
But what a larger payroll should do, is give you further depth, and the ability to get more things wrong / better handle adversity.

Elias

I called for his job in August and took the headline back in September, and I meant both.

Rubenstein authorized a franchise-record payroll and got a losing season. Elias then sold at the deadline and got a genuinely strong return – five top-100 prospects in the system now, three of them acquired this summer. The farm is stocked. The books are the cleanest in baseball. Baz and Bradish are signed long-term. Basallo is under contract through 2033 at an average of $8.4 million.

2025 and 2026 have been highly disappointing years for Orioles fans.

I am someone that has largely been an Elias superfan for his tenure, but there can’t be unlimited rope.

If he’s going to be back for 2027, he has to have some conviction about the roster he wants, and he has to figure out to build a contender.

I like positional versatility.
I like having a team that has multiple bites at the apple vs. going all in on any one particular season.

But barring some crazy run here in the last 12 games, the O’s will have not reached October two years in a row.
The mentality for everyone in The Warehouse should be that can’t continue in ’27.

The National League is probably superior to the American League at this point, but the AL East remains the best division in baseball.
The goal should be to build a team that looks like they could win 95 games and the East next year.
The goal shouldn’t be to build a team that looks like they could possibly / maybe sneak into the post-season next year if everything goes right.

You’ve got a deep system, you’ve got an Owner who says he’s committed to spending.
You’ve got an existing roster which has both plenty of questions and plenty of talent.

It’s on Elias to figure out how to make everything work in 2027.

The post The Winter Ahead appeared first on Baltimore Sports and Life.

Jackson Holliday — 2B, bats L, turns 23 in December

Where he is: 92 games, 328 plate appearances, .232/.309/.349, seven homers, eight steals. An 87 wRC+ and an 89 OPS+. 0.6 fWAR, 0.4 bWAR.

The case file: First overall pick in 2022. Baseball America Minor League Player of the Year. Struck out 33.2% of the time as a 20-year-old in 2024, then cut it to 21.6% in 2025, the second-largest year-over-year improvement in baseball. Played 149 games in ’25 and hit .242/.314/.375 with 17 homers and 17 steals.

He fixed the strikeouts. He didn’t fix the impact, and this year the impact got worse. His average exit velocity is 87.0 mph against a league mark of 88.8. His hard-hit rate is 34.3% against a league mark of 38.6%. His barrel rate is 6.9%. He is hitting the ball on the ground 44% of the time with a .118 ISO. The hamate injury is part of that and hamates historically cost a hitter power for the better part of a year, but there was no power surplus to lose.

The encouraging piece: a 26.2% chase rate, a 10.4% walk rate, and 28.8 ft/s sprint speed, 87th percentile. The approach and the athleticism are both real. And his .301 xwOBA against a .292 wOBA says he’s earned roughly what he’s gotten. There’s no hidden season here.

Career: .232, 29 homers, three seasons. Under control through 2030.

2027 Best Case — Fully past the hamate, age-23 season, and the exit velocity climbs into league-average territory, which is all he needs given the approach and the speed. .265/.345/.430, 18-20 homers, 15-20 steals, plus defense at second. 3.5-4.0 WAR and a first All-Star nod.

2027 Worst Case — A third straight season around .230/.310/.350. The contact quality stays 30th percentile, meaning there’s no production waiting to be unlocked. He loses time to Blaze Alexander and finishes under 1.0 WAR, and the Orioles spend the following winter taking calls.

2027 Likely — .250/.330/.390, 12-15 homers, 15 steals, roughly a 100 wRC+, 2.0-2.5 WAR as the everyday second baseman. Real improvement, no leap.

Career Best Case — Four or five All-Star-adjacent seasons in his late twenties, peaking around .285/.370/.450 with 20 homers and 25 steals. Something like Ozzie Albies with better strike-zone judgment. 30-35 career WAR.

Career Worst Case — He never slugs .400. A defensively adequate second baseman with a .330 OBP and no thump becomes a utility man at 29. 8-12 career WAR, three or four organizations, and a permanent spot on lists of draft busts he doesn’t entirely deserve.

Career Likely — A good, long career that isn’t a star’s career. Ten-plus years as a regular, 2-3 WAR annually, around .255/.335/.395, maybe one All-Star selection, 20-25 career WAR.

Coby Mayo — 3B/1B/DH, bats R, 24

Where he is: 116 games, 385 plate appearances, .224/.288/.460, 21 homers, a 109 wRC+ and a 105 OPS+. 1.5 fWAR, 0.6 bWAR. He homered twice against Cleveland on September 7th.

The case file: A fourth-round pick in 2020 who became an elite power prospect, and the power is now unambiguously playing. 91.5 mph average exit velocity, a 48.5% hard-hit rate, a 13.0% barrel rate, a .236 ISO. He pulls the ball 49.8% of the time and puts 35.5% of it in the air. That is a home-run hitter’s profile, in the majors, right now.

Two things to be honest about. First, there’s no luck story left: his .322 xwOBA sits essentially on top of his .323 wOBA. What you see is what he’s earned. Second, the strikeouts remain the whole question — 31.7% on the season with a 31.0% whiff rate. And the platoon split is severe, with the large majority of his damage coming against left-handers.

Through his first 646 big league plate appearances he hit .207/.282/.390 with an 89 wRC+. Since the All-Star break he’s been one of the two or three best hitters on the team.

One option year left. Cheap through roughly 2031.

2027 Best Case — The second half was the real player. 550 plate appearances, .255/.325/.510, 32-35 homers, a 130 wRC+, strikeouts down near 28%. 3.5 WAR and Silver Slugger votes at DH or first base.

2027 Worst Case — The splits calcify, he’s unplayable against right-handers, the whiff rate climbs back over 33%, and he’s a strong-side platoon bat with 350 plate appearances and under 1.0 WAR. Or he’s the centerpiece going out for pitching and hits 30 somewhere else.

2027 Likely — 450-500 plate appearances leaning on matchups. .240/.305/.475, 26-30 homers, a 110-115 wRC+, 1.5-2.0 WAR. Genuinely productive and genuinely flawed at once.

Career Best Case — Six to eight years as a 35-homer middle-of-the-order bat, two or three All-Star appearances, a 4-WAR peak. 20-25 career WAR, 250-plus homers.

Career Worst Case — The strikeouts against right-handed pitching never come down, and he’s a platoon slugger who bounces between four organizations. 500-600 games, 5-8 WAR, 90 homers.

Career Likely — A ten-year big leaguer with a defined role. 180-220 career homers, a career line near .240/.310/.460, 15-20 WAR. A real power bat, not a franchise cornerstone.

Samuel Basallo — C/1B/DH, bats L, 22

Where he is: 102 games, 367 plate appearances, .230/.300/.420, 17 homers, a 102 wRC+ and a 101 OPS+. 1.8 bWAR but only 1.0 fWAR, one of the widest splits on the roster,

The case file: Still the most valuable long-term asset of these five, and it isn’t close.

