Rebuilt
The Orioles are young. They're cheap. They're winning big. And they look like they're here to stay
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—Baseball America, in placing the Baltimore Orioles atop their mid-season organizational talent rankings:
The Orioles have the best record in the American League.
They have the No. 1 prospect in baseball.
The Orioles also have the game’s best farm system. Again.
Even after graduating catcher Adley Rutschman and shortstop/third baseman Gunnar Henderson—the last two preseason No. 1 prospects in baseball—as well as righthander Grayson Rodriguez, the Orioles remain atop our Organization Talent Rankings. They again have the game’s best prospect, with shortstop Jackson Holliday having an incredible first full season, flourishing in Double-A as a 19-year-old after the Orioles drafted him with the No. 1 overall pick last year.
Including Holliday, the Orioles have seven prospects in the Top 100. Most of that talent has come through quality draft picks, hitting on their early selections picking at the top of the draft, as well as a pair of fourth-round picks in second baseman Joey Ortiz and third baseman Coby Mayo. Now they finally have potential impact international prospects coming through the pipeline, with catcher Samuel Basallo a Top 100 prospect.
Baseball America is bullish on the Birds.
And MLB Pipeline agrees, as they last week placed the Orioles atop their organizational rankings, making the O’s the first franchise to top the Pipeline list for 5 consecutive cycles (each of their semi-annual assessments since mid-season 2021).
What’s happening in Baltimore today is the best-case, only-in-your-wildest-dreams scenario every general manager and owner fantasize about when embarking upon an organizational teardown to the studs and a total rebuild.
The Orioles are winning big, led by cheap, young controllable talent. As they get set to welcome the Blue Jays to Oriole Park to open a 9-game homestand tonight, the O’s are 30 games over .500 and on pace for 101 wins. Only the Braves have a better record in all of Baseball.
And they’re doing it with the youngest roster and a $60.8 million Opening Day payroll that ranked 29th in MLB, ahead of only the Athletics. 20 of the other 29 clubs have payrolls more than twice the size of Baltimore’s. The Mets’ season-opening payroll was more than 5 times bigger.
The Orioles are 15-5 against the Rays and Blue Jays, their closest pursuers in the AL East. They have the 2nd-best road record in the majors behind Atlanta. They’re 22-11 in one-run games (3rd-best in MLB behind the Marlins and Brewers), and they’re 40-30 against teams with winning records, again, 2nd to only the Braves across both leagues.
And as Baseball America and MLB Pipeline remind us, they’re simultaneously developing waves of potential future stars at all levels of the organization.
Last year, Adley Rutschman debuted, a generational catcher drafted first overall in 2019. He was the runner-up to Seattle’s Julio Rodriguez in the 2022 AL Rookie of the Year vote. The O’s 2nd pick in 2019 was shortstop/third baseman Gunnar Henderson. He’s considered by most to be the front runner for this year’s Rookie of the Year.
2020 top pick Heston Kjerstad, an outfielder, is tearing it up at Triple-A at age 24. Baltimore 2nd draft choice that year, infielder Jordan Westburg, is already contributing in the big leagues.
2021 #1 pick, outfielder Colton Cowser, has already played in the majors this year.
Meanwhile, last year’s top pick, prep shortstop Jackson Holliday, is making a mockery of Double-A pitching. And there’s speculation the son of 7-time All-Star Matt Holliday might even be in the big league before the end of this season. At age 19.
And there are others, top talents already in the major leagues, some knocking on the door and others just beginning their climbs through the minors.
The O’s rebuild is working.
There are plenty of examples across the sport of rebuilds that haven’t worked. In many cases, 5 or 6 years after beginning a rebuild, organizations have little to show for their efforts.
The Pirates, Tigers, and Rockies are among the clubs that always seem to be chasing a moving target. One step forward, 2 steps back.
The Nationals, Royals and Athletics are trying to claw their way back to respectability, with the Nats at least making some notable strides.
The Reds and D-Backs are knocking on the door in 2023.
Are the Marlins finally on the verge of a breakthrough in year 6 of the Bruce Sherman rebuild?
In some places, it works to a certain point. Look at the Royals and Cubs. Both had good runs, with Kansas City reaching consecutive World Series in 2014 and 2015, even winning a championship in ‘15, after a decade in the abyss. But they quickly fell back to rock bottom, where they can be found today.
Theo Epstein directed the Cubs through a rebuild and into the playoffs 5 times in a 6-year span, highlighted by their historic World Series victory in 2016. That’s a 6-year stretch any team would take. But they then fell off and are building again.
There aren’t many examples where it has worked to perfection, where teams have not only found success but have been able to sustain it.
The Astros have pulled this off. But they’re the exception to the rule.
That, however, could be where the Orioles are headed at this advanced stage of general manager Mike Elias’ rebuild, which began when the 40-year-old came over from (coincidentally?) the Astros in November of 2018.
With the Orioles living in the historic AL East shadow of the Yankees and Red Sox, it may be easy for some to overlook the remarkable baseball tradition in Baltimore.
Over nearly a quarter of a century, 24 seasons from 1960-83, no team in Baseball won as many games as the Orioles, who averaged 92 victories per season in that span.
The O’s won 6 pennants and 3 World Series in those 24 years, topping 90 wins 17 times and surpassing 100 victories on 5 occasions. In that stretch, Orioles players earned 4 MVP Awards, 6 Cy Youngs and 5 Rookies of the Year.
