Orioles general manager Mike Elias spoke with reporters (including Rich Dubroff of BaltimoreBaseball.com) just after their relatively inactive deadline. Baltimore are firmly entrenched in the “seller” category, with the worst record in the American League and only the Diamondbacks keeping them from being worst in all of MLB. But despite that, the club only made a pair of minor trades as the deadline approached, sending Freddy Galvis to the Phillies for Tyler Burch, and Shawn Armstrong to Tampa for cash considerations.
As Elias sees it, the reason for the lack of moves is because their players with the most trade appeal are actually building blocks. “We were very mindful that a lot of our best players that were in demand were players that are not pending free agents with the Orioles,” Elias said. “They’re players that are young and talented and we like and have future years with this club and project to be a part of this club when we hope to be a playoff contender.”
When asked specifically about John Means and Cedric Mullins, Elias said he was “pretty confident that we weren’t going to get very serious in talks with those players. We’re very, very impressed by what those guys are doing, and they’re here for a long time, and they play positions that are not easy to find guys to do what they do. It’s not a priority for us to look at those opportunities.”
Means will cross three years’ service time by the end of this season, setting him up for his first of three arbitration years. He won’t be eligible for free agency until after the 2024 season. Mullins on the other hand, has one extra year of control beyond that, slated to hit free agency in late 2025.
Getting back into contention within the next three to four years will be a challenge for the club, as they share a division with four very strong teams. Although Baltimore has a solid farm system, that doesn’t necessarily give them a leg up on their division mates. The Orioles came in seventh on Baseball America’s most recent organizational talent rankings. But two of the other AL East clubs, Tampa and Toronto, are ahead of them. And both of those clubs already have lots of young, controllable talent at the major league level. The Red Sox and Yankees have weaker systems on that list but are currently strong at the major league level and always have higher payrolls than Baltimore to attract and retain talent. Holding on to players like Means and Mullins also carries the risk that they may get hurt or not maintain their performance.
Elias did say that they were “pretty close” to trading away one of their relievers, but didn’t specify which one. Paul Fry and Tanner Scott are two lefties that seen their names surface in recent rumors, alongside righties Cole Sulser and Dillon Tate. All of those hurlers are controlled through at least 2024. And it seems in that the thinking with those arms was the same as with Means and Mullins, that it’s better to hold and try to build around those players before they reach free agency.
One player slated to reach free agency much sooner is Trey Mancini. But despite having just over a year of team control remaining, the idea of a Mancini trade seems unlikely for different reasons. Since missing the 2020 season dealing with colon cancer, Mancini has become a fan favorite in Baltimore and around the league. And trading him would certainly be a difficult sell to the Baltimore fans, who have had few things to feel good about in recent years. As Elias puts it, “I hope he’s here as long as possible and, ultimately, we’re going to take things as we come like baseball teams do in the major leagues and look at stuff and keep talking. He’s a very special part of this team, and he’s going to continue to be so, and we’re happy about that.”
Baltimore didn’t really sign any rental players to be traded in the feeding frenzy.
Tanner Scott is ambidextrous? Who knew
Good for the Orioles. Trying to grow home grown talent and hanging onto fan favorites. MLB needs a salary cap. The league is never going to be balanced when the Yankees, Red Sox and Dodgers have endless cash piles and can buy championships.
Boston and Baltimore have very similar populations. Why can’t the Orioles keep up with the Red Sox? How can the Red Sox keep up with the Yankees year after year?
Umm Boston market is at least twice the size as Baltimore.
You know how they grew their market? They did well with marketing their team.. and they won… which made people want to follow them.
It’s crazy, but before the Nationals came in, the Orioles had a massive market opportunity to take advantage of with so much surrounding area without a pro baseball team.
What’s the excuse? Oh, “it’s just a bigger sports city.”
Well, that’s the city of Baltimore’s fault for having lame people.
The O’s draw 3+ million fans before the Nats showed up. They lost fans because of the owner, a losing team and a city that is cesspool full of criminals. They barely support 2 sports, Boston supports all 4. I have lived near Baltimore for 40 years and I wouldn’t go to the city at night.