Signed out of Santo Domingo in January 2021. Reached Triple-A at 20 and hit .270/.377/.590 with 23 homers in 76 games. Debuted August 17, 2025, and five days later signed an eight-year, $67 million extension running through 2033, with a 2034 club option at $18 million and a $7 million buyout. It maxes at $88.5 million and was the largest pre-arbitration deal ever given to a catcher. He makes $1 million a year through 2028, then $4M, $7M, $11M, $15M, $15M. With the option, he isn’t a free agent until he’s 30.

The contact quality supports him: 90.5 mph exit velocity, a 43.0% hard-hit rate, a 12.7% barrel rate, and a .323 xwOBA against a .313 wOBA. He has been slightly unlucky, not lucky.

Two flags. His 39.4% chase rate is the highest among Orioles regulars by a wide margin and is the thing standing between a .300 OBP and a .350 one. And his sprint speed is 24.8 ft/s, fifth percentile in baseball, which matters for the question of where a 6-foot-4 catcher ends up if he has to move off the position.

All of that, at 22, with a 102 wRC+ and 17 homers. Catchers who do this at 21 and 22 become stars at a high rate.

2027 Best Case — The chase rate drops five points and everything follows. .270/.340/.500, 28-30 homers, a 135 wRC+, receiving grades to average, 110 games caught. 4.5-5.0 WAR and an All-Star selection.

2027 Worst Case — The chase rate holds, the OBP stays under .300, and the defense pushes him to first base and DH. .235/.295/.440 with 22 homers and 1.0 WAR. A fine age-23 season, but if the O’s are committed to him playing only 80 or so games behind the plate, that causes other roster construction discussions.

2027 Likely — .250/.315/.460, 24-27 homers, a 115 wRC+, 3.0-3.5 WAR splitting catcher and DH.

Career Best Case — A perennial All-Star catcher with multiple 5-6 WAR seasons, a 35-homer peak, and down-ballot MVP finishes. 40-50 career WAR and one of the five best contracts in the sport by 2030.

Career Worst Case — The bat plays and the position doesn’t, and the fifth-percentile speed means there’s nowhere to hide him but DH. A designated hitter with a .310 OBP by 25. Still a big leaguer for a long time; the surplus value evaporates. 15-20 career WAR.

Career Likely — A very good catcher for a decade. 3-4 WAR most years, two or three All-Star teams, 250-plus homers, 30-35 WAR, and by 2029 the extension is one of the reasons the Orioles are competitive again.

Dylan Beavers — LF/RF, bats L, 25

Where he is: 89 games, 295 plate appearances, .244/.323/.382, six homers, 18 doubles, a 101 wRC+ and a 100 OPS+. 0.1 fWAR, 0.0 bWAR.

The case file: The 33rd pick in 2022 out of Cal, signed for $2.2 million. Baseball America’s grades: hit 40, power 60, run 60, field 55, arm 60. He hit .304/.420/.515 with 15 homers and 31 steals at Norfolk in 2025.

The approach might be the best of this group. A 24.1% chase rate and a 24.5% whiff rate, both comfortably better than league average, with a 9.8% walk rate. That skill is major-league quality today.

Everything else is a problem. The 60-grade power has produced six homers and a .137 ISO, on an 88.2 mph exit velocity and a 7.0% barrel rate. The 60-grade speed has produced five steals in ten attempts despite 28.9 ft/s sprint speed, 88th percentile. And the defense, which I gave him credit for last time based on the scouting reports, has graded out at -4 in LF, -3 in RF, and -1 in CF per OAA. He does run and throw at high levels. He also graded perfectly adequate defensively in 2025, which would make you think ’26 has largely been a defensive slump for some reason, and not definitively who he is with the glove.

He’s also 25, with a .301 xwOBA against a .313 wOBA, meaning he’s been slightly fortunate, not unlucky. Under team control through 2031.

2027 Best Case — The power arrives at 26, which happens for tall left-handed hitters more often than people think, and the outfield defense regresses toward the scouting grade rather than the 2026 measurement. .265/.355/.450, 20 homers, 15 steals, a 120 wRC+. 3.0 WAR.

2027 Worst Case — .235/.320/.370 with eight homers and negative defensive value. A corner outfielder whose only carrying skill is not swinging at bad pitches doesn’t hold a job when Azocar, Booth, and Irish arrive. Under 0.5 WAR.

2027 Likely — .250/.335/.410, 12-15 homers, a 105 wRC+, roughly neutral defense. 1.0-1.5 WAR as a strong-side platoon corner outfielder.

Career Best Case — Five or six years as a .265/.360/.450 everyday corner outfielder with one 25-homer season. 18-22 career WAR.

Career Worst Case — The classic good-approach, no-impact corner bat, and the glove doesn’t save him. .240/.320/.380 across six to eight years as a fourth outfielder. 3-6 career WAR.

Career Likely — Useful for a long time without ever being important. 9-13 career WAR, 80 ish career homers. Ideally more of a platoon player vs. a regular starter.

Colton Cowser — CF/LF, bats L, 26

Where he is: 128 games, 347 plate appearances, .215/.306/.368, 13 homers, a 93 wRC+ and a 92 OPS+. 1.5 fWAR, 2.1 bWAR, with +4.9 Def.

The case file: The fifth overall pick in 2021 and the hardest of these five to read.

In 2024 he hit .242/.321/.447 with 24 homers, a 119 wRC+, and 3.9 fWAR, and lost the AL Rookie of the Year award to Luis Gil by two first-place votes. Then 2025: thumb, rib, and concussion injuries limited him to 92 games and he hit .196/.269/.385 with a 35.6% strikeout rate, bottom one percent of baseball. This year the strikeout rate is 30.3% with a 32.4% whiff rate. Better. Still bad.

His .319 xwOBA sits 18 points above his .301 actual wOBA, the biggest such gap among Orioles regulars. His hard-hit rate is 40.8% and his barrel rate is 10.4%, both above league average. He has been the unluckiest hitter on this team, and there is a better season sitting underneath these numbers than the batting average suggests.

Add the defense and you have a player whose floor is higher than a .215 hitter’s floor normally is.

Arbitration-eligible this winter. Free agent after 2029.

2027 Best Case — The batted-ball luck normalizes and the contact gains from this August hold. .245/.335/.450, 24 homers, 15 steals, a 118 wRC+, plus center field defense. 4.5-5.0 WAR and he’s in the running for being one of the best all-around players on the roster.

2027 Worst Case — The strikeout rate goes back over 33% and even good defense can’t rescue an 85 wRC+. 1.0 WAR, then a non-tender or a salary-dump trade in his second arbitration year.

2027 Likely — .230/.320/.415, 18-20 homers, a 105 wRC+, carried by the glove to 2.5-3.0 WAR. A good everyday center fielder whose value comes more from defense than offense, and who will frustrate everyone watching him hit.

Career Best Case — 2024 was real and his age 27-30 seasons deliver. Three or four 4-WAR seasons, a Gold Glove, 150-plus career homers, 25-30 career WAR.

Career Worst Case — The swing-and-miss wins. A defensive-replacement fourth outfielder by 29, finishing around 10-12 career WAR with 2024 as the one good season people bring up as a what if?

Career Likely — Five more years as an above-average defensive OF with a streaky, low-average, real-power bat. 2-3 WAR annually, 18-22 career WAR. Consistently more valuable to his employer than he looks to the people in the stands.