They had a Hall of Fame manager in Earl Weaver for 14 of those seasons. At various times, their lineup included Hall of Famers Brooks Robinson, Frank Robinson, Cal Ripken Jr. and Eddie Murray.
Among those 4 alone: 4 MVP Awards and 49 All-Star selections during their time in Baltimore.
Their rotation for much of that run was led by Hall of Famer, 3-time Cy Young Award winner and 6-time All-Star Jim Palmer, who won 20 games in 8 different seasons.
There were countless other notables during those years. Boog Powell, Paul Blair, Mark Belanger, Mike Cuellar and Mike Flanagan to name only a small handful.
And every one of them was educated in “the Oriole Way,” a detailed guide to the fundamentals of the Game that was ingrained in every member of the organization, from the lowest rung of the minor league ladder in Rookie ball all the way to the big leagues.
“The Oriole Way was ‘never beat yourself,” former O’s catcher and long-time coach Elrod Hendricks said years later. “And that’s why we won so many close games. We let the other team make mistakes and beat themselves. And when the opportunity came we’d jump on it.”
Don Pries, who served at different times as a scout, the farm director and assistant general manager said, “There are two ways to play. One team goes to the park to play the game. The other goes to the park to beat you.
“We went to the park to beat you, not just play the game.”
Eventually though, the Orioles lost their way. After winning the World Series in 1983, Ripken’s 2nd year, they’d play in October only twice (1996 and 1997) over the next 28 seasons.
They found their way back to the playoffs in 2012, 2014 and 2016 under GM Dan Duquette and manager Buck Showalter. But things went south in a hurry, as the O’s fell off to 75-87 in 2017 before plummeting to a franchise-worst 47-115 record in 2018.
Enter Mike Elias.
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A pitcher at Yale, Elias’ career was short-circuited by a torn labrum. In 2007, a year after graduating, Elias was hired to scout for the St. Louis Cardinals by then Vice President of Scouting and Player Development Jeff Luhnow. When Luhnow was named general manager of the Astros after the 2011 season, he took Elias with him as a special assistant and, in August of 2012, he promoted Elias to Scouting Director. In 2016, Elias was named assistant GM, replacing David Stearns, who had left to become GM of the Brewers. In that role, Elias oversaw the Astros’ player development.
And at the end of the 2018 season, Baltimore called.
It wouldn’t be hard to improve upon the 115-loss team he inherited, but the goal was to get the Orioles to where the Cardinals and Astros had been—to where the O’s themselves had been at one time in their history.
A lot of front offices talk about building a sustainable winning club through scouting and player development. Very few are disciplined enough—not to mention skilled enough—to actually do it.
Elias’ Orioles are well on their way.
The Orioles are led in the dugout by a couple of men with strong ties to the Marlins.
Manager Brandon Hyde was a long-time minor league manager in the Marlins organization, guiding Jacksonville to the Double-A Southern League championship in 2009. In 2010, when Marlins manager Fredi Gonzalez was fired mid-season (ironically in Baltimore), Hyde was named to serve as replacement manager Edwin Rodriguez’s bench coach, and he remained in that role under Rodriguez and, after Edwin’s Mother’s Day resignation in 2011, under interim manager Jack McKeon for the rest of that season.
Hyde didn’t return to the Marlins in 2012. He served on the Cubs coaching staff from 2014-18 before taking over the Orioles at the start of the 2019 season.
He’ll be the run-away winner of the AL Manager of the Year award this season.
His bench coach since 2020: the former Marlins manager and coach Fredi Gonzalez, a great baseball man who—after leading the Marlins to their 2 best seasons since 2003 in 2008 and 2009—was wrongly scapegoated for a 34-36 start in 2010.
A year later, he replaced Bobby Cox as manager of the Braves upon the Hall of Famer’s retirement. Fredi’s teams averaged 93 wins over his first 3 years in Atlanta, reaching the playoffs twice, before he lost his job in 2016 after getting caught up in an Atlanta rebuild.
In a move you don’t see often, the former manager returned to the Marlins as a member of Don Mattingly’s staff for 3 seasons before leaving to join Hyde’s staff with the Orioles.
There’s no way to know what the Orioles will do come October. Their immediate goal is to hold off Tampa Bay to win the division and, barring something unforeseen, assure themselves a first-round bye.
There are good teams, and certainly more experienced teams, with whom they’ll have to contend in the postseason.
But for the O’s, it’s not 2023 or bust. This is a team with as bright a future as any franchise in the major leagues.
After perfectly executing their rebuild, now comes the fun part, seeing how far these Orioles can fly.
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As you wrote, we remember the few truly successful rebuilds. The formula that teams like the Astros, and now the Birds, used require baseball people with skills to work. I count myself among those howling for Marlins developmental prowess as the only sustainable competitive path. Of course, they want this, too, but fall short in assessment and drafting. Can't just scream that the Marlins need to follow the Rays from office strategy or Baltimore's player development strategy as if it's simply a choice.
Great to see Fredi and Brandon doing well
In Baltimore. Fredi has been so undervalued throughout his career. He’s
won from the minors to the Majors. And
he was the first Marlin minor league manager one year before the major league team threw out the first pitch !