Is that racism I’m sensing …
it’s funny how the moderators blocked my post but let yours stay…I called you a POS for your comments but they blocked it
No, it’s statistics, but if you’re looking for racism you’ll find it.
Mgraub – Are you saying that only specific races commit crimes? That’s pretty…..racist.
Look at the quality of the population in Boston versus Baltimore. White collar fans versus a stadium in a combat zone of crime.
So Boston people are classy, and Baltimore people are trash. Got it.
The area around OPACY is fine and the team drew well when it was winning and competitive. The owner ruined the team. Sounds like maybe the son is trying to undo the old man’s wrongs.
“Classy” is what Boston thinks they are. They all think their kaka doesn’t stink. Don’t get me wrong, the Orioles should be doing a lot better in terms of fan base, but Boston has zero class
Classy? You mean rich wealthy Libtards. You guys won a world series after 100 years and your special now. lol
@downsr30
If winning had anything to do with it, then the Cubs would have the smallest fanbase in baseball right now; to reference the WS drought of 100+ years.
Heck, the Rays have been playing good baseball and have had a long stretch of success since 2008, making the World Series that very year and in 2020. Yet that very team has one of the smallest fan bases in the world.
Your argument that some teams didn’t market their teams as good as others is also incorrect.
All 30 teams – be it good or bad – market their teams with local sports ads, special event days like bobblehead giveaways, etc.
The biggest factors in fan base sizes is the location/population of the city the team plays in and the amount of years said team has been in the city.
Red Sox have had more years and history to market in Boston then the Orioles have in Baltimore.
It has nothing to do with one being objectively “better” then the other, much as you seem to want it to be.
Well it is interesting you make this comparison, but Baltimore’s moronic DA Marilyn Mosby is from the Boston area. Her parents were cops and Marilyn went to Boston College Law. Yet look at what she has accomplished
Jacob, the first reasonable comment here. Thank you.
‘accomplished’? She has accomplished being part of why it’s a mess. Comical and very sad that she was re-elected. The former mayor stole from the city and was almost re-elected. Hence, it is where it is.
Can you talk baseball without your political jabs? Do you think that’s possible?
I’m sure the horrendous state of the city alone has and will keep the Orioles from signing top players. A player would have to live at least 20 miles from the stadium to feel he’s in a comfort zone and then they still have to play in that disgusting area. Boston is, for the most part, a pleasant place to live with several communities close by (Newton, Brookline, Lexington) for a player to enjoy life. New York is New York. Most players enjoy being there. Best thing the O’s could do, seriously, is pack up and move to Montreal.
I’m a Baltimore fan living outside of Boston, grew up in Southern CT (Yankee Territory) I know crazy right!
You can’t compare the two cities at all.
Red Sox & Fenway have a century of history. O’s not so much.
Practically all of New England ( outside of Fairfield and New Haven county CT) are Red Sox fans. That includes the Portland, ME. Hartford CT, Providence RI, Manchester, NH markets.
Baltimore has to compete with Nationals and Phillies in close distance. Both of those teams generally have very high payroll and are normally competing.
Red Sox have a insane payroll so they can bring in names that fans already know. Baltimore is generally always homegrown talent.
Baltimore would sell out in the Machado and Ripken days practically every game.
Angelos is a terrible owner who cares more about his ROI on signing a player then actually winning games. Most fans know this and refuse to give a Billionaire their hard earned money.
The last thing baseball needs is a salary cap. Why do the dumbest fans always suggest the worst solutions. Baseball has more parity than all the other major sports. That’s not debatable either. Spending doesn’t equal winning.
Wow that’s totally inaccurate and reading it made me dumber. Baseball has the worst parity of all the major sports. NHL has a cap and the Stanley cup winner is ALWAYS up for grabs.
Agree with you dpsmith22.
Yes, the NHL has a ‘hard cap’ of around $75M, so how did Tampa get away with a payroll of over $90M this year? Every league that has a cap (NBA, NFL & NHL) has a ton of loopholes to get around it. I believe the Warriors had a payroll well north of $200M when Durant was there. Caps are just an excuse for cheap owners not to spend and a license for them to print money. If anything, baseball needs a minimum floor, but not a hard cap.
lol ok so the fact that Tampa utilized a loop hole is in some way a comparison to teams with almost triple another’s payroll? The joys of ignorance…
It doesn’t guarantee winning but it absolutely helps to have unlimited resources.