Jordan Westburg — 3B/2B, bats R, 27 (28 in February)

Where he is: Nowhere. He has not played a game in 2026 and won’t.

The case file: The 30th pick in 2020 out of Mississippi State, debuted in June 2023, and the only player on this list who has already been an All-Star.

The production, when he’s on the field, has been very encouraging. The inability to stay available has been disheartening.

• 2024: 107 games, .264/.312/.480, 18 homers, 63 RBI, All-Star. A season ended by a fractured hand.
• 2025: 85 games, .265 with 17 homers and 41 RBI. Hamstring, left index finger, right ankle.
• 2026: Zero games.

Career: .264 with 38 homers in 260 games across three seasons. Eighteen homers in 107 games is a 27-homer pace. Seventeen in 85 games is a 32-homer pace. The power has been trending up the whole time, and he’s a legitimately good defender at third base who can also handle second.

Here’s the whole projection in one sentence: he has never played 110 games in a season, and now he’s had Tommy John.

He was diagnosed with a partial UCL tear in his right elbow in February, took a PRP injection to try to avoid the knife, was shut down from throwing in early May when the discomfort came back, and had the surgery on May 13th with Dr. Neal ElAttrache. Elias said afterward that the delay cost nothing on the 2027 timeline and that Westburg being “back as a full player in the early part of 2027 is very much in play.” Westburg said in June that if he gets a normal spring, he thinks he’ll be ready.

Position players come back from UCL surgery much faster than pitchers, and the bat generally comes back intact. This is not the same risk profile as a pitcher’s Tommy John. But the surgery date puts him roughly nine months out at the start of spring training, which is cutting it close, and the arm strength question is real for a third baseman specifically.

Under club control through 2029.

2027 Best Case — Normal spring, opens on time, and finally gets the season he’s been chasing. 140 games, .270/.330/.470, 25 homers, plus defense at third. 4.0-4.5 WAR and a second All-Star nod.

2027 Worst Case — The elbow isn’t right in February, he opens on the IL, the arm strength doesn’t come all the way back, and he’s a 100-game DH-and-second-base guy. Or another unrelated injury, because that’s now four straight years. Under 1.0 WAR and the Orioles have to decide what he is with two years of control left.

2027 Likely — He’s back by April or May and plays 110-120 games at .265/.325/.450 with 20 homers and good defense. 2.5-3.0 WAR. The production when available is good; the availability is the question.

Career Best Case — He finally strings together health at 28-31 and puts up three or four seasons of 4-plus WAR with 25-30 homers and good third base defense. Two more All-Star teams, a big free agent contract after 2029. 25-30 career WAR.

Career Worst Case — The elbow lingers, the arm forces him off third, and he becomes a second baseman and DH who plays 90 games a year. He’s a useful player nobody can count on, changes teams twice, and finishes around 12-15 career WAR with everyone remembering the 2024 first half.

Career Likely — A very good hitter who plays 115 games a year. 2.5-3.5 WAR annually in the seasons he’s mostly available, 20-25 homers, a strong free agent case after 2029 that some team pays for. 20-25 career WAR.

The post Best Case, Worst Case, Likely appeared first on Baltimore Sports and Life.

Entering tonight in Colorado, the Orioles are 68-69, 4th in the AL East, and one game behind Cleveland for the 3rd Wild Card.

One game under .500 for the first time since April 30th.

Seven wins in their last nine. 5-1 on the road trip with three to play in Denver.

Baseball Reference now puts their post-season odds at 23%. FanGraphs has their odds at 21%.

On August 4th, the day after the Deadline, the FanGraphs projection was 12%.

SI’s betting roundup had the O’s as the biggest mover in the league last week, from +500 to +310 to reach October.

They’re 16th in the Power Rankings at CBS Sports, 14th at MLB.com, and 14th at FanGraphs.

The Schedule

The remaining schedule is:

• 8/31 – 9/2 at Colorado
• 9/3 – 9/6 vs. Boston
• 9/7 – 9/9 vs. Cleveland
• 9/11 – 9/13 at Toronto
• 9/14 – 9/16 at the Mets
• 9/18 – 9/20 vs. Milwaukee
• 9/21 – 9/23 vs. Toronto
• 9/25 – 9/27 at the Yankees

Sixteen of the 25 come against the AL East or Cleveland. Thirteen at home, twelve on the road.

Six games come against Colorado (52-85) and the Mets (61-76), who are the two worst teams they’ll see.

Three come against Milwaukee, who at 85-52 has the best record in baseball.

And six against Toronto, who at 68-70 is a half-game behind the O’s and chasing the same spot.

The Cleveland series, September 7th-9th at Camden Yards, is also circled. Three games, head-to-head, against the team directly in front of you.

There is no version of this where the O’s back into the playoffs.

If they reach the post-season, they’ll have earned it – even with the AL being down as a whole.

Walking Some Thoughts Back

On August 3rd I wrote a piece with the headline “Yeah, Time For Elias To Go.”

I’ll take some of that back.

I try not to be hyperbolic, the headline was.

What I wrote at the time was that I could make a logical argument for each move individually and still didn’t like the decision-making collectively.
That I could see the O’s still make the post-season, and if that happened – I’d be irritated to not have Rutschman, Wells, Kremer, Ward available.

My thought was that I would have preferred Elias to add along the fringes, and let that group play out the year.

I did acknowledge that Elias had extracted value in the trades, particularly for Rutschman.

But I said the fanbase wouldn’t get over it, and I said the man should lose his job over it. Four weeks later, the team is 14-11 since, they’ve climbed from four games under to one, and their odds have roughly doubled.

A month later, I have to plainly acknowledge Elias largely made the right call.

And the returns look better with a month of distance. Per MLB Pipeline and ESPN’s updated Top 10, Anthony Eyanson is now the #2 prospect in the system, Enddy Azocar #4, Michael Forret #9. Kyson Witherspoon, also from the Rutschman deal, just missed, as did 2025 college picks Caden Hunter and JT Quinn. Eric Booth Jr. sits atop the list.

Add Joseph Dzierwa, Nate George, Ike Irish, Boston Bateman, Wehiwa Aloy, and Trey Gibson, and this is a genuinely deep system again. Not overwhelming at the very top. But deep, with real pitching, which the O’s have never had this much of at once under Elias.

Ward finished his Orioles season with 2.7 bWAR, 1.8 fWAR. By bWAR, he’s still has the 2nd highest total  on the team.
Rutschman had 1.9 bWAR, and 2.4 fWAR in 67 games.
Wells had a 2.67 ERA out of the pen.

Those were real players and the O’s gave them away in a season they’re now one game out.
So no, I’m not declaring the Deadline a masterstroke.

But calling for the man’s job was too far, and I said it too fast.

If they get in, the correct read is they fortified the systems, and got to October. That would be a hell of a month’s work.

Most Valuable Oriole: Alonso, And Then?

Pete Alonso is the MVO and it isn’t close.

.270/.360/.503, 32 homers, 91 RBI, a 143 OPS+, 4.0 bWAR, 4.0 fWAR, and he’s played all 137 games. On a club that ranks 17th in slugging, he is the slugging.
He has been every bit of what they paid for.

Second is the interesting question.

The bWAR board, among players still in the building:

• Gunnar Henderson  – 2.5
• Brandon Young – 2.1
• Colton Cowser  – 1.9
• Samuel Basallo – 1.6
• Shane Baz – 1.5
• Blaze Alexander -1.3

The fWAR board:

• Shane Baz – 3.4
• Gunnar Henderson – 3.1
• Trevor Rogers – 2.7
• Kyle Bradish – 1.9
• Colton Cowser – 1.7
• Brandon Young – 1.5
• Blaze Alexander – 1.4

Henderson leads it, and I understand why. He’s played 136 games, taken 610 plate appearances, held down shortstop, and hit 22 homers.

But a .223 average and a .307 on-base from a player we expected to be a top-five position player in the sport is a disappointing season to-date, and if voting today – I’d have a hard time placing him 2nd.

Truth be told, Henderson is probably the correct choice.

Still, I’d like to highlight Young and Alexander.

I don’t think either are better or ‘more valuable’ than Henderson obviously; but this year goes completely sideways without their production.

Young is 9-3, 3.38, a 122 ERA+ over 130.1 innings, on a staff that ranks 19th in ERA and lost Zach Eflin and Keegan Akin to Tommy John, traded Kremer, and has watched Chris Bassitt post a 4.97. Young came into 2026 with no guaranteed rotation spot. He’s been regularly dependable, and that consistency means so much.

The fair counter is his 4.30 FIP, which says some regression is owed. Noted.

It’s been great seeing Alexander get back after the fracture in his left hand. He’s hit .309/.363/.430 with a 126 OPS+ in 84 games while starting at six different positions.

Robert Jr., Platoons, And Alignments

Monday the O’s claimed Luis Robert Jr. off outright waivers from the Mets. They owe roughly $3M the rest of the way, with a $20M team option for 2027 that carries a $2M buyout. Because he joined before September 1st, he’s post-season eligible.

He hit .223 with 10 homers and a .702 OPS in 58 games for New York, and missed April 27th through July 20th with a herniated lumbar disc.
He’s got an .841 OPS over his last 30 games, and 75 ab’s.
He’s got elite speed, and a strong arm.
He’s good in CF, previously grading strong.
Him being available for CF, allows you to play Cowser in left and upgrade two spots.

At the Trade Deadline I talked about wanting the O’s to improve on the fringes.
One of the things I mentioned was a better defensive OF.
Here they got a viable option for just money. That’s a win.

With Tyler O’Neill on the IL (retroactive to August 23rd) with a shoulder, the O’s outfield was Cowser (L), Beavers (L), and Taveras (S). Against left-handed pitching that’s a real hole, and Robert is a right-handed bat who won a Gold Glove in center in 2020.

I’m interested to see how playing time shakes out in September.

Clearly Mayo and Encarnacion-Strand have to play every game vs. lefties given how their crushing southpaws.

Taveras probably doesn’t get anymore ab’s vs. LHP (.518 OPS as a RHH).

As we just said above, Robert in CF pushes Coswer to LF.   Cowser has been excellent in CF this year, but was even better in LF in ’24.

Jackson Holliday has been ice cold  (.494 OPS) over his last 104 ab’s. He actually has a higher OPS vs. LHP right now.

Alexander has a .873 OPS vs. RHP.  Got to get him ab’s, and see if he can pick-up where he was before the injury. His positional availability gives Albernaz some flexibility.

How many games can Basallo catch?   Carlos Narvaez is excellent defensively, but he’s really struggling offensively.

Beavers had a nice August offensively. Going into tonight, he’s had a .816 OPS over 69 ab’s.

The Bullpen

I like what has been pieced together here.

Yennier Cano has been the quietly excellent one. 3.07 ERA, a 2.38 FIP, and exactly one home run allowed in 44 innings across 59 appearances. He picked up his third save Sunday.

Rico Garcia has been the workhorse. 64 games, 3.26, a 0.966 WHIP, 59 strikeouts in 58 innings. After allowing 8 homers over June and July, he hasn’t allowed a big fly in August.

Grant Wolfram has a 5.05 ERA and a 3.16 FIP with 9.9 K/9. The results should have been better than they’ve been.

Josh Walker (2.33), Cam Sanders (3.46), and Alex Hoppe (no earned runs in 8.2 innings, acquired in the Rutschman deal) round it out. Cade Povich was recalled Monday to start, and he’s another long-man option.

Andrew Kittredge has eight saves and a 3.19 ERA, but a 3.74 FIP and -0.2 bWAR.  Despite that negative WAR, he’s been strong since the calendar turned to June. I’d still rather have him in the 8th vs. the 9th.

Ryan Helsley hasn’t pitched since June 27th with elbow inflammation and has only recently progressed to bullpen sessions. Plan on nothing, but he’s still hopeful he can return before the year ends. That would be a bonus.

And then there’s the one that matters.

Félix Bautista is three rehab outings into his return from the August 2025 surgery to repair his labrum and rotator cuff. The first, at Double-A Chesapeake, was ugly: one out, three runs, three walks, though the fastball hit 97. The second at Norfolk was a clean inning. The third was a scoreless sixth against Durham with one single, no walks, a strikeout, and a sinker that topped at 97.6.

You are looking to see if he can throw strikes consistently.
At some-point maybe you give him outings on back-to-back days and see how he responds.
Like Helsley, you don’t count on his return, but it’s fun to think about as a possibility.

Things To Watch

Who closes? See above. Albernaz has used five different guys for saves.

Does Bassitt keep his rotation spot? A 4.97 ERA and a 1.582 WHIP, five runs allowed Sunday, and Povich just got recalled after a 5.2-inning, 11-strikeout start at Norfolk. That’s a live question in a race. I’d defer to the experience – probably.

Does Holliday finish? As we said above, Holliday has been freezing the last month. That was after a strong July.  Does he turn things around in September?

Does Basallo get hot?  He’s got the talent to be a difference maker.

Adley comes home. Boston is at Camden Yards Thursday through Sunday. That’s going to be a strange four days, and the crowd reaction will tell you something about where the fanbase actually landed on all this. The fact that he’s got a .500 OPS in 53 ab’s with Boston vs hitting the ground running there makes it easier.

And on September 19th, Trey Mancini signs a one-day contract and retires as an Oriole before the Milwaukee game. Whatever happens in the standings, go to that one.

They Reach October If…

Henderson finishes with a flurry.

This is the whole thing. He hit two off Jeffrey Springs on Sunday, added a run-scoring triple, and tied his career high with five RBI. He’s at 22 homers with a 102 OPS+ in a season that has been a genuine disappointment.

He doesn’t need to be the 2024 version for six months. He needs to be that guy for 25 games. A .900-OPS September from Henderson is worth two or three wins by itself in a race decided by one, and it changes the entire complexion of a lineup that ranks 9th in runs but only 17th in slugging.

If Gunnar goes off, the O’s are in. I believe that more than anything else on this list.

They take care of Colorado and the Mets.

