While the Baltimore Orioles have made moves this offseason, they have still been few and far between, not even to mention how questionable they have been.
The club has added Tyler O’Neill, an oft-injured outfielder on a three-year, $49.5 million deal, Gary Sanchez, a catcher entering his age-33 campaign who has been inconsistent offensively, to say the least, since 2020, and Tomoyuki Sugano, a 35-year-old pitcher who has never set foot on a MLB field.
The one signing they have made that has made sense was adding Charlie Morton to their rotation depth. While Morton is entering his age-41 season, his last four years have been solid with the Atlanta Braves seeing the veteran pitch to a 3.87 ERA across 686 1/3 innings in 124 starts, posting for 30 or more games in each.
Another team in MLB has gone in the opposite direction of the Orioles, spending freely and often on the biggest of names, the Los Angeles Dodgers.
After winning the 2024 World Series, the Dodgers have gotten a taste for victory and want more, and their spending spree has drawn the ire of fans across the nation, with many claiming the team is ruining the sport.
While the excessive deferrals through a loophole in the CBA are not something that should be allowed to continue with the next CBA, Baltimore has some share of the blame for Los Angeles’s spending spree by being reluctant to spend any money of their own.
“It’s not as if the Orioles have totally sat out free agency,” writes Zachary D. Rymer in a recent article for Bleacher Report. “A little more than half of their $96 million splurge went just to Tyler O’Neill, who inked a three-year, $49.5 million deal in December. Charlie Morton, Tomoyuki Sugano and Andrew Kittredge have also gotten eight-figure sums from Baltimore.”
“It is nonetheless fair for Orioles fans to want more right now, and not just because the franchise has spent the past six seasons among the dregs of MLB for payroll. This is the Orioles’ first offseason under new owner David Rubenstein, whose net worth is estimated at $4.1 billion. The only acceptable explanation for his lack of bigger spending is that he’s saving it for contract extensions, but none of those have materialized either.”
The new principal owner David Rubenstein is far from the one who should be shouldering any blame, as he made it clear earlier in the offseason that he is willing to spend to win.
Mike Elias, on the other hand, has shown a complete lack of urgency to spend someone else’s money and make this team a bigger contender in the American League East.
As it stands, the Orioles are mostly stagnant in all facets of the game while other contenders have spent big money this winter to improve.
While it is not entirely Baltimore’s fault that the Dodgers have far surpassed any previous single-season payroll records, their lack of spending when capable has certainly been one catalyst.