You must be a Yankee or Dodgers fan.
Only way a salary cap works is if a salary floor is in place as well.
Boknows – are you thinking Tanner isn’t a lefty?
Honestly, I would have thought the Orioles might have done a wee bit more with trading at the deadline with sale if some of their relievers. Maybe they didn’t get offers worth taking but they had pieces to move
They like the pieces they have and I can’t blame them. There’s talent in the org, including already at the ML level. I have no idea how the author came up with three to four years as the time when they’ll be competing. They should be competitive in the division by 2023, provided they take a step forward next year
I don’t think the writer questions whether they’ll be good sooner than that, rather how well will they fair being that they’ll have to continually keep up with Boston, New York, Tampa, and now Toronto. Meaning they have a huge task ahead of them to be competitive.
Currently they’re 3-6 against Toronto so far this year, 4-7 against Boston, 4-6 against New York, and 1-8 against Tampa. The near even marks against Boston and New York would seem good if not for the fact that they swept Boston to start the year before Boston got hot and have went 1-6 since, and if New York were playing at the level they should be playing at. So we won’t really know how well they can perform against New York this year until they play again with new york actually playing better. Their best progress at the moment is that they play average baseball against Toronto. But that only means they’re getting closer to possibly being a fourth place team. When you’re spending at least 60 games of your season against the 4 teams they are, you’re going to have to start playing a lot better baseball.
What do you mean by competitive? Unless the rest of the AL East decides to blow it up, 3-4 years sounds far more realistic than 2023, IMO. They have a ton of holes/unproven players; I wouldn’t expect them to be able to sort all of that out by 2023. It generally takes prospects at least a year or two to really get their feet under them once they make their debut.
I see Baltimore trading Means at next year’s deadline if they get a nice offer. I’d expected them to take a step forward this year but what has backfired for them are the struggles of their young starting pitchers. If guys like Kremer, Zimmerman, Lowther, and Akin have a fresh start next season and keep their ERAs around 4 and with the possible call ups of Adley and Grayson then I see this team becoming more relevant for next year.
I wouldn’t say anything backfired this year but the pitching (which I wasn’t totally banking on anyhow) didn’t progress. The biggest disappointment though was the trio of Santander, Hays and Mountcastle not stepping it up. Still thin they can/will in the future.
*think
If you’re looking for these guys to be elite that’s not happening. Mountcastle has “stepped up” just fine. Santander has been hurt, and Hays didn’t profile as more than a fourth OF. And then Mullins surprised everyone. I’d say better Mullins and Mountcastle they’ve done well. Santander will get heathy again and Hays won’t pop and that’s fine.
Mountcastle is having a pretty good year for a guy who is about to complete his first full year in the majors. Santander has been dogged by injuries and Covid. Hays is more than a 4th outfielder. He’s excellent defensively and has some pop. It would be nice to see what he could do if healthy for an entire season!
The MLB needs a hard salary cap. It won’t force those low budget teams to spend more but at least it will make the high budget teams more accountable. Tax penalties and loss of draft picks are not enough.
I like what Elias is doing, but as long as this team is under the helm of Peter Angelos they won’t see winning for another 4 years. They don’t have to be cheap and be the one of the lowest paid payrolls in baseball, they choose to be like that! You can draft, scout, and win at the exact same time as you develop younger talent in your minor league system, but the Orioles choose to go the small market route and spend like one, i.e. Tampa Bay, while basically paying for bottom of the barrel type players such as Matt Harvey and lose while they wait for their young talent to get to the big leagues. They are NOT a small market team, and it’s unfair to the fans for what they’re doing as far as their on field spending goes. It will be another 3 or 4 years until this organization sees another winning team again. Who knows where the world will be by then. God help us!
Please stop with the clichéd approach of bashing Angelos. It’s simply no longer true—and hasn’t been for a long time. Time for a new narrative.
agreed Dimitril
It’s stupid to blame the ownership, such a copout. The team will spend money, they just don’t know how to spend it. Chris Davis, Alex Cobb, Mark Trumbo ring a bell?
