A quick glance at the American League East standings may not indicate it, but the Baltimore Orioles appear to have turned the corner and possibly are headed in the right direction toward being relevant once again.
OK, the team may be dead last in the five-team AL East (at 30-38), but taking a deeper dive into the season to date, the team’s on-field play is, well, encouraging.
Just recently, the Toronto Blue Jays had to notice, as did the Tampa Bay Rays, who undoubtedly figured to use their games with the O’s to pick up some steam in the chase of first-place New York.
Instead, Toronto and Baltimore split a four-game series in Canada, with the Orioles coming thisclose to winning three of four. Baltimore, over the weekend, then took two of three from Tampa Bay.
Tampa must have discovered something was up when it was blanked 1-0 in Friday’s series opener. Last season, Baltimore was a woeful 1-18 against the Rays; this season, the Birds are 5-3 against Tampa Bay.
In Sunday’s Father’s Day matinee at Oriole Park, Baltimore used seven pitchers in a 2-1 win over the Rays. Welcome to Major League Baseball, 2022.
Nationally, the media has taken notice of what’s going on in Birdland. With the arrival of top MLB prospect Adley Rutschman last month, the press box at Oriole Park is getting a bit more crowded.
“I think that people are sensing that the play on the field is better,” executive vice president/general manager Mike Elias said Saturday in a media briefing. “We’re still in fifth place, still a million miles from winning this division with the opponents that we have (more on that later), but I think we’ve got guys making highlight-reel-type plays almost every night, and that’s putting us in a more positive light nationally,” added Elias.
The much-awaited Rutschman call-up may have been a turning point in the long Orioles rebuild. While Rutschman is figuring out Major League pitching, his teammates are going about their business of improving their individual games.
Shortstop Jorge Mateo, who was brought to Baltimore in a trade with San Diego after the 2021 season, is becoming one the game’s best defensive infielders. Mateo, 26, from Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, has been stellar defensively for the Orioles. In Baltimore, they are now saying, “the earth is covered 75 percent by water, Jorge Mateo covers the rest.”
The Orioles are still south of .500, but after Sunday’s 2-1 win, they are 16-13 in the past month, including a 10-8 record against the AL Beast, err, East, on pace for a 70- to 72-win season.
About that unbalanced schedule
The MLB regular season consists of 162 games. Currently, teams play nearly one-half the regular season against division foes. For Baltimore, that means playing against some of the best teams in baseball almost nightly. The O’s seldom get a night off to pick up some wins against poor teams.
But that is going away after this season. Under the new collective bargaining agreement, teams will play division foes 14 times and face every team in both leagues at least one series each season.
Baltimore will go from playing 76 games against AL East teams to 56. One fewer trip to the Bronx, Fenway Park, Toronto and Tampa, and one less time those teams visit Camden Yards.
Orioles rebuilding plan includes a blueprint
On a recent trip to Richmond to watch the Richmond Flying Squirrels play the Orioles Double-A affiliate Bowie, I had the opportunity to sit with Orioles player development scout Quincy Boyd. The Baysox roster included a handful of players on the cusp of getting the call to Baltimore, including Rutschman and Kyle Stowers, who joined the big-league team while in Toronto.
When discussing the Orioles, Boyd said he had been associated with numerous Major League rebuilds, but the Orioles effort was different, explained Boyd. “Every team has a plan. Baltimore has a blueprint to go by and build from. It’s not a quick fix, but the plan can help small- to medium-size franchises compete with the superpowers,” said Boyd.
Baltimore’s plan started just a few weeks after general manager Mike Elias took the reigns of the Orioles’ baseball operations in November of 2018. The first blueprint was to develop a state-of-the-art training and development academy in Guerra, Dominican Republic, which is now slated for completion by this fall.
The complex will house the club’s Dominican player-development operations, three full fields, a turfed agility field, batting and pitching area’s as well as classrooms to instruct the players in English and finances.
Boyd said the Orioles have increased their Dominican scouting presence over the last few years and has the Island of Hispaniola covered from shore to shore. “Our scouts know where the best 16-year-old players are, and they know where the best 10-year-old players are,” boasted Boyd.
The Orioles farm system has grown into a top-rated program in recent years, and a large part of the success has been credited to the team’s recent foray into the international market.
For Baltimore, competing in the AL East is a huge challenge. New York, Boston and Toronto have large revenue streams that allows those teams to sign high-priced free agents to ridiculous long-term contracts,
Baltimore simply can’t regularly compete in that arena. But with the plan and the blueprint in place, the Orioles don’t intend to waive the white flag of surrender. Instead, they have their sights set on another type of flag, a pennant flag.
Farfetched? Maybe so, but don’t tell the Orioles that.
Story by Scott German
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