Louis to Houston, and oversaw amateur scouting in his first role with the Astros. To that end, the most important acquisition of the offseason is Elias, who oversaw the Astros tear-down and rebuild.Įlias is well-qualified to oversee the Baltimore rebuild, as he accompanied Jeff Luhnow from St. In 2019, we will continue to see the the steady ‘sell-sell-sell’ mantra of 2018. Obviously, the Orioles will not be competitive in the American League in quite some time, so their rebuild continues into 2019 (and 2020.and probably 2021). Elias’ first order of business was replacing veteran skipper Buck Showalter, and they landed former Cubs bench coach Brandon Hyde to take over the reigns in the clubhouse. With new General Manager Mike Elias taking over for Dan Duquette, the former Astros front-office executive has his work cut out for him. Baltimore finished in last place in the American League East with a 47-115 record, eleven games worse than the second-to-worst Royals, and were basically out of the playoff race by Memorial Day. They were not only bad, but really, really bad. Too much of the basics of franchise-building were ignored in Baltimore for too long.The 2018 Orioles were bad. The team is a lot closer to the bleak wasteland the Astros occupied when Jeff Luhnow took over after the 2011 season than teams like the Brewers that required lighter resets. The Orioles are in the very, very early stages of a rebuild that will likely need to be one of the longer and more painful ones in resent memory if it is to bear fruit. I wouldn’t get upset about the relatively tame projections for prospects like Ryan Mountcastle and Yusniel Diaz. The team has had a knack for finding relievers who end up pitching better than their stuff suggests they will, and ZiPS largely sees the front half of the relief corps being surprisingly solid, though this will probably matter more for deadline trades than for the immediate future of the Orioles, with the possible exception of the wild-but-fascinating Tanner Scott, who hits the high 90s and seems a lot more familiar with where home plate rests than the natural Orioles comparison, Brad Pennington, did. One of the few 2019 bright spots in Baltimore’s ZiPS projection is the bullpen. Why? Before he was shut down with blisters, he was having a quietly solid second half, which coincided with increased usage of his splitter, his bread-and-butter pitch throughout his successes with the Rays. The question at this point is whether Bundy and Alex Cobb can be league-average enough to be traded, and while I’m down on Bundy from a ceiling perspective, I’m more optimistic about being able to answer that question with a “yes.” I think there’s a good chance Cobb can beat this projection. It strikes me as unlikely that he’s ever even half the pitcher the O’s hoped he would be his slider can still be very good, but too much of his repertoire is crushable. It’s kind of depressing, but unlike the departed Kevin Gausman, who has a few more miles per hour on the fastball and a splitter that is just filthy at times, I don’t think Dylan Bundy post-injuries really has the stuff left to be a viable breakout candidate. Sadly, I think the list of non-factors includes Trey Mancini, who feels a lot closer to Jim Traber than a Randy Milligan-esque surprise. My gut tells me that of the players in the graphic, only Mullins really has much of a chance to be a factor the next time the Orioles are good. It was disappointing how many at-bats the Orioles gave Caleb Joseph last year given how up-and-down Chance Sisco’s been if he’s ever going to succeed in the majors, he’s going to have to learn how to get through a slump, and that’s not going to happen against Triple-A pitchers. Cedric Mullins at least looks like he has some promise and Renato Nunez is fascinating in that it still feels like he could have a weird 30 homer-but-below-average-overall season. Probably the most humorous/interesting/sad projection is Chris Davis‘, who is essentially projected for a massive, three-WAR rebound, which will get him to…zero or at least close enough to zero to borrow its lawn mower. The short-term outlook for the Orioles is bleak. After all, this is a team that finished last in the American League in runs scored with Manny Machado for half a season, and even if Jonathan Schoop was disappointing and Adam Jones is in steep decline, they at least combined for an OPS above. Well, at least expectations have been tempered quite a bit.
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