Six games against 52-85 and 61-76. Go 5-1 and you’ve bought yourself the margin to split with Boston and Toronto. Go 3-3 and you’re going to need help you won’t get.

They win the Cleveland series.

September 7th-9th, at home, against another team in the mix.

Bautista gets back and gets the ninth.

Maybe I’m dreaming here. But if the O’s get him back, and he’s able to factor in leverage situations, that’s significant.

Mayo and Encarnacion-Strand keep hammering left-handers, and Albernaz uses them accordingly.

The platoon edges are the cheapest wins available to this team, and they’re sitting right there. Mayo has an .878 OPS since July. Play the matchups every night.

Bradish and Rogers finish strong.

If Gunnar finishing strong is #1 on my list, how Bradish and Rogers finish is 2 and 3.
Bradish had a 5.40 era over 5 starts in August.  We wondered if the lack of innings the last 2 years would catch-up with him.
Rogers had a 4.82 era over his 5 starts in August.
The O’s don’t reach October if these two aren’t better in September.

Twenty-five games. One game back.  Can they go 17-8?

Four weeks ago I wrote that post-season baseball is largely a roll of the dice, and the goal is just to get there and take your chances.

September is arriving, and October is within reach.

The post September Arrives appeared first on Baltimore Sports and Life.

Fact: The Orioles have traded away Adley Rutschman, Taylor Ward, Dean Kremer, and Tyler Wells in-exchange for Anthony Eyanson, Kyson Witherspoon, Enddy Azocar, Carlos Narváez, Alex Hoppe, Brock Moore, Harrison Kreiling, Jhomnardo Reyes, and Michael Forret.  They also made smaller deals for Christian Franklin, Codi Heuer, and Rece Hinds.

Opinion: I can make a logical argument for each move individually. I acknowledge that Orioles General Manager Mike Elias added ceiling, depth, and control to the Orioles system. I still don’t like the decision making process when you look at the moves collectively.  Obviously the primary discussion point here is Rutschman.  Elias extracted value from Boston.  And the Red Sox likely paid more now, with Rutschman having 1.2 years left of team control; then they or another team would have paid this Winter for him. My feeling is the O’s would have still been able to trade Rutschman this Winter if need be, and I don’t think that hypothetical return would have been 50 cents on the dollar compared to the deal they did make.

What I said yesterday was, “Don’t think losing Rutshman, Ward, or Kremer in a vacuum, means a lot; but taken together, it’s a tough look even if you can reasonably understand each individual move.
Kremer is a 5th that was struggling his last 4 starts, and Bassitt is a reasonable answer to replace him, and Elias obtained a kid with helium and control. Ward hasn’t hit for the power expected, and is a below average LF.  The O’s can replace him in the lineup with Beavers, Kjerstad, Taveras, etc… and get similar production. Maybe the relievers obtained help. Rutschman – like Wieters – didn’t match the hype, but also like Wieters was a good player. A 3x All-Star. Your rep this year. He had the 3 stints on the IL this year, but they were largely fluky. I thought he had a better offensive approach this year vs. the last 2 years.  When he hasn’t been around, it’s been noticeable with the lineup. I haven’t seen the return, but I expect Elias extracted some value from Boston. And with Rutschman, you could argue now was the time to trade him if you weren’t going to reach an extension.”

After sleeping on it, looking at the returns, and adding the Wells trade; I feel the same.
The most valuable commodity in baseball is team control; but the most valuable thing in baseball is holding a Championship trophy and unfurling a banner.
I was okay with Elias trading off Trey Mancini and Jorge Lopez at the 2022 Deadline, because that team was ahead of schedule.
I can’t get on-board the same way here in 2026, because the ’26 O’s are behind schedule.
The AL is not overwhelming this year, and despite being 4 games under .500 entering tonight, the O’s were 15-8 in July.
I believe post-season baseball is largely a roll-of-the-dice. The goal is to get there and take your chances.
FanGraphs is giving the O’s a 12% chance of reaching the post-season, so not great odds, but not nothing either.
Entering play tonight, the O’s are 2.5 games back of the 3rd Wild Card (Cleveland), and 5 games back of the 2nd Wild Card (Boston). Minnesota, Texas, Seattle, all ahead of the O’s, all 1-2 games back of Cleveland.

I generally think the play was improving, and that the O’s had a reasonable chance to get to October.
They still might.
If they do, you could say, “They still reached the post-season, and they fortified the system.” 
If that happens, that would be a very fair comment.
I think if they reach the post-season, my take will be that I would have liked having Rutschman available.

My overarching thought is, I would have rather seen the O’s either keep the roster as is, or add along the fringes to help the existing ML roster, vs. again deciding not to try.
Elias decided the odds weren’t good enough to try now, and the more prudent decision was adding more to the overall arsenal to try again tomorrow.

Part of me respects that.
You should want multiple bites at the apple vs. going all in once.
And while I might have enjoyed it in the moment, I don’t think I would have really supported going all in with major acquisitions of players with expiring team control utilizing the existing prospect pool.
I would have supported continuing with the current group for the remainder of ’26 and giving them a bit of help.
Another reliever capable of contributing in leverage situations. A defensive 4th OF.

Fact: Via MLB Pipeline, Eyanson becomes the Orioles top overall prospect, with Forret, Witherspoon, and Azocar also now in the Orioles Top 10.

Opinion: The system was pretty tapped before the trades and draft last year. Now with the 2026 Draft completed and these trades; the system strength is again pretty strong. Maybe not overwhelming quality at the top, but a good amount of guys that could possibly directly contribute to the ML roster, or give you the organizational depth necessary to make other trades.  If you were going to make the trades, I like the returns.  Elias added some legitimate talent.  Once you moved Rutschman, I certainly get moving Wells at that point. Getting Forret back in the organization was a nice move.

Fact: Carlos Narváez has a .535 OPS in a 171 ab’s this year for Boston.  He also had a .726 OPS in 403 ab’s last year, with 15 homers, and 27 doubles. He’s regarded as a strong defensive Catcher, and he is under team control through the 2031 season.

Opinion: If he can rebound offensively, you’ve got a nice pairing with him and Basallo long-term at Catcher.

Fact: Christian Franklin is starting in LF tonight for the O’s.

Opinion: The 26 year old Franklin had a .735 OPS in 426 plate appearances this year for AAA Rochester. Obtained from the Nationals for Joe Glassey. This year with Rochester he had 35 games in RF, 31 games in LF, and 17 in CF.  Presumably when he does play, he will be a better LF than Ward.  Obviously not a high bar there. Still, I think we would all enjoy seeing improved defense down the stretch. Curious to see how much playing time he gets.

Fact: Holliday, Mayo, Cowser, and Beavers are all in the lineup tonight.

Opinion: When we get to the off-season, and we start thinking about 2027; our optimism for believing the O’s can be more of a factor next year is going to largely be tied to how these guys finish out 2026.  Holliday had a .921 OPS in July. What can he do for encore here in August?  Plenty of playing time available for the other three as well. How do they perform these last two months?

Fact: Elias reported July 31st that Blaze Alexander’s bone is still healing (non-displaced fracture in left-hand). No timetable currently for his return.

