Beyond the obvious rebuild with which they’re faced, the Orioles have numerous behind-the-scenes questions to answer this offseason, writes Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic (subscription link). Longtime owner Peter Angelos has ceded day-to-day operations of the club to sons John and Louis, but the league is still unclear who the new “control” person of the team is at this point. The O’s will also have to make a determination on whether to retain longtime general manager Dan Duquette and/or manager Buck Showalter, as each will see his contract expire at season’s end. Beyond that, the ongoing MASN television rights fee battle with the Nationals will likely have an arbitration hearing in front of a panel of fellow MLB owners in November.
More from the AL East…
- Despite the Yankees’ recent struggles, owner Hal Steinbrenner voiced support for rookie manager Aaron Boone in a statement to George A. King III of the New York Post. “Aaron Boone has done a good job dealing with all these moving parts and certainly has the respect of the players,” Steinbrenner said in an email to King. He goes on to acknowledge that injuries have impacted the team significantly — Aaron Judge, Gary Sanchez, Didi Gregorius and Aroldis Chapman have all been on the disabled list — but emphasizes that the organization “has been happy with the choice” of Boone as the replacement for longtime skipper Joe Girardi.
- Red Sox infielder Eduardo Nunez exited Thursday’s game due to soreness in his right knee, per MassLive.com’s Chris Cotillo — the same knee that plagued him late in the 2017 season and into the American League Division Series, where he had to be helped off the field. Nunez recently told WEEI.com’s Rob Bradford that the knee has been an ongoing issue for him in 2018 but was getting “close” to 100 percent. That doesn’t seem to be the case now, though Cotillo notes that skipper Alex Cora said the team doesn’t believe Nunez’s current injury to be serious. Nunez will be held out of tonight’s game and re-assessed this weekend. He’s struggled to a .262/.287/.387 batting line through 486 plate appearances this season and has a player option for the 2019 season that increased from $4MM to $5MM when he took his 400th plate appearance (as first reported by Bradford).
- Sportsnet’s Shi Davidi takes a thorough look at a crowded Blue Jays roster in previewing some of the decisions the Jays will have to make this offseason. They’ll only lose two players (Tyler Clippard and Marco Estrada) to free agency, and their 40-man spots will be filled by Troy Tulowitzki from the 60-day DL and eventual trade acquisition Julian Merryweather (the PTBNL in the Josh Donaldson trade). The Jays have an arbitration class of nine players without any real non-tender candidates, and there are numerous prospects who still need to be added to the 40-man roster to be protected from the Rule 5 Draft. Davidi speculates that former prized prospect Dalton Pompey could be on the bubble, as he’s dealt with myriad injuries that have sapped his production and was also suspended this season due to an altercation with his manager in Triple-A.
Bud Selig caused this Masn dispute when he brought the Montreal Expos to Washington. Just 1 of Bud Selig’s screwups
Agreed! Should have never happened. Brewers are an AL team! Actually-he stole the Brewers from Seattle! Astros are an NL team. Always found it odd that a Brewer was the only player to ever beat an arbitration case with steroids. 🙂 Still say the idiot Braun should pay half his salary to the guy he lied about and got fired. And don’t get me started on the All-Star game! Finally met someone that likes Selig-he’s from Milwaukee. Of course the new guy isn’t much better. He saved 1/2 a second a game with the intentional walk rule change and he gave Facebook exclusive rights to certain games. I don’t care if the game’s on Facebook, just let everyone else watch it on tv!
waaaaa 25 out of 2430 games are only on Facebook WAAAAAAA
The games on Facebook are awful though…
I totally agree that the games on Facebook exclusively is a horrible idea!!! I also agree that it’s fine to put the games on Facebook, providing they are still broadcast on their regular tv station, or tbs or ESPN.
Anything else you’d like to get off your chest?
As much as I disliked Selig, I would ecstatic if we could have him back and get rid of our current moron of a commissioner. All of his pace of play crap among so many other things I would love to never hear about again. And before anyone says I’m old school and the younger generation needs pace of play, I’m in college. Don’t speak on behalf of us.
Agreed.
Amen to the pace of play crap. Leave the players alone and let them concentrate on what they are paid to do. The pace of play issue is from a small but loud minority of the total amount of fans. How about keep doing as the silent majority are in favor of doing??
Let baseball be baseball as it always has been without idiotic restrictions.
“The pace of play issue is from a small but loud minority of the total amount of fans” that minority (young fans) is what MLB is trying to capture and grow. Think about these two things, the average age of an MLB fan is 55 (easily googled), MLB has fallen to the number three sport in the US. So what should the commissioner do, nothing or something?
Nothing they do to baseball is going to make it as exciting to the younger fan. I guess they could have teams start playing soccer and sign the top stars from Europe and South America.
they could start with getting rid of the “unwritten” rules. also let them show emotion without all the passing and whining. Kids love watching the emotion of the game not some automaton unable to crack a smile
Honestly, pace of play is important and I think Manfred is going about it right. I honestly they’d go further.
MLB should insert the rule that if your team gets three outs if you are losing or tied, but only two outs if you a winning.
So if you take the lead with two outs is the inning automatically over?
Is your intention to make it more likely for a losing team to tie the game?
You realize that will force more games to extras and end up adding a lot more time than it saves right?
Yes he did. Too small a market for both. And how is a panel of fellow owners an appropriate impartial panel for arbitration?
Yep, Nats came into a market that can’t support two teams. And how is a panel of fellow owners an impartial arbitration panel?
