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Even if it seems almost impossible to ponder a world in which proven baseball failure Mike Elias does not screw up the entire offseason, we have to consider it.
Yes, I am sick of always being infinitely better at discerning his rosters needs and warts than he is. I am sick of knowing more about how the pieces fit and don’t fit and what it will require to truly be a contender. It’s boring. I've been over it since the 2023 trade deadline (the charlatan and overmatched Skipper 1.0 should have been fired after that season).
So while I know that I will be more right about what this franchise truly is and what it badly needs – just a guy reporting from the dining room table and doing a digital show from his basement – than they could ever be, we do need to keep putting them on notice that we know what could be accomplished in the hot stove while not shattering last year’s payroll. And we do know what these mega-rich investors could afford, and we know what a real 2027 Orioles lineup with a chance of contending would look like.
Liftoff was allegedly May 2022 … Let’s get real about what April 2027 should encompass:
They will never get a true, throwback leadoff guy, and Steven Kwan would be ideal but he might actually get paid by the Guardians or they could play it out with him in the final year of his deal. I am asking Elias to do some real stuff a little further down this exercise so we will go from within here.
Did you know that Alexander had a .380 OBP vs right-handers last year? Hmm. Reverse on base splits. Can he focus on that, we know there is some thump in there vs lefties and Elias really wants this trade to look like a steal and they refused to embrace this guy enough last year when he was a top 10 hitter in MLB from April 20 til he got hit in the hand right before the All-Star break.
Maybe the three spot would be ideal but this is against a hypothetical righty starter (most of them are) and this is going to be at worst probably the second-best on base game on the team. Trying to stagger righties and lefties. But if we get real about the No. 3 and No. 4 spots, people are going to have to pitch to him here. Guess who led the 2026 O’s in runs scored (look at me worried about the one stat that truly determines games) by a landslide with 100?
Bye-bye Gunnar. Both have two years of control. The injuries give me some pause but this is a steal at $15M a year and let the Twins try to fix Henderson. Will it take adding a prospect? Fine, do it. As a 10-5 guy, he can veto trades and he’s done it in the past when he had a limited no-trade and you have to incentivize the contract to get it done.
This is the one real spend we are asking for in free agency. If that too much to ask? Jared Banner is a real hotshot MLB executive – when he isn’t too busy sucking up to Griggs in such a shameless and pathetic manner - and he really wants you to believe that; hence the performance art at the press conference. Okay big guy - go get someone we're all sure you had everything to do with luring from Japan to the Cubs in the first place (Banner is the guy behind Pete Crow-Armstrong becoming an MVP, also ; you don't even have to ask him, he'll just tell you).
Let’s see you do something besides talk a big game. Gotta earn your stripes around here, Assistant GM No. 4. He also wasn't the first choice at GM, because of course Elias got turned down.
He should play first base at least 25-30 times next season – sorry Pete – and plenty of DH days too. The power bat is the carrying trait and it is special and it needs to be honed and the pocket puppet skipper needs to build some kind of a bridge to this 22-year old who did things at age 21 with his slug that almost no catcher of that age has done in the history of the game before he collapsed as they miss-managed his role and health all season.
Let’s keep him away from the hot corner to try to get 100 games in the field out of him. He should be special at second base. Le’s take pressure off the bat by not trying to force him into the top of the lineup every night the way Elias did with Henderson and Adley Rutschman to hasten their demise in a franchise that’s very brand is Massive Player Development Failures.
Yeah, even against a hypothetic righty Opening Day. Let’s try to empower and build guys up and give them a runway once they start showing progress in a particular way rather than default to the supercomputer 9999 times out of 10000. Get behind him and give him a chance. Nobody did more damage against LHP than him in MLB and he made strides against righties in the second half.
If the Rays don’t pick up the $3.1M option on Walls, that’s the guy. This team needs a spine unless Elias is going to hand out $250M in free-agent starter contracts. They need a real glove-first shortstop. Walls can run and is a switch hitter. Ortiz is getting marginalized in Milwaukee because they aren’t run by idiots and have an incredible farm system loaded with impact IF. They can market him as a starting SS elsewhere and Elias drafted him in 2019 and he played with Westburg in the minors. That’s a real double-play tandem.
Just get on base and work counts and hit 30 doubles and catch the ball. That’s it. I am putting him at nine because there is real OBP potential here and he, unlike almost everyone else coming through Elias’s vaunted minor-league structure, knows how to steal a base and time a pitcher and slide. We can debate the 8/9 order here and whether to flip flop.
If they follow my plan and get Henderson and Jackson Holliday (they will never fix him; they can always break him further) and Colton Cowser (ditto) out of here, the need for another starting-ish lefty bat is huge. They really need to sort out the Christian Encarnacion-Strand, Tyler O’Neill, Jeremiah Jackson vortex. Keeping a RH bat like Rece Hinds around makes no sense to me (so of course they did it!), and even if Leody Taveras is the 4th OF as a switch hitter they need an utility IF bat from the left side and the fact that Jonah Heim is a switch hitter is another reason he really appeals to me as the guy to pair with Basallo.
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