Opinion: As I start thinking more about ’27, I envision Alexander penciled into Super Utility duty, with Jordan Westburg getting every opportunity to reclaim 3rd once he shows he’s healthy.

Fact: The O’s have given recent extensions to Basallo, Baz, Bradish, and Cano.  They obviously signed Alonso before this season.

Opinion: I think you can safely assume that if Orioles Owner David Rubenstein had taken ownership earlier, that Elias might have pushed for deals into the free agent seasons with Rutschman, Gunnar Henderson, and Holliday.  There is some talk to be found the the O’s did offer Rutschman extension offers in the last year plus which were rejected. Presumably Henderson will want to reach Free Agency, but after a down for him ’25 with the shoulder injury, and this disappointing ’26 season; the deal he ultimately signs somewhere is not going to be as lucrative as it figured to be after the ’24 season.  I’d still be pushing for a deal with him now, offering him very significant money. Hoping he’d consider it with the way his ’26 has gone. My guess is Henderson would decline such a deal, and bet on himself to rebound in ’27.  If he rebounds in a big way, he probably prices himself out of a possible deal with the O’s.  If he rebounds and the team doesn’t, I think the O’s will have to look to trade him next Summer like they did with Rutschman yesterday. If the team rebounds, you probably ride out ’27.  Then maybe you deal him after the ’27 season (he’s a Free Agent after ’28).  I know some people are not super excited about Holliday at this point, but he’s not 23 until December, and the potential is still there. He’s not a Free Agent until after 2030. If you could get a deal done now that takes you through 2032 or 2033, that would be great.

Westburg is also a Free Agent after 2030. He will miss all of ’26, and was limited to 85 games in ’25. He’s 28 next February.  Given all the time he’s missed, could you tack on a year or two now? Is that a good risk given his age, and the injury history? Does the existing injury history make a deal viable?

Fact: Trevor Rogers was not traded yesterday.

Opinion: I didn’t want to see Rogers moved, but was surprised after Rutschman was dealt, that Rogers didn’t find a new home. Rogers was quoted leading up to the deadline saying he wants to stay in Baltimore. He’s a Free Agent to be.  I’d like to see a deal happen there. If you get a deal done before the off-season, you could go into Winter believing you had four spots (Bradish, Rogers, Baz, Young) in the rotation filled. I don’t see a scenario where the O’s obtain two starters with better upside than Rogers. Getting to the Winter and feeling like you have to fill two spots doesn’t seem ideal.

The post Facts & Opinions On The Orioles – August 4th appeared first on Baltimore Sports and Life.

Believe he’s capable of building a Championship team.

Can acknowledge that he was threading a needle here between a team that is 2.5 games out of the 3rd Wild Card, and also 4 games under .500.

Don’t think losing Rutshman, Ward, or Kremer in a vacuum, means a lot; but taken together, it’s a tough look even if you can reasonably understand each individual move.

Kremer is a 5th that was struggling his last 4 starts, and Bassitt is a reasonable answer to replace him, and Elias obtained a kid with helium and control.

Ward hasn’t hit for the power expected, and is a below average LF.  The O’s can replace him in the lineup with Beavers, Kjerstad, Taveras, etc… and get similar production. Maybe the relievers obtained help.

Rutschman – like Wieters – didn’t match the hype, but also like Wieters was a good player. A 3x All-Star. Your rep this year. He had the 3 stints on the IL this year, but they were largely fluky. I thought he had a better offensive approach this year vs. the last 2 years.  When he hasn’t been around, it’s been noticeable with the lineup. I haven’t seen the return, but I expect Elias extracted some value from Boston. And with Rutschman, you could argue now was the time to trade him if you weren’t going to reach an extension.

But…

Kremer could potentially help you now. The 18 year old you obtained can’t. Twins 1.5 games up on the O’s in the WC race.

Rutschman made the O’s better now, and you’ve traded him to a division rival.  A team above you in the playoff race.

Ward traded to Seattle, a team a .5 game up on the O’s in the WC race. You’ve removed a guy that has a high on-base %, and has been in the lineup everyday. Is that a great message to the clubhouse?

Collectively, just a very tough look.

And as someone that genuinely likes Elias, I can’t justify it overall, even when I can make the individual arguments.

The fanbase isn’t going to get over this.

Hell, even if Bassitt is good, Kremer is bad, the in-house options seamlessly replace Ward…  and the O’s get past losing Rutschman and still make the post-season….    even if that all happens, once there the feeling will be…  “The O’s lineup would look better with Adley there.” 

Time to go.

Potential Replacements For Elias:

Jon Daniels – Former Rangers General Manager.  Currently a Senior Advisor with Tampa Bay.

Kim Ng – Former Marlins General Manager.  Currently outside the game entirely.

James Click – Former Astros General Manager.  Now VP of Baseball Strategy with Toronto.

Michael Fishman – Yankees VP / Assistant GM under Brian Cashman.

Amiel Sawdaye – Diamondbacks SVP / Assistant GM under Mike Hazen.  Baltimore native, Graduate of Pikesville High, and University of Maryland.

Cal Ripken Jr. –  The HOF, has an Ownership share, and is doing some Player Development work.  Obviously the name would sell, and the Ripken Way still carries weight. Especially with the current fundamental issues with the ML team.  Feels like Ripken would need to surround himself with a lot of Front Office experience.

The post Yeah, Time For Elias To Go appeared first on Baltimore Sports and Life.

2.5 games out of the 3rd Wild Card, you can argue that the O’s have a viable path to reaching the post-season.  FanGraphs gives the O’s a 21.2% chance of making the playoffs currently.

Conversely, with the O’s still 4 games under .500, and a number of on-going injuries; you could argue that there isn’t much reason to believe the remaining 53 games will be demonstrably different than the first 109.

There are 6 games between now and the Deadline next week. Every game matters at this point.

The Atlanta Series

Against the NL East leading Braves, the O’s played in three 1 run games this last weekend. With the bases loaded and none out in the 10th yesterday, the O’s were on the precipice of a series win. Alas, things went awry. So close, so far away.

It was a competitive series against a quality team, but it was frustrating to not get the series W.

Going by current records, the O’s have one of / if not the strongest remaining schedule.
So if the Birds reach the post-season, they’ll have earned their way there by playing well against quality teams the rest of the way.
There is a reminder there that the O’s didn’t do enough earlier on, when the schedule was a bit lighter.
With the remaining schedule dwindling daily, losses that were possibly wins feel especially compounded at this point of the season.

Unlike football, there isn’t a lot of time in baseball to celebrate wins or tough losses.
There isn’t a week in-between games, there is another game the next day.
In that sense, yesterday is over, and the O’s are on to Detroit, and I agree with that mentality.

Realistically though, the Orioles have to play at a consistently elevated level these last 53 games.
If a win is there for the taking, they can not squander those opportunities.

My only other note from watching the Braves for a couple of days, was that even with Atlanta making a couple of unusual unforced errors; that’s a quality defensive team that is typically not going to force their pitching staff into recording extra outs.

Certainly a juxtaposition with the O’s when looking at how the Orioles defense regularly gives opposing offences additional opportunities.

The O’s are 12th overall in Runs Scored, and 12th overall in ERA.

