Photo by Jim McIsaac/Getty Images
The Baby Birds zoomed up to 101 wins and the division crown in 2023, and their nest of prospects only continues to grow.
For almost a decade, the daunting AL East was dominated by the high-profile New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox, as well as the perennially savvy Tampa Bay Rays. In 2023, however, the division champion was none of those three teams; instead, it was the ascendant Baltimore Orioles.
The O’s had been a frequent contender under manager Buck Showalter and GM Dan Duquette, making the playoffs three times between 2012-16 (with an AL East crown in 2014). The core decayed though, and it soon became evident that the Baltimore front office was behind on the times. They bottomed out at 115 losses in 2018, leading to Showalter and Duquette’s dismissal. In their place stepped new skipper Brandon Hyde and GM Mike Elias.
Taking a page from his last gig in Houston, Elias stripped down the roster, modernized the infrastructure of the farm system in an effort to rebuild it, and with the, er, “help” of a few more ugly seasons at the big-league level, nabbed some very high draft picks. So even though Baltimore lost 110 games in 2021 as well, the consensus was that their minor-league core would have them on the rise.
After top 2019 pick Adley Rutschman led them to a respectable 2022 rebound at over .500, that aforementioned core really exploded last year. Gunnar Henderson won AL Rookie of the Year, Rutschman made his first All-Star start behind the plate, Kyle Bradish finished fourth in AL Cy Young voting, and Grayson Rodriguez was brilliant with a 2.58 ERA and 2.76 FIP down the stretch following a mid-July return from Triple-A. Combine all that with a lockdown bullpen, surprise contributors like Royals castoff Ryan O’Hearn, and strong campaigns from Austin Hays and Anthony Santander, and you have Baltimore’s return to the AL East mountaintop with their first 100-win season in 43 years.
Despite all that fun, October was a dud for not just the O’s but the entire division. The stalwart Yankees and Red Sox both missed the playoffs, the frustrating Toronto Blue Jays managed the remarkable feat of losing to the Twins in postseason play, the 99-win Rays went two-and-out to Texas in the Wild Card Series, and those same soon-to-be champion Rangers steamrolled Baltimore in an ALDS sweep. Not a single AL East team won a playoff game.
So with a long offseason to reflect on these losses, which club has put itself in the best position to both win this powerhouse division and actually do something in October?
Notable additions and departures were limited to a maximum of five players for efficiency.
2023 season: 101-61 (AL East champions)
Notable additions: Corbin Burnes, Craig Kimbrel
Notable departures: Kyle Gibson, Adam Frazier, Aaron Hicks, DL Hall, Joey Ortiz
For a long time, it seemed like the O’s would simply stand pat after 2023, even with a starting rotation that could use improvements. Through the end of January, their lone real roster addition was embattled closer Craig Kimbrel, who will team up with Yennier Cano to fill the Félix Bautista-sized void at the end of ballgames as the big guy recovers from Tommy John surgery. Then on February 1st, Baltimore pulled the trigger on a huge addition: Corbin Burnes.
The 2021 NL Cy Young Award winner is only under team control for one year and cost Baltimore a couple very good young players in Hall and Ortiz. Burnes immediately gives them a no-doubt ace though, which will be all the more important early on since Bradish has had concerning elbow trouble in spring training and neither he nor John Means will be in the Opening Day rotation. Ortiz in particular was expendable because the Orioles’ cup runneth over with talented hitting prospects who are expected to impact 2024, including the consensus No. 1 in all of Major League Baseball, top 2022 draft pick Jackson Holliday (son of seven-time All-Star Matt).
As good as Burnes and Holliday are, the biggest long-term offseason development is the change in ownership. The Angelos family has had a difficult relationship with the City of Baltimore (and each other), especially over the past decade with failson John Angelos serving as the point person due to the declining health of his father, Peter. On January 31st, the Orioles announced that there was a deal in place for a group led by Baltimore-born billionaire David Rubenstein to purchase the team. The sale still needs to be approved by MLB and it remains to be seen how much Rubenstein will invest in the Orioles, but given how much the Angelos family has penny-pinched and embarrassed the organization for years now, Rubenstein’s arrival is a welcome development in the Charm City.
Expect the Orioles to be a playoff team in 2024. Although there are fair questions about their pitching beyond Burnes, the position-player pool is so loaded that they’re deep all over the depth chart.
2023 season: 78-84 (Last place)
Notable additions: Tyler O’Neill, Vaughn Grissom, Liam Hendriks, Lucