BALTIMORE – The bigger-picture questions are there, looming ominously in the background for the Baltimore Orioles, who even more so than the Toronto Blue Jays are faced with the likelihood of imminent transformational change on their roster.
Manny Macahado’s pending free agency is, quite obviously, the biggest and most important matter before them. But fellow cornerstones Adam Jones, Brad Brach and the currently injured Zach Britton can also hit the open market at season’s end. While Jonathan Schoop, Trey Mancini, Chris Davis, Kevin Gausman and Dylan Bundy still offer a solid base to build from, a realistic assessment of whether the Orioles should keep going or step back looms.
“I’m sure that’s coming at some point,” says Orioles general manager Dan Duquette. “You’re either trying to win now, or you’re trying to improve your club to win later. The idea is the same. Recently clubs have torn it down to build it back up and they did a good job building it back up in Chicago and Houston. But that’s painful. You have to go through a period of time there where your team isn’t as good as you hoped, but you have hope for the future and you can deliver, which they did in Chicago and Houston.
“We still think we can be competitive this year.”
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Should an inauspicious 5-8 opening to the 2018 season extend well into next month, debate over whether the Orioles should begin shedding assets to further restock an improving farm system are sure to intensify.
Already, over the winter, Machado was shopped around in a well-publicized manner, but ultimately there was no prospect windfall to be gained and therefore no deal. It was a decision that played well locally.
“Our fans like Manny, for sure,” says Duquette. “Frankly, the talent offers weren’t all that attractive. Everybody says, ‘well, you could have got this, could have got that.’ Well, if your team could have got this and could have got that, the team would have done that, right? So we’ll see. We’ll see how it plays out.
“The system is set up so that if you lose a significant free-agent player, there’s compensation. And you can be rebuilding your team through your farm system while you’re competitive in the big-leagues. It’s not mutually exclusive. You can have a good team in the big-leagues and still be working on developing players to help the club in the future.”
That’s what the Blue Jays are trying to do, having already transitioned from Edwin Encarnacion and Jose Bautista over the past two years, and facing Josh Donaldson’s pending free agency at season’s end. J.A. Happ, Marco Estrada and Steve Pearce can also hit the open market in the fall. And with a gap to some of the natural replacements in the farm system, the club will need to decide whether to keep trying to push forward or take a step back while waiting for Vladimir Guerrero Jr., Bo Bichette, Anthony Alford, Nate Pearson and other prospects to arrive.
In that regard, the Blue Jays appear better positioned than the Orioles, although the latter does have some interesting pieces. Catcher Chance Sisco and outfielder Anthony Santander are currently up in the big-leagues while outfielder Austin Hays, third baseman Ryan Mountcastle and righty Hunter Harvey opened the season at double-A Bowie.
The Orioles system is far from a barren wasteland, but with the Boston Red Sox and New York Yankees both seemingly well positioned for the next few seasons, and knowing most prospects don’t make an impact, the landscape is far from loaded with promise.
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That’s why, in some ways, exhausting the current competitive window of a core that reached the post-season in 2012, ’14 and ’16 makes sense. Duquette, working with limited budgetary resources, made a series of value-play moves over the winter headlined by the late addition of starter Alex Cobb on a $57-million, four-year contract.
Shorter-term adds included re-signing Chris Tillman, giving Andrew Cashner a $16-million, two-year deal and offering minor-league contracts to Pedro Alvarez, Colby Rasmus and Michael Saunders, among others.
USA Today’s annual payroll survey ranked Baltimore’s opening day tally of $148.1 million, good for 12th in the majors.
“My belief is that you should try to have as good a club as you can have every year given the resources,” says Duquette. “It’s hard to know when you’re going to have it all together, right? Your best laid plans don’t always work out that way, there are so many uncertainties. You need the right players, you need the right players to be healthy, you need to be able to add to those players, you need some players to come up from your farm system to help. You need all those things. And the division is tough year in and year out.
“But if you make a couple of good moves and you got some decent players, you can hang in there and compete and then who knows? Maybe you’ll get lucky, maybe you add somebody who is a lot better than what you’re expecting and you’ll be able to find the pitching you need. So we try to have as good a team as we can have every year.”
Amid the trend to tear-down and reallocate rather than push a core for as long as it can go, it’s refreshing notion, for better, or for worse.