Does this feel surprising to you?

Both numbers continue to trend upwards for the O’s.

Overall run differential continues to trend towards even.

Taken together, I think the O’s are generally a bit better than how most O’s fan would grade them – but the defensive liabilities are limiting.

The Bradish Extension

Loved that deal, and was frankly surprised it wasn’t significantly higher.  Kyle has had a solid year, and he’s been strong the last month (2.96 era, 24.1 ip), but he hasn’t been overly sharp overall after missing all but 14 total starts over 2024 and 2025. There have been control issues, which can often be the last thing to come back after surgery.  Still, I would have expected the soon to be 30 year old to get a larger deal in an extension. These total dollars are very workable.  Already I think it looks like a steal.  If he finishes strong, and continues to look more-and-more like his 2023 self, than the contract just looks that much better.

This deal, the Basallo extension, the Alonso signing, the Baz extension; it’s been fun to see the O’s locking up multiple pieces.

Trevor Rogers

Rogers is set to hit Free Agency after this 2026 season.

Unless the O’s collapse over the next 6 days, it would be surprising to see the O’s trade him by the deadline.

As I’ve said before a few times now, I’d pay for him to be a 3rd starter, and maybe not expect him to be that – but would have some reasonable hope he could be more than that.

If you can get a deal done with him – and the Bradish contract provides a viable framework – then you’ve got the makings of a pretty solid rotation locked in.

He had a 2.05 era over 5 starts in June, and he’s followed that up with a 1.48 era over 4 starts in July.

You can probably expect some up-and-down fluctuations from him going forward, but he’s not yet 29 and he’s very impressive extended stretches last year and this year.

If he were to leave in Free Agency, I have zero expectations of the O’s adding someone with equal or better ceiling.

Brandon Young

Where would the O’s be without Brandon Young?

He started the year as the O’s 8th starter, and he’s 8-2 with a 3.13 era.

Over 97.2 ip, he’s allowed 92 hits, 9 homers, 34 walks, and has 80 k’s.

He’s been remarkably consistent, and he’s one of the primary reasons the O’s can still dream of playing games that matter in October.

Updating The Injuries

Adley Rutschman – The O’s 2026 All-Star rep is on the IL for the 3rd time this season. Per The Baltimore Sun, he was seen throwing the ball Saturday at Camden Yards, but has yet to resume catching the ball. Rutschman played 2 games (catching one) in Houston after the break, and then went on the IL with a wrist injury. Those wrist injuries are usually extended inflammation. My guess is that it didn’t just flair up after the one start catching vs. the Astros. Which makes me wonder if he should have spent the entirety of the All-Star break with no baseball activity?  He is eligible to return to action Wednesday July 29th, but that currently doesn’t seem likely.

Sam Basallo – The O’s shutdown Basallo from baseball activities for a few days to let his shoulder calm down. He is eligible to return to the O’s this Friday July 31st, but as with Rutschman – that doesn’t seem likely.

Blaze Alexander – It was reported 10 days ago that there was no time table for Alexander’s return. He was placed on the IL retroactive to July 13th, and his non-displaced fracture typically takes 6-8 weeks to heal.

Ryan Helsley – Was transferred form the 15 day IL to the 60 day IL 8 days ago. After being placed on the IL, the soonest he could return is August 29th.

Definitely a different looking O’s lineup without Rutschman and Basallo.
The O’s really needed Helsley to be an All-Star caliber closer this year, and he’s largely been unavailable.

Christian Encarnacion-Strand

CES has given the lineup a boost in his first 7 games with the Orioles.

Encarnacion-Strand started the 2024 season as Cincinnati’s 1st baseman.  2024 and 2025 was marked by injuries and non-performance.

This year he has a productive 274 ab’s at the AAA level before his promotion to Baltimore.  We wondered who would step-up when Alexander went down, and at-least temporarily Encarnacion-Strand has answered the call.

Dylan Beavers 

Beavers is 13 for 44 so far in July, slashing .295 / .380 / .364.  The game winner Saturday was nice.  When he’s going like this, he puts up a bunch of good ab’s which is fun to watch. Doesn’t overswing, finds contact. There are definitely things to like about his game.

Tyler O’Neill 

TON has a .983 OPS in 38 July ab’s, with 4 of his 6 homers on the year coming this month.  People might not like seeing his name in the lineup, but have to ride that hot hand.

Tyler Wells

For the season, Wells has appeared in 41 games.

Have to feel good for him, after he was limited to just 7 combined starts over 2024 and 2025.

In those 41 games, he has a 2.82 era, with 51 innings, 53 hits, 12 bb’s, and 53 k’s.

Over the last 30 days, he’s 1-1, with a 1.88 era, and 3 saves.

His Baseball Savant page shows a lot of red.

Up Next?

The O’s are beginning a 3 game series in Detroit.

The O’s are 2.5 games back of the 3rd Wild Card (Cleveland), and the Tigers are 3.5 games back of the Guardians.

Detroit is 6-4 over their last 10, but has lost their last 2.

The Tigers are 21st in Runs Scored, 22nd in On-Base %, and 18th in Slugging.
Detroit is 5th overall in ERA.

The scheduled pitching match-ups are:

Bradish vs. Montero
Kremer vs. Melton
&
Rogers vs. Skubal

The trade rumors around Skubal are getting a lot of attention. 

The post Closing In On The Deadline appeared first on Baltimore Sports and Life.

The O’s are now 46-51 as the All-Star Break arrives.

10 Quick Thoughts

1) The O’s entered today in last-place in the AL East, and the season still isn’t ‘over.’  The 97 games played so far weren’t an enjoyable watch, but opportunity still awaits in the 34% of the season that remains. I still like the O’s talent, and believe the AL is too jumbled to justify trading off a ton before the August 3rd Trade Deadline. Maybe the O’s will come out of the All-Star Break, and have another poor stretch that seemingly officially closes the lights on the 2026 season. If that happens, and the O’s decide to part with Adley Rutschman, Trevor Rogers, Taylor Ward, etc; that would be understandable. But as of today, they’re 2 games out of a Playoff spot, and their talent compares well with the 7 different teams (Cleveland, Seattle, Minnesota, Houston, Boston, Toronto, Detroit) that will be competing for the last 2 Wild Card’s in the American League. Of that group only Cleveland is currently above .500.  If you think the O’s are toast, and should be trading any assets not tied down for prospects and team control – you’ll have to explain to me why the O’s are done, but those other teams are not.

If the argument is solely that you’ve watched these initial 97 games, and don’t believe in the O’s – that’s fine, and fairly understandable.
But that argument falls apart to me if you believe the O’s chances are dramatically different than any of the other aforementioned teams above.

2) Tampa Bay is 56-37, and leading the American League East.  The Yankees are 53-42, and the lead Wild Card in the American League. Per FanGraphs, both of those teams have over a 96.5% chance of making the post-season. Given the gap between those teams, and the O’s currently – we can put those teams out of our mind at this point.

