Last summer, Mike Elias didn’t allow the Orioles overachieving to alter his plans at the trade deadline.
About two months into the 2023 season, Baltimore is far outpacing projections once again, and the Orioles’ executive vice president and general manager said he expects the club to be “buyers” at the trade deadline for the first time in his tenure. But how far Elias is willing to go to bolster the 2023 roster — including moves that could impact the organization’s long-term future — will be the burning question.
About 10 months ago, he made the unpopular decision to sell at the deadline despite the Orioles being in a wild-card race. It appeared last summer as if Baltimore’s rebuild was over, but the decisions to trade away team leader Trey Mancini and All-Star closer Jorge López were quintessential rebuild moves.
Elias entered 2023 with much higher expectations, saying several times this offseason that his goal for the club was to make the playoffs. That goal is more achievable now than it was before the season, as the Orioles’ 33-18 record is the second-best in the major leagues — a position they’ve held for most of May.
But whether the Orioles overachieving this year will motivate Elias to push more chips to the center at this year’s Aug. 1 deadline remains to be seen.
“We’re thinking about the trade deadline. We’re aware of the standings right now. We’re aware of what we view our talent level to be. It’s all positive stuff,” Elias said before Friday’s game. “But it’s over two months away. It depends so much on other teams’ records and what their strategies are. I can’t tell what it’s gonna look like. We’re certainly doing the work in the warehouse to prepare for a number of different scenarios.
“So much can change on our end — I hope it doesn’t change on our end, and I don’t think it will. But we’ll see what happens around the league and where we’re at in the standings. And I just trust that the front office is doing what it should be doing to prepare for the trade deadline and we’re preparing to be buyers.”
After he traded away Mancini and López, Elias recognized that the moves amounted to a calculated “step back” for a team that was above .500 and just 1 1/2 games out of a playoff spot.
“It’s my job to manage the organization as a whole from top to bottom,” Elias said in August. “At times, there are opportunities that feel like a step back. But in the big picture, it’s a step forward for the entire organization.”
Shortly after that deadline is when Elias made his “liftoff from here” comment. The Orioles didn’t end up spending on a marquee free agent in the winter, instead electing to make marginal additions to bring in veterans Kyle Gibson, Adam Frazier, James McCann, Cole Irvin and Mychal Givens. But Baltimore’s play in 2023 (save for Friday night’s 12-2 drubbing at the hands of the Texas Rangers) has reflected the liftoff Elias spoke of.
At 33-18, the Orioles are solidly in second place in the American League East with a four-game lead over the third-place New York Yankees, appearing to have turned the corner against their division foes by winning four straight series against them.
Entering the season, FanGraphs gave the Orioles just a 10.4% chance to make the playoffs — the lowest among AL East teams. Before Friday’s loss, the website’s projections had Baltimore’s postseason odds at 50.6%.
“We’re looking at the standings every day. It’s not just the team record, but there are individual players here that their outlook is kind of ticking up, and that’s great,” Elias said. “Certainly the guys in the dugout and in the clubhouse, they take it one game at a time. But the front office, we plan. We’re looking at scenarios where our record kind of stays like it is now, and as I’ve said all winter, I think one way or another we’re gonna be right in the thick of things. We’re planning for all that.”
Despite their success, the Orioles are far from a perfect team. Baltimore has rarely been blown out (again, excluding Friday night), but it’s also infrequently ran away with lopsided wins — a factor that’s led to its plus-35 run differential that ranks seventh in the majors and equates to an expected win total of four fewer than what they sport now. After ranking in the top five in most offensive categories through April, the bats haven’t been as hot in May, and the rotation’s 4.97 ERA is fourth-worst in the AL. And the Orioles lack a bona fide slugger in the middle of their batting order as well as a No. 1 starting pitcher — evidence of the organization’s recent reluctance to spend money, as Baltimore has the second-lowest payroll in the majors at $60.8 million.
While adding to the lineup or the bullpen are certainly possibilities, the need for a top-line starting pitcher is perhaps the club’s greatest. Acquiring one at the deadline would cost a pretty penny, though, as Elias would have to dip into his top-ranked farm system to get a pitcher worthy of starting playoff games.
Until Friday, it was thought that left-hander John Means could serve that role in a different way. Recovering from Tommy John elbow reconstruction surgery, Means was expected to return in July after tearing his ulnar collateral ligament last April. He was the Orioles’ opening day starter in 2021 and 2022, and while he isn’t necessarily a dominant starter, he’s displayed the consistency and ceiling that would make a healthy version of himself valuable for the Orioles’ rotation.
However, Elias revealed Friday that Means won’t be returning in July because of a setback, ending the possibility that his midseason addition could be a deadline-esque boost to the rotation. Means was “flying along” his recovery, Elias said, but the left-hander recently suffered a strained teres major muscle in the scapula area of his upper back that will delay his return. Elias said the goal is still for Means to pitch for the Orioles in 2023.
Means’ injury could change Elias’ strategy, but that’s just one of hundreds of factors impacting MLB teams as the deadline approaches. With more teams in the hunt in MLB’s expanded 12-team playoff field, Elias said it’s unclear what the trade deadline “landscape” will look like in July.
“We’re definitely preparing all types of scenarios, and they’re buy scenarios,” Elias said. “I think the deadline, so much of it that’s murky with me is, who’re the sellers going to be? What are other teams going to try to do? What are the standings going to look like? These extra playoff spots seem to have really changed the landscape and dynamic and the balanced schedule, and you just see some weird stuff going on in each division compared to one another. So it’s really not clear what that’s going to look like.
“We’re just trying to get a clearer sense of the type of players that might provide the biggest impact for us, where those players might be coming from, and trying to gauge any likelihood that any of these players might be on the market.”
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