The Orioles finished 52-110 last season, 48 games behind the division-leading Rays. The season before that, they were only 15 games out after the season ended but that was the extremely truncated 2020 season, so the effect was about the same. In 2019 it was business as usual as Baltimore finished 49 games out. 2018? 61 games out. You have to go back six seasons to find the last time the Orioles finished above .500 and two more seasons before that was the last time they won the division. Point being it’s been a while, darnit. If you’re reading this, I salute you! The question that must be on your mind just about all the time, if not directly at least underpinning every Orioles-related thought, must be how long is this thing going to last?
The Orioles rebuild has been going on since Mike Elias was hired in November of 2018. If you only follow the major league team you might be forgiven for thinking everyone in the front office has been asleep since then, but if you follow the organization closely you know there are strides being made. The O’s farm system, once one of the worst in baseball, is now among the best and some analysts say it’s the very best of the best. These things are subjective, but regardless of any actual ranking, the organization has clearly made a lot of progress. Further, the Orioles are now active in the international free agent market, something they had eschewed for far too long. This is another big step forward, even if it has yet to bear fruit.
So on one hand things are improving. Grayson Rodriguez is the consensus best pitching prospect in baseball and his battery mate in Triple-A Norfolk this season, Adley Rutschman, is the consensus best position player prospect in baseball. Both are close to the majors and are expected to make their debuts in Baltimore at some point this season, assuming the owners let us have a season. But as anyone who has watched baseball for more than a moment knows, it takes more than one pitcher and one catcher to get an organization out of the kind of doldrums the Orioles have been in.
So, I’ll ask again, how much longer is this going to take? Well, let’s figure it out. If you look at the Orioles major league roster right now, it’s a last place roster. There are some interesting players on the team, no doubt, but it’s not anything other than a last place roster. Bring up Rutschman and Rodriguez and the team gets better, but again, that’s just not going to do it. The rest of the many prospects in the Orioles farm system are unlikely to be ready to contribute in Baltimore in 2022.
So bring on 2023! But before we do, let’s try to find some greater clarity and talk timelines. O’s GM Mike Elias is known for his time with the Houston Astros. During Elias’ time in Houston, he was part of the front office that famously burned the Astros team to the ground in order to build them back up. That rebuild culminated in their 2017 World Series win*. So how long did it take the Astros to get to that point?
Jeff Luhnow took over the Astros in December of 2011. Houston was coming off a 56-106 2011 season (sound familiar?). From that point it took six seasons before Houston won the World Series. Six seasons from when Mike Elias took over the Orioles would put Baltimore’s ETA at 2024, or two seasons from now. That’s a real quick ’n dirty way of looking at it, but surprisingly that kinda squares with where things are with regards to the farm system developing and delivering talent to the major league club.
There is one thing though that is different. Well, okay, many many things are different, but this one specific thing that doesn’t get talked about much is, I think, worthy of highlighting. That is this: the Astros rebuild didn’t actually start in 2011. Everyone says it did, but it really didn’t. Following the 2011 season is when the Astros decided to hire Luhnow and Luhnow decided the best way to win was to lose, but the Astros were rebuilding and even tanking (accidentally) before that. By the time Luhnow took over the organization, Houston had significant minor league talent in their system due, at least in part, to drafting higher up because of losing, even if that losing wasn’t on purpose. When Luhnow was named GM, the Houston farm system already had the following minor leaguers: starting pitcher Dallas Keuchel (a future Cy Young winner), center fielder/second baseman Enrique Hernandez, catcher Jason Castro, second baseman Jose Altuve, and outfielder George Springer.
Now look at the Orioles system that Elias had when he took over the Orioles. Austin Hays, Ryan Mountcastle, and DL Hall were the headliners of the O’s system back in 2018. That’s not nothing, and indeed we don’t yet know for sure how these players careers will turn out, but it pales in comparison to Springer, Altuve, Keuchel, etc.
So it took the Astros super smart front office six seasons after a full tank to get to and win the World Series. The Orioles similarly super smart front office is going into year four, but it’s worth remembering that they play in a much more difficult division, in a smaller market, and had a more barren cupboard.
So, I’ll ask again: how longer is this going to take?
With the caveat that I can’t predict the future, the Astros example is, I think, instructive. If you go back beyond the start to Luhnow’s tenure to when the Astros really started to tank, at least 2009 if not a few years earlier, you can see that it took at least eight seasons to get to the World Series, and six of those seasons were of the ‘lots ‘o los’n’ variety. Add in the buffer for the Orioles residency in the AL East, and I think you can start to see that 2024 isn’t that crazy after all. That would be Season Six of the Elias Regime, and it’s probably a pretty good starting point for expectations of a winning season in Baltimore. If you give Elias the extra two years, plus maybe another one for the talent he didn’t have when taking over the job, well, you can’t predict World Series winners, and the team will have to spend some money eventually, but if this progress continues, there should be a pretty strong team in Baltimore by then.
Yes, I know that’s not now. If the team would go out and sign Carlos Correa, Freddie Freeman, Kris Bryant, and Trevor Story, and then Carlos Rodon and probably trade for a few A’s starters, this thing would go much more quickly, but we both know none of that is happening? Why not? That’s probably another article, but for whatever reason this front office is going to do things their way, and that includes drafting, developing, and deploying their own talent. Whether the reason is to keep costs down or because they think they can build a better long term winner doing it their way I leave up to you, but regardless, none of that is happening. It seems crystal clear that the next pennant winning Orioles team is coming up from the Orioles minor league system. And while that’s a self-imposed speed bump to winning, it’s also one that you might want to build in an extra season for, at least when talking realistic ETAs.
Extra season or not, if things continue according this path, it looks like we’ll start to know how good this rebuild really is around about 2024.
Orioles Analyst
Matthew Kory is a Orioles / MLB Analyst for BSL. He has covered baseball professionally for The Athletic, Vice Sports, Sports On Earth, FanGraphs, and Baseball Prospectus. He lives in Portland, Oregon with his wife, two boys, and his cats, Mini Squeaks and The President. Co-Host of The Warehouse.