Scoreboard watching can be fun, but I’m not going fixate on the Guardians, Mariners, Twins, Astros, Red Sox, Blue Jays, or Tigers either.
Cleveland is 3 games ahead of Seattle and Minnesota, who are tied for the 3rd Wild Card.  Houston, Boston, Toronto, Detroit, and the O’s are all within 2.5 games of the Mariners and Twins.
Basically it comes down to which 2 teams are going to play the best over the last 10 weeks of the season? How do these teams perform head-to-head?
The Red Sox are a good example of this.
They’ve largely been down for most of the season so far, but are riding an 8 game winning streak. With this stretch, they’ve pulled within 3 games of .500, and now have a 37% chance of making the post-season.
So, who gets hot?

3) Are the O’s capable of getting hot over an extended stretch?  They entered today 12th in runs scored (12th in on-base %, and 17th in slugging %), and 20th in ERA. Their a below average defensive team. Closers might be overrated by analytics, but I think fans and players alike feel better knowing you have a reliable closer to finish games off.  If the O’s are going to go on a run, they’ve got to slug better. They’ve actually got the on-base % up to a decent level, but now their not putting enough balls in the seats.  I feel pretty good currently about Bradish, Rogers, Baz, Young, and Kremer; but if the O’s aren’t trading away at the deadline; than GM Mike Elias needs to prioritize adding a high leverage reliever to add to the mix. You could also argue for adding a reserve OF and/or UTI IF that could be a positive defensive replacement at multiple positions.  If you wanted to aggressively pursue one of the better SP’s available with some of the O’s Top 10 prospects (outside of Wehiwa Aloy) before the 2026 MLB Draft; I could get on-board with that. If that were to occur, I’d expect Kremer would be part of the package leaving.

To get to the playoffs, the O’s likely have to win 85-90 games.  With 46 wins currently in 97 games, that means the O’s would need to win 39 to 44 of their last 65.

4) Coming into action Sunday, the O’s leaders by fWAR were Alonso (2.3), Rutschman (2.1), and Henderson and Baz were tied at 1.9.   I can’t imagine a scenario where the O’s get hot, and Henderson doesn’t play at a dramatically improved level than we’ve seen from him over these initial 97 games.  I feel good for Rutschman, making his 3rd All-Star team.  His slash line this year .253 / .327 / .436 looks a lot like his career averages .254 / .342 / .415; but better than the past two years.  The biggest difference to me is the doubles.  He had just 37 doubles in 893 ab’s during ’24 and ’25.  This year he has 18 in 241 ab’s. To me, that show’s he has had much better approach this season.

5) If you were doing the 2026 Most Valuable Oriole voting today, Blaze Alexander*, Brandon Young, and Sam Basallo have to be getting votes somewhere on your ballot. The tough watch we’ve seen would’ve been an absolute nightmare without their contributions to date. Basallo hit homerun #16 today.  The most impressive thing to me about Sam isn’t his ridiculous power, it’s the adjustments he’s shown he’s able to make including in-game depending on situation. He’ll be 22 in a month, and he seems like he could finish the year with a floury.

*EDIT: Per MASN’s Roch Kubatko, Alexander has a non-displaced fracture on his left hand after being hit with a pitch in the 7th. That takes the wind out of the sails quite a bit.

6) If you believe or don’t believe in the O’s chances of putting a run together, it probably largely comes down to how you feel about Bradish and Rogers going forward. Over the last 30 days, Bradish has a 2.12 era over 34 innings of work. Rogers is at a 1.19 era (30.1 innings) over that same 30 day stretch. If you think Bradish is going to hit a wall and tire out, or you believe Rogers is just too inconsistent – than you’ll be down on the O’s chances of finishing strong.  If you believe these two are capable of sustained excellence, you are probably a bit more enthusiastic.

7) Alonso has a .854 OPS for his career, and he entered today at .825 for the season. He’s on-pace for 35 bombs, and 29 doubles. He’s largely held-up his end. Ward is playing everyday (96 games played), and despite being a below-average LF, he’s been a league average-ish LF overall with his .385 on-base %.  Last year with the Angels he had a .317 on-base %, and a .475 slugging % (69 xbh’s, including 36 homers). This year he’s slugging .361, and is on-pace for just 10 homers (32 doubles). At some point I’d think the obp would come down, and there would be more big flies.

8) Cowser had a .891 OPS in May, and a .725 OPS in June.  He’s now 1 for 17 in July, and 11 for his last 58 (entering today). The O’s need his glove in CF, so they can’t afford him to again become a black-hole in the lineup. Mayo has 12 homers, and is on-pace for 20. The other day he reached the 2nd deck in LF, which has rarely happened in the history of OPACY. He’d really benefit himself and the team if used the whole field more. He’s got just 9 doubles in 223 ab’s, which is pretty inexcusable for a guy with his power. He just has to commit to making more contact (80 k’s) and taking more pitches the opposite field. We know Mayo isn’t going to spend a lot of his career at 3rd going forward, but that’s where the O’s had availability for him in ’26 after Westburg’s injury.  Alexander isn’t a fantastic fielder himself, but he’s better than Mayo, and with the way he’s betting hitting since May 1st – he’s going to get most of the playing time at 3rd. But Mayo is still going to find opportunities the rest of the year.  He’s talented enough to contribute, and too talented to not be embarrassed by that that current sub .200 batting average.

9) At 22 years old, Jackson Holliday doesn’t have to-be a finished product. Also shouldn’t expected to-be one. After starting the year on the IL with his hamate bone surgery; Holliday has played in 45 games this year and has 119 at-bats. He had 60 games and 190 ab’s as a rookie in ’24, and 586 at-bats over 149 games last year in his first full season.  In ’24, he had a .565 OPS. Last year that improved to ,690.  He’s at .703 right now. His current batting average (.210) is lower than last year (.242), but that’s just the difference of a productive week with so few ab’s for the year yet.  His on-base, and slugging match his production from last year, but his BB% is significantly higher (14.3% vs. 8.6%). His K’s are also up.  Like to see his average climb the remainder of the year.  He hit for high averages (at-very young ages) at the A, and AA level.  That slowed some at AAA in ’23 and ’24 before his MLB promotion, but he still had quality averages (again, particularly for his age) at the AAA level.  When you start thinking about how the light could come on for the O’s, he’s one of the ways.

10) The O’s schedule out of the break, up until the Trade Deadline is:

@ Houston July 17th – 19th
@ Boston July 20th – 22nd
Atlanta July 24th – 26th
@ Detroit July 27th – 29th
Philadelphia July 31st – August 2nd

Atlanta and Philadelphia are 1st and 2nd in the NL East.
Houston, Boston, Detroit also in the AL WC mix.

The O’s are 18-26 on the road so far, and 3 of those series are on the road.
Come out of the break, and get pummeled in these series’, and maybe there is clearance sale leading up to August 3rd.

If you want to feel like a contender at the Deadline, you’ve got to start stacking series wins.
if the Birds could manage to win all 5 series, going 2-1 in each, they’d be 56-56 with 50 games left; and then things could get fun.

A more realistic 8-7 showing in that stretch, would likely leave me feeling like I do today.
In for a penny, in for a pound.

Going into the break on their first four game winning streak is a positive.
The fact that opportunity still exists for this season is a positive.

We will see if they’re able to build from here, and put together an extended quality stretch.

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