Why spend over 100m in payroll to get to 4th place? The GM is basically doing an rock bottom rebuild and they’ve shown in the past they’ll spend money, no reason to assume they won’t. GM is just dumpster diving and holding onto key pieces until they start to progress.
Maybe institute a salary floor at $65 million for the next CBA? That way rebuilding teams can avoid spending tons of money but more major league caliber players can get signed (Rick Porcello, Anibal Snachez, Cole Hamels, Jeff Samardzija, Mike Leake this year, )
The problem with a salary cap and a salary floor is this. The players won’t want a salary cap. The owners won’t want a salary floor. There’s not really anything big enough that one side wants enough to bring an “I’ll give you this if you agree to that.” Players are going to want a DH in the NL and likely at least ask about getting rid of the qualifying offer. Because they won’t want teams to be afraid of signing a player and losing a pick. But the owners are probably going to ask for something else that they’ll offer in exchange to say yes to those.
The owners also likely know that if they asked for a salary cap, the players would likely ask for a floor, which the owners don’t want. At least a vast majority of them wouldn’t. Tampa, Pittsburgh, teams that usually spend 60 million or less on their teams, or at least want to be able to do so during a rebuild, are absolutely not going to want to be required to do so.
I just don’t see it happening anytime soon. Expansion will probably happen before that does.
Here’s why there is no cap! If I am the Royals, why would I vote against you, Yankees, when you give me money every year? They won’t and of course the players union will fight until the end of the world, So, you get this shattered game, that I love, that greed has broken.
Cal Ripken Jr. Is one of the greatest, if not the greatest Oriole player of all time and you look at the fact that he made his only World Series appearance in his third season in the Major Leagues and didn’t see the postseason again until thirteen years later. It took another 15 years after the Orioles lost the ALCS in 1997 to reach the playoffs again. Winning Baseball in Baltimore has been few and far between since they made the postseason 8 times and won three championships from 1966-1983
Ted Williams played in 1. Nice try and all.
Perhaps, but in the Wild Card era the Red Sox have as many championships as the Orioles have playoff appearances. Your anti-Boston agenda does not change the fact that in the last four decades the Orioles are good for a year or two and then lousey for 12
A salary cap doesn’t mean the league is more competitive. Look at the NBA a perfect example of that. The MLB won’t be getting a cap anytime soon.
The NBA is a star run league, baseball is not. At least with a cap your team get eat bad contracts and rebuild their minor league systems with them. A level playing field is always better. You obviously don’t live in a mid or minor market.
Two reasons that a hard cap and hard floor work in the NFL is 1) revenue sharing and 2) non-guarenteed contracts. Neither of which seems particularly likely to be part of MLB anytime soon.
A lot of folks are all in on the AA talent base, rightfully so. However, the fruits of the rebuilding process are still in A ball currently. Really like the infield tandem of Henderson and Westberg. Hopefully they aren’t too far behind Adley, Grayson, and Hall. As for the major league group you’d have to believe not many will be around for the next winner. Means and Mullins are getting a lot of hype and rightfully so but you’d have to think Elias would be crazy to pass on a good trade for either. Means can be inconsistent and Mullins was a 4th OF/AAAA guy the past few years.
The O’s rebuild is going slowly, much too slowly for a team that has the assets they have. And they’ve made some questionable choices. Adley’s going to be a very good player, no one doubts it. But Witt Jr. looks like an aircraft carrier, and is doing more than holding his own at a level that he’s 3 years young for. And the 2020 draft looks less than scintillating.
FWIW, I thought Hayes was their most tradeable product; a RH hitter that can reasonably play CF; at least 5 teams are looking for that. And it looks like his ceiling is “meh”. You really can’t move Boom Boom (represents too many good things), Means or Mullins (gotta ride their 2021 success with the hope it portends good things.) .
But like the Rays. their biggest problem is the division, at least until expansion comes. The myth of “rebuilds” is that teams like the Sox, Yanks and Jays are going to stand there while you get better. And I think we can all agree that the Rays just do these things better.
They’ll improve, at least to some degree. But I don’t see the current management structure taking them anywhere above perpetual mediocrity. .
Still waiting to see if Elias has any extensions to hand out. Mullins? Means? Mancini?