The Orioles are having a normal Winter Meetings experience. Here's what stood out back in Baltimore on Day Two.
Did Brandon Hyde tip the plans on the team's true intentions on the pitching side? Is there anything noteworthy about the comments from Rob Manfred and Scott Boras?
The first Winter Meetings of my time on the Orioles beat back in 2016 was a bit of a tough time.
It was right down the road in Washington, and without getting into details as to why other than I worked a newspaper with a budget, it involved the entire Orioles beat sharing a room and the junior member poorly utilizing some camping equipment to sleep on the floor of the paper’s one hotel room. People have enjoyed professional experiences more.
I only bring that up, from the comfort of a couch that would still be in boxes in my living room were I actually in San Diego, because it calls back to an era when the Orioles were kind of having a normal Winter Meetings experience.
The next year was all about which of their pending free agents would trade, then 2018 was about hiring a manager and starting the rebuild off right. But everything I’m seeing now–the questions to Mike Elias and Brandon Hyde about roster construction, who will play where, how they’ll improve–makes this seem like the stuff of normal offseasons.
All the other Winter Meetings under Elias have featured the same types of questions, but it was all mostly for show. They knew the Orioles weren’t planning anything meaningful, and they didn’t. But this week at least warrants a recognition that this is not that kind of offseason, and on a very basic level it’s good for the Orioles to be beyond that point.
As for the meat of the day, there wasn’t anything major that happened, but a few things are worth touching on. They include an interesting gulf in how Elias and Hyde discussed the team’s pursuit of pitching, the value of Rob Manfred’s assurances, and some Scott Boras intrigue. And some gratitude to be sleeping in a bed and not on a hotel floor tonight, even if it’s not in San Diego.