The Tanking Will Continue Until Morale Improves: the 2022 Baltimore Orioles

joey bart is a cautionary tale

(tbf on almost any other team he'd have long since been in the majors)

anyway still pissed about how mountcastle was literally the IL MVP in 2019 and the orioles didn't call him up in september

i mean they are among the shittiest organizations in a thoroughly bullshit league, hard to give them the benefit of anything

Every year I tell myself it's silly to hope for anything, and yet here I am saying to myself "What if Yusniel Diaz is actually good?"

Then again I did keep saying that about Cedric Mullins until it came true.

really awesome how they're taking the cancer survivor to arbitration and will end up trading him either way

It's inexplicable, he doesn't get paid very much and he's not going to bring anything in trade, why do this

He should have a decent trade value, no?!

he's a bit better than league-average hitter playing corner outfield relatively poorly. and he's 30. so no

but apparently it's more important to the orioles to keep their payroll under $40m than give their fans anything at all to root for

I mean he's the absolute paradigm of a player who's worth more to the Orioles than he is to any of the other 29 teams, unless you take the view, which Orioles management often seems to, that by definition no player has any value to the Orioles because the winning of games and the happiness of fans are themselves of zero value. So sure, trade Mancini for the next Zach Pop.

o's and mancini settle and add a mutual option for 2023...honestly, i like mancini, but was okay w/ whatever outcome. more anxious about means.

i want to know the history of mutual options and whether they've ever actually been exercised

I read something once a while back that it hardly ever barely happens. Like a step up from never.

lol okay

Mike Elias said of the Orioles' current group of young starters — Akin, Baumann, Kremer, Lowther, Zimmermann — "Some of those guys need to step up."

"That's why we're struggling right now is because we haven't gotten a real cemented breakout from one of those guys."

— Nathan Ruiz (@NathanSRuiz) April 4, 2022

Should be noted that none of those guys were acquired by Elias. He seems to have a pretty pissy attitude towards the previous regime's moves in general, outside of Hall and Rodriguez

I feel like we just saw a little of what we're gonna see a lot of.

adley rutschman is now 24yo. he hit .285/.397/.502 in the minors last year. the guy drafted first overall a year later made his big league debut tonight

garbage organization in a garbage sport

big felix, big mike...nice to see some big arms in the pen.

rutschman is injured tho, no?

he is, and it's been radio silence for a while unfortunately

xp seeing felix make wander franco look silly was heartening. i'm really not too worried about the bullpen going forward, which is why i liked the sulser/scott trade. the pitcher we got back for them looks like he might be in the rotation by july.

Yeah, I don't think there's any doubt Adley's the Opening Day starter if he's not hurt (whether he should have been up last year is a question one can discuss)

i'm really not too worried about the bullpen going forward

I admire your optimism but I look at the bullpen and I'm not seeing the 4-5 decent innings a day we're gonna need with this rotation

i think the innings are somewhere in the system, but we may be subjected to a lot of alexander wells, zac lowther and keegan akin before we land on the right mix.

yeah, i don't mean the current bullpen arms, more that a bunch of our mid-tier starters will end up as decent relievers in the next year or two. i have faith that out of "keegan akin tier" we'll get a handful of good relievers. jorge lopez didn't look bad closing. i think guys like rom and even bradish will end up there and could shine. and fangraphs seems to think hall will end up there and turn into josh hader

it's the rotation i'm worried about

bradish definitely has filthier stuff than the akin tier...boy, those rodriguez highlights from the night, though. mercy.

left forearm tightness for our only good starter

would love for the rotation to get a little more bradish, but i fear this means the imminent return of matt harvey.

kill me. if this doesn't mean bradish and grayson soon.........

Hyde said Means getting second opinions on elbow. Gonna be awhile - to get results and for him to pitch again. Hyde doesn’t know if Means will pitch again in 2022. Said doesn’t expect him back anytime soon #orioles

— Roch Kubatko (@masnRoch) April 16, 2022

On the whole, "everybody in the AL East beats up on us every year, except the Yankees whose season we keep ruining" is about as good as we can hope for right now, so let's keep it coming

will grudgingly accept this outcome. for now...

I support it.

3 out of four wins have been shutouts.

I mean this is about as good as a team scoring under 2 runs a game can be

means is getting tommy john : /

bad news for everyone in the world except matt harvey

https://blogs.fangraphs.com/introducing-the-new-orioles-bullpen/

i am a bit amazed at this team coming into the season with an original plan (setting up middle middle) and implementing it... thought that kind of thing was just for the rays and dodgers and giants

bautista is so fun to watch

it was noted on twitter today that every oriole to play so far this season is at least 25 years old

keeping rodriguez down this long is bullshit but aside from him and adley, who will be up within a few weeks, there is no one in the organization under 25 who is ready to be called up right now. and aside from rodriguez who should've pitched at AAA last year, you can't point to any other prospects and say they were held at any level too long.

and i have no idea what scocca's problem with bruce zimmermann is? am i supposed to be angry at the orioles for tanking for young prospects or angry at them for not giving up on 27 year old former prospects? should i be angry that they stuck with non-prospect cedric mullins while he was experimenting with a new approach and then developed into a player who could star on a playoff team? am i supposed to just be angry at everything the orioles do all the time even when there are positive developments on the 26-man roster that have nothing to do with tanking?

there is no one in the organization under 25 who is ready to be called up right now

The exact point is that that itself is the problem for an organization that has supposedly been rebuilding since 2018.

And nobody has anything against Bruce Zimmerman, Bruce Zimmerman rules, he represents the kind of "find unexpectedly useful guys off the scrap heap" philosophy that the Orioles have always been decently good at (Rodrigo Lopez, Nate McLouth) -- but the idea was meant to be to use those guys in combination with players you could actually expect to be good.

The exact point is that that itself is the problem for an organization that has supposedly been rebuilding since 2018.

i don't really see how that's the case if the prospects are still there? it's just ignoring every bit of context to make a provocative tweet. the covid year didn't help, nor did major injuries/illnesses to hall and kjerstad. i will 100% say that adley should've been up last year (he still would've been injured this year so he still wouldn't be on the team) and rodriguez should've made it to AAA and started this year in the majors. i am currently pretty furious that bradish isn't starting in the majors, though he struggled at AAA last year so i can see why they started him there again. but the rest of the prospects are still there, they're playing at the levels expected of them and being promoted pretty liberally after they come to succeed at said levels.

and santander or hays or mancini should be traded asap to make room for stowers, but then the scoccas of the world would just tweet about the bad tanking team recommitting to an endless death spiral by trading away actual major leaguers in their arb years.

everyone knows where this team started when elias actually came in. zero analytics, zero international signings, one of the worst farms in the league, an expensive go-nowhere major league team that was 2 years past any hope of being a couple FA signings away from competing again. prospective GM brady anderson. this was never going to be a rebuild like the jays or braves or tigers or white sox or padres who all started light years ahead of where this team was. there was never any sensible reason to think this team would be able to follow that sort of a timeline.

>when elias actually came in. zero analytics, zero international signings,

did not realize it was this bad. i remember about 8 years ago they were so good for a team that looked just okay-ish on paper. i just assumed they knew what they were doing behind the scenes

it was a team that combined a group of great players amassed by the previous regime with a GM that was almost supernaturally good at supplementing those players with random guys he found. there were almost never any holes on the roster.

it was also a team that sacrificed its 2016 first round draft pick for yovani gallardo

re: baby birds

would love to see stowers up sooner rather than later, dl hall will probably debut this year...a lot of people like drew rom and i'm also curious how quickly they'll move prieto and cowser.

...also think they'll give akin, wells, lowther and kremer (once healthy) a few chances to sink or swim. don't know what the leash is like for gutierrez. owings probably not long for this world.

psyched bradish is getting the call tonight. hope he gets an extended look.

Bradish certainly earned the extended look.

Walk-off unearned run on a terrible bunt!

Enjoying the Orioles playing like an ordinary bad team instead of a historically bad team!

orioles hitters in may (admittedly only eight games all at home and mostly against mediocre teams, but still): .293/.343/.448

that's v. good!

pitching is also above average but they're not getting a lot of strikeouts (relatively speaking)

toss in the yankees and it's really looking like a dogfight down the stretch.

the way the jays rays and mariners are playing i'm thinking the yankees falling out completely is the only way we make it in

I know Gunnar's not THIS good but I sure am enjoying this (and the hair)

situation w/ the jays will resolve itself head to head, i think.

1982 redux. sort of.

'89 for these two teams--Jays won the division by 2.0 over the Orioles, with the final three games in Baltimore. The Orioles had to sweep to win, two Baltimore wins would have left them in a tie. (I don't know if they went by head-to-head records then or a tiebreaker.)

right down to the "this team sucked real bad last year what happened???" factor

I'd forgotten all about that! That was the team lost their first 21. I have a very clear memory of the clinching win in '89: Henke struck out somebody and pumped his fists. It was a big deal after blowing it in '87.

Larry Sheets (who had one big year, if I remember correctly).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I8ztJxMpVt8

team is absolutely screwed if they have to play a single day game in the playoffs

7 sunday losses in a row! why has this been a thing for so long? feel like we'd go on these streaks back in the dave trembley days

this team will never win a day game

Does a 5pm start count as a day or night game??

gonna say day for this one

i'd like to be able to blame today on needing to rely on 2 AAA pitchers for both games of a doubleheader but the offense has felt inert for a while.

feels like it might be the end :|

I woke up this morning feeling "this is the day that makes or breaks the season" and sadly I still agree with myself

Very necessary win. Rougned being Rougned to nearly the greatest extent physically possible.

well, that sucked.

i don't think we're gonna come back from that series. there's always a chance but.... no

Have you met the 2022 Blue Jays? We're a tad streaky.

yeah but this series really just felt like the clock struck midnight. and i think the bullpen just has to be too taxed to get through the like 20 straight games left to play.

this offseason is going to be very interesting. i'm not really sure how elias is going to handle it, and i don't envy him. this team is in such a weird position relative to the normal tank/rebuild cycle, because so much of the value this year has come from young, cost-controlled guys that weren't major prospects and don't have all-star ceilings. hays, santander, urias, mateo... and probably mullins and mountcastle at this point. all solid players who deserve full-time major league spots (and there's no obvious platoon splits either aside from maybe mullins), only one older than 27 (urias, 28)

this team's main quality is its depth. adley's the only guy you can confidently project to be a 4 win player going forward, but nearly every position has contributed solid value, even the starters. the only real hole has been 2B. and backup catcher i guess. there'd be a lot more room for improvement if those wins were distributed more unevenly.

and this is an organization that still has a lot of good hitting prospects in AA and AAA - guys with higher ceilings than a lot of the big contributors this year. cowser, westburg, norby, ortiz, mayo are all potential impact guys who could be up by the ASB. stowers and vavra are already in the majors struggling to find ABs. gunnar doesn't even have a set position.

obviously some guys are going to get traded, but how often do you see full-tank teams start to trade top-100 minor league talent (i do think those AA/AAA guys are all top 100 except westburg, maybe mayo who still wouldn't be far off) when only 2 major prospects have been promoted? you have to give other prospects a chance to figure it out, there's too much potential there.

i think there's a very good chance next year's team is worse than this year's team as the solid 1.5-3 win players are replaced with struggling rookies. and even if we get a full year of rodriguez, the return of means, and trade for/sign better starters, there's still less room for improvement after voth/kremer/wells all came out of nowhere to pitch well.

anyway, i'm sure some major leaguers and minor leaguers are going to be traded. it's just going to be nutso to see how it all shakes out. there's so much depth and not a lot of room. looking at the 14-17 astros, not an easy comparison - those offenses were deep, but the solid non-prospect contributors were older soon-to-be FAs, not difficult guys to cut bait on.

also a lot of the improvement this year came from the bullpen and defense, which aren't very reliable year to year. idk, i really don't have much hope in next season i guess.

also i'll say this here because i can't say it anywhere else, but if elias does trade santander, mateo and urias to bring up prospects this team will be blindingly white. he drafts like marge schott.

it's possible i'm just not used to having this much talent in the high minors at once

A smalll step back next year wouldn’t surprise me. Let the young guys calibrate to the majors and focus on plugging holes with low-risk free agents in 2023 - then spend in earnest for 2024 on free agents and maybe dealing away some of the prospects in the lower minors for major league talent.

I get you from a tactical perspective but boy I would be sad to see santander and especially mateo go

that'll do it

just a real crap time for the bats to go frio.

almost back to back CGs. so close to a maddux for bradish! granted he was working with the world's biggest strike zone

who needs bats, let's just have complete game shutouts and an occasional hit by Rougned Odor

bradish notched a 90 game score last night, fwiw.

what in the world

does mike elias have something on astros hitters? are our pitchers doing some sort of reverse trash can magic to throw the right pitch every time?

The Jays are doing their hapless thing, so do not abandon hope.

imagine if we didn't lose 2 to the tigers lol

xp seems more likely that the Mariners manage to collapse despite their incredibly easy schedule and extend the playoff drought

ugh, that game might have been the death blow, but what can you do, you can't count on sweeping the astros

Bradish is absolutely baffling to me.

This game.

so, after that crazy summer push, feels like a bit of a let down to not nab the third wc spot, but locking in at least .500 season and hanging in the playoff race through september is a huge achievement for a team that hasn't had a winning record in five seasons and has lost well over 100 games in three of those seasons. rutschman and henderson look like the real deal.

ramon urias winning a gold glove and jorge mateo winning a fielding bible award were not things i expected out of 2022.

An Orioles fan should start a new thread without "tanking" in the title...If Baltimore goes on to win the World Series, remember to thank the Blue Jays for letting them know once and for all they're really for real (which I'm sure they knew anyway).

There’s literally a 2023 Orioles thread.

Polite as ever, but thanks, didn't know.

And just to set your troubled mind at ease, I did search "Baltimore," but not Orioles. I tried, I really tried.

lol not really