Orioles Talk

Unfortunately, it's looking like there is a lot of truth in that statement.  I believe Steve Bisciotti (Ravens owner) once said, he wanted to have a good team every year, get into the playoffs enough, eventually things go your way and win the Super Bowl.  This was in response to playing salary cap games for a few seasons and then eventually having to pay the piper with the dead money and being uncompetitive for a few years. Hopefully the O's can be consistently good and get hot at the end of the season and make a run through the playoffs.  Go back to June 1st and the five best teams in the league were the Orioles, Yankees, Guardians, Phillies and Dodgers.  Two are already out, Guardians fading fast with the Yankees and Dodgers still alive.   A Tigers - Mets World Series would be quite fitting.

Elias has a history (albeit as an AGM) of extending core players. He did it with the Astros. The main question: did he not do it here because of John Angelos wanting to keep the books clean for a sale...or as some fundamental shift in GM strategy. I think it's more a function of ownership, because outside of Chris Davis and Adam Jones, when is the last time you saw a longish term contract for a position player? I think Peter Angelos and Duquette screwed the pooch on not extending Machado, and I think Duquette set this organization back years with an incredibly poor trade deadline return for so many players.  All that said, players I'd look to extend in terms of priority: Gunnar Henderson Jordan Westburg Adley Rutschman I'm on record as thinking that Adley's second half woes were a function of nagging injury (wrist, back). I think he bounces back next year. But we absolutely need to get Gunnar locked up long term. I don't want to hear any nonsense any longer from GMs or ownership about taking two to tango. If the Braves, Astros, hell the freaking *ROYALS* can do it, we can do it.  You cannot repeat the sins of letting Machado go. He's been a near 24 bWAR player for the Padres in 6 years. I'm not talking about his recent contract extension, but rather his original 10 year, $300m contract back in 2019 when he was only 26 years old.  Get it done, Elias. Rubenstein, step up to the plate. 

I would too…but again, Bradish and GRod could be that. The point in bringing up Burnes is we “lucked” into that guy for 2024. It didn’t work out in terms of winning in October. Lots of teams with high level starters don’t make the playoffs or see those starters fail in the postseason.  

I don't think we have Burnes here anymore, but we'll see. These guys all get hurt.  That wasn't the point, really...but we all hope that they have good pitchers that can stay healthy, an increasingly unlikely scenario in MLB as we head into 2025. Skubal has had injury issues, yes.  But I'd still like for Elias to have a guy like that come through the system.

He already looks a step slow in the outfield.  Trout has definitely been disproportionately hit by injuries going by age, but perhaps not if you go by games played. He has put a lot of miles on his legs.  True, the median outcome for productive age is probably somewhere in between Trout and Nelson Cruz.