For the Orioles, baseball's new CBA means their rebuild rolls on – whether they plan on getting good, or having it last forever
Whether you believe this Orioles rebuild is about to turn a corner or will never end on purpose, Thursday's CBA agreement leaves both paths wide open
Mercifully, Thursday afternoon’s deal between MLB and the players union on a new collective bargaining agreement meant the lockout was lifted, and what should have been months worth of an Orioles offseason will be crammed into days.
They have signings and trades to consider, they have a major league camp to pull together by next week, and they have all the ramifications of the new CBA on their rebuilding project to consider.
Or do they?
On the first few fronts, certainly. They probably need some infielders, definitely need to sign a catcher they can credibly start on Opening Day if it won’t be Adley Rutschman doing so, and could think they need starting pitching even if I’d rather they just didn’t bother.
As for what the CBA will do to impact their rebuild, it seems like the only answer is not much – no matter where in the process one estimates they are.
Whether you’re the most optimistic Orioles rebuild advocate or believe it’s just a cover for penny-pinching that will end up with the team sold or moving, Thursday’s outcome isn’t going to change the trajectory of either.
There was a time when that wasn’t the case. The union’s initial intention to revamp the game’s economic system and force spending in small markets while curbing tanking had the potential to really shake things up for teams like the Orioles. What ultimately happened, at least with details available now, doesn’t.
There was a point of view at the outset of the lockout (mostly held by me) that their spending on Rougned Odor and Jordan Lyles signaled they were at least ready to try to get better, especially if they were forced to. But honestly, where they are in this cycle means that should be the case anyway.
This summer is probably overly optimistic in terms of when they’ll arrive at and turn the proverbial corner, but it’s not as blatantly clear that they’ll be bad like in years past.
In Cedric Mullins, Trey Mancini, Ryan Mountcastle, Austin Hays, and Anthony Santander, there’s the makings of a decent lineup. Add Rutschman to the mix whenever that happens, bake in the improvements that should come under new co-hitting coaches Ryan Fuller and Matt Borgschulte, and get literally any production from the infield, and it’s hard to imagine the offense not being the best it has been in years.
The pitching, behind John Means and possibly Lyles, is the issue. When isn’t it with the Orioles? But now, it feels like they at least know what the solution will be. Grayson Rodriguez and DL Hall should be in the rotation by midseason, and whichever homegrown starters they have who can’t hack it will improve the bullpen. They know they’re going to have to trade for the kind of reliable starting pitching they’ll need beyond that. They probably even know who from the massive wave of hitting prospects they have who they’ll be willing to dangle in trades.
So even if the worst-case scenario for 2022 plays out and they’re terrible again, how much is it going to matter? At every position on the field, there’s more than one up-and-coming hitter that this front office drafted, developed, and deeply believes in.
They’re going to pick first again in the July draft and have the largest bonus pool to maximize the value of their overall class – something they’ve shown the ability to do very well. Who really cares if there’s a draft lottery and they’re not eligible for the top pick in 2023 given what they’ve already built? That’s really the only immediate consequence that’s emerged in the details of the new CBA.
Aspects like expanded playoffs, and next year’s reported schedule adjustment that will have teams play fewer in-division games, could help them. There’s probably not a lot of time for reflection in the Orioles’ front office right now, but maybe if there were, they’d be feeling pretty good about how this turned out.
Maybe they would for more cynical reasons, too because it really doesn’t change the broad strokes of how the sport operates. After all, both publicly and privately, Orioles officials used the old CBA for cover for the less desirable parts of this rebuild–the major league’ team’s struggles. Mike Elias cited the CBA and the arbitration process as a reason for non-tendering Hanser Alberto after the 2020 season, and other club officials have noted the structure of the agreement and the incentives for not fielding a competitive team in the darkest on-field moments of the last few years.
They weren’t wrong by the letter of the law, and if they want to continue on that path, nothing is really stopping them.
When Rutschman debuts will be the most significant short-term ramification on that. They can either look at a player they believe is truly special and think he’ll probably be atop the Rookie of the Year voting no matter when they call him up, thus giving him a full year of service time and negating the extra year of club control they could get by keeping him in the minors for a few weeks, and spare themselves the ignominy of flaunting the new rules by having him start on Opening Day.
They can also start him in the minors and basically force Rutschman to perform at a level to make that moot, leaving open whatever small possibility there is that he doesn’t earn that full year of service time anyway and he reaches free agency a year later.
Truthfully, it feels like this decision won’t be a huge bellwether of the organization’s trajectory under this new CBA. But in a macro sense, as someone who believed they’d be happy to have Rutschman on their Opening Day roster absent a reason to leave him off it, this deal doesn’t ultimately give a reason to change behavior on this or any other front.
It also doesn’t really remove the possibility that the Orioles can tout their farm system’s progress from one side of their mouth and lament their competitive disadvantages from the other and just never get better. They might not draft in the top-five every year, but they’d still draft high enough and have a large enough bonus pool to bring in impact players.
They’d still get revenue sharing from those big-market teams, the removal of which the union backed off from in this process. They’ll still collect millions from national television contracts – which the league seems to be signing by the day. They’ll benefit from new revenue streams like jersey and helmet advertising. Young, homegrown players will still be far cheaper and thus more valuable than veteran major leaguers and free agents.
That will happen whether they’re trying to win or not, and while the union made laudable gains in getting young players more money during these negotiations, the deal stops short of financially discouraging a team like the Orioles from putting out a diminished product by exclusively fielding them.
No one needs to have gotten this far here to know the fascination, bordering on admiration, that exists in this space for the types of and amount of progress the Orioles have made in overhauling every corner of baseball operations and amassing the kind of potential energy this rebuild has.
It’s also true that no matter how much they spend on infrastructure, scouting, and player development, it’s a fraction of what it would cost to pay quality major league players and make the Orioles better.
The decade-long dispute over the Washington Nationals’ broadcasts fees where it comes to MASN, as well as years of runaway spending on the major league product, have financial matters at the top-of-mind of Orioles ownership. Its impacts are felt for fans in a lot of areas, and the mere possibility that Opening Day from Tampa’s Tropicana Field may be broadcast from Camden Yards only underlines that.
If the pipe dream of this rebuild is the Houston Astros, who drafted and developed a star-studded core and supplemented it with trades to win a World Series (sans the cheating, of course), then the doomsday scenario is a team like the Pittsburgh Pirates.
Theirs and the Orioles’ most recent peaks coincided. Pittsburgh, though, tore it down sooner and are stuck in a cycle of constant rebuilding where they develop good players and then have to trade them because the team still isn’t good enough. They’re constantly chopping down the proverbial forest, saying it’s OK because they’re planting saplings, and pretending there’s no difference.
This CBA at least leaves that in play in Baltimore. I’m not sure whether it’s my brain, or gut, or even heart that is propelling the feeling that it won’t be how things go here, at least if baseball operations gets its way. They possess the unique privilege of wholly believing they’re doing this the best possible way and having no internal resistance whatsoever in executing that vision.
They’re doing it this way because of impediments they readily admit to – the division, the market size, etc. Those will be true, succeed or fail, and by any gauge what the Orioles have done to set themselves up to be better for years to come makes success a real possibility. It would be a shame to go from using the CBA as a shield in its old form to using it to undercut all that progress in its new one.
Is there a real possibility the O’s broadcast teams will be home for road games? And not because of the pandemic. That can’t be a good look.
If they can’t afford to send, what, 6 people on road trips to broadcast the game, sell the team already. And I’m not a believer that this rebuild is a cover for turning some kind of profit. But man, you can’t send Kevin and Big Ben to the trop?