That’s fine. The Orioles are garbage and should be sent down to the minors.
So, the O’s front office is still a mess.
Not really actually. There are some structural things to work out but the organization over all is actually coordinated and has been for a number of years. Yep, the current season has been a disaster but both Buck and DD deserve to be back and should be retained.
Somebody is in denial.
Both Buck and DD deserve nothing. Its time for new blood. A GM whose title is actually GM. And the new GM should be given the privelidge of hiring a manager of his choice. A mgr not named Buck.
And Brady…Brady Anderson isn’t helping things. He’s getting in the way. Fire him too.
Obviously the forthcoming MASN decision looms pretty large in terms of what the O’s are going to do moving forward. An adverse decision won’t turn them into the Tampa Bay Rays, but will knock them down a few pegs into the Brewers/Reds/ Pirates class.
Gonna take a lot of work…..
That is a fair assessment. In some ways though they seem to operate similarly to those clubs already.
So as soon as the Blue Jays receive Julian Merryweather, they could possibly be looking to get rid of him because of 40 man roster issues?
Seems this roster crunch problem is something they should have thought more about earlier
I’d imagine they wouldn’t take Merryweather if they weren’t 100% sure they’d keep him. But yeah, adding a guy that needs 40-man space when they have a crunch already probably isn’t a good idea.
Reading the article, it acts as if everyone is about as high to higher in value, and that the team will need to open multiple 40 man spots for even higher valued prospects on top of that.
Merryweather is old, has fairly limited even upper minors experience and nothing in MLB, and will need to spend at least a chunk of 2019 in minors getting back into form after his TJS
If they didn’t ponder the 40 man problem before agreeing on him, I could see him in the pile of possible difficult choices they have to at least consider.
I question some of the previous Jays 40 an roster moves. There are some players who we have seen that were, in advance of any MLB appearance, accurately forecasted that they didn’t belong on the roster.
There won’t be much of a 40 man roster issue. At the moment Mark Leiter Jr is on it. lol, so is Petricka and neither belong in the big leagues.. While Luke Maile has done a respectiable job this year, he could be traded or released as well to make room for the kids. Let Martin mentor the kids..
As far the Dalton Pompey goes, he doesn;t belong in the majors unless he is a pinch runner. He can’t hit well, his outfield defensive routes are just better than Hernandez but that doesn’t say much. Time to cut bait.
Spot-on. Plus decline Solarte’s option.
I still get flashbacks to George whenever I see the name “Steinbrenner” and fully expected to see something like “Yankees fire Aaron Boone…Bob Lemon to be interim manager, Steinbrenner says “Aaron knows how I feel about him…”
Yankees fire Aaron Boone, hire Billy Martin.
Yankees fire Billy Martin after 3-5 start, searching for new manager.
Maybe hire George Constanza?
Member when the Yankees were picked by everyone to win the AL East? I member….
The big whiff on that prediction was that nobody expected the Red Sox to literally be one of the best regular season teams of all time.
Take the Sox out of the equation and the Yankees are a 100 win team. And the injuries (as noted in this article) play a big role in their struggle to catch Boston, too.
But they’ll still likely win 95+ games, nothing to sneeze at.
Yankees, How good are they really?
What day is it or who is pitching? This team could beat the 27 Yankees and on the other hand they would have been swept by the 62 Mets, 03 Tigers, and the 1889 Cleveland Spiders!
LOL @ Vinny
Ya I got a kick out of that. Make no mistake, the Yanks are very good; but the Sox historic season was pretty easy to predict. Sox would have won it even without JD, which is saying something..;…their starters and defense are far superior to the Yanks….
That being said, it won’t amaze me if the Yanks get to the WS……as I said, they’re very good….
Exactly. I think as much as they’re being heralded now, the Sox team of 2018 will likely go down as one of the best in MLB history.
The Red Sox will win 110+ games, something only ever done 6 times in the history of the game.
I think that’s a bit much. Over half of the the AL is rebuilding. The best teams would’ve had no problems racking up wins this year.
Then why didn’t the other best teams in the AL play similarly this year?! Someone’s salty.
Scott is bang-on. AL Central had more rebuilding teams to begin this season than the East and West.
I’m not salty at all. There’s going to more than likely be three 100 win teams and possibly even four. The AL is garbage this year, it’s not really a question
Arguably the best 4 teams in baseball come from the AL (Hou, Bos, NYY, Clev). Houston’s very strong, Boston’s been very strong all year, Yankees are scary and nobody wants to face Cleveland’s pitching. If garbage to you is what’s going on with the bottom teams, fine. But the World Series favourites resides in the AL with one of those 4.
the AL also has 4-5 of the worst teams.
Red Sox and Yankees also get to play an awful lot against the Orioles… helps pad the stats a bit.
^Red Sox and Yankees have to play Tampa also. Want a weak division? Look at the AL Central and NL East.
NYY: 45-11 against the AL Central and AL West combined.
Jays: 13-7 vs. NL teams, 18-15 vs. AL Central despite having 65-82 record.
Red Sox historic season was easy to predict? They were supposed to be great but the Yanks were rated higher on almost every website (mlb, ESPN, 538, etc). You should have gone to Vegas knowing that they would win 110 games.
Would have won it without JD? That’s a very bold claim.
I have always had good respect for Dan Duquette. He is a reliable baseball man, so is Buck.
But, the pitching staff they have run out there the last few years has been mostly scotch tape and binder twine. That leads me to believe that they are tanking on purpose. Get some high drafts. Can’t see any other reason for it.