You could almost get your hopes up for something if you didn’t know any better.
Hello, friends.
The Division Series round of the postseason continues – well, three of the matchups, anyway. The Mets dropped the Phillies yesterday to advance to the NLCS. The Tigers moved themselves into a chance to take the Guardians out with a win today. Royals-Yankees could end today too, if Yankees, who took a 2-1 lead in the series yesterday, can follow up with a win today. Dodgers-Padres ended after I went to bed, but it looked good for the Dodgers the last I checked.
The great thing about being a hater is that if 29 teams aren’t going to win the World Series each year and 28 of them aren’t the Orioles, that’s 28 teams worth of joy when they are wiped out. I’m not going to spend one second rooting for the Yankees, but if the Royals lose today, with their season ending in front of their home crowd, won’t that be glorious for at least a fleeting series of moments? Yes. If the Yankees lose, and then lose on Saturday at home, that would also be glorious. I win either way.
More directly relevant to the Orioles GM Mike Elias appeared on a New York Post baseball podcast recently, and the enterprising Andy Kostka of The Baltimore Banner listened to the comments enough to transcribe an answer of Elias talking about the idea of giving out contract extensions to some of the team’s players:
On the NY Post “The Show” podcast, Orioles GM Mike Elias on contract extensions: “We very much love a lot of these players that we have and we will be making every responsible attempt to examine ways to keep them, if we think that’s in the best interest of building the team.” pic.twitter.com/dRwWBZpPqD
— Andy Kostka (@afkostka) October 9, 2024
This is a classic Elias remark. There’s just enough in there that you could maybe get excited about it. The fact that he leads in with a reference to the ownership group allowing them to run the franchise optimally is fun. That surely means spending money, right? But even that’s vague. We don’t know what Elias’s idea of optimally is.
When it comes to talking about the contract extensions, he sounds interested in making that happen. Yet if you really drill down into it, there’s just a lot of equivocating language. “we will be making every responsible attempt” comes down to not knowing what Elias believes is reasonable, and the same with how he finishes that same sentence, “if we think that’s in the best interest of building the team.”
The basics of the situation are unchanged. The most exciting extension candidate would be Gunnar Henderson. That’s not happening unless David Rubenstein decides to plow many Magna Cartas worth of guaranteed money into an offer that gets the usually-reluctant Scott Boras to say yes to it. After the second half of the season, maybe no one should even want to think about an Adley Rutschman extension. Though the other 20-year-old Jacksons in MLB this year – Chourio and Merrill – did very well for themselves, Holliday on the Orioles did not – and he’s a Boras client too even if he had done well.
With how August and September went without him, maybe the guy to try the hardest to lock up beyond his team controlled years is Jordan Westburg. Even he’s not going to be a free agent until after the 2029 season, at which point he’ll be 30. The idea of all of this is probably better than the reality of it. Kind of a fitting summary for the 2024 Orioles experience overall.
My final thought on this: The next time that Elias gives out multiple guaranteed years on any kind of contract to any player will be the first time. I am done with getting my hopes up that it’s going to happen until it happens. I believe him when he says that he’s been quietly exploring this stuff. I don’t think the fact that nothing has happened results from a lack of effort on the part of the Orioles front office. But trying hard with nothing to show for it is only worth so much.
Around the blogO’sphere
Stats and theories on Adley Rutschman’s poor second half (Steve Melewski)
The numbers were pretty bad and there’s no concrete reason for it. It should be on the list of possible worries for 2025 until it’s answered another way, but it’s not time for panic mode yet.
Second base was a problem for the Orioles in 2024 (The Baltimore Banner)
Orioles second basemen were 26th in MLB for OPS this season. It’s not what we were hoping or expecting.
The Orioles’ playoff run ended quickly. When will fans get their tickets refunded? (The Baltimore Sun)
If you bought tickets for games that did not end up being played, the refund is supposed to hit no later than October 25.
An appreciation: Cal Ripken Sr. (Baltimore Baseball)
Excerpted from recently-digitized interviews done a long time ago by veteran Baltimore scribe John Eisenberg.
Birthdays and Orioles anniversaries
In 1979 and 1996, the Orioles won playoff games. In 2012, 2014, and 2023, they lost.
Here’s a little thought experiment for you. Should Nick Vespi count as a current Oriole? He is not on the 40-man roster but remains in the organization after being designated for assignment and going unclaimed. In any case, it’s his 29th birthday today. The only other Oriole to ever be born on this day was 1956 one-gamer Gordie Sundin, whose sole major league appearance resulted in an infinite ERA.
Is today your birthday? Happy birthday to you! Your birthday buddies for today include: hydrogen discoverer Henry Cavendish (1731), opera composer Giuseppi Verdi (1813), actress Helen Hayes (1900), jazz pianist Thelonious Monk (1917), author Nora Roberts (1950), Van Halen vocalist David Lee Roth (1954), Halestorm vocalist Lzzy Hale (1983), and actress Rose McIver (1988).
On this day in history…
In 732, an outnumbered Frankish force led by Charles Martel defeated invaders from the Umayyad caliphate in the Battle of Tours, though the exact location in modern France is unknown. Different generations of historians have had differing opinions on the significance of the battle, but in the decades after the battle, the Carolingian Empire arose in France and the Umayyads, having failed to expand further, fell into decline.
In 1845, a naval school, known today as the United States Naval Academy, opened in Annapolis. Initially, there were 45 students. Today, that number is over 4,500.
In 1973, then-vice president and former governor of Maryland Spiro Agnew resigned from office following federal charges of tax evasion.
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And that’s the way it is on October 10. Have a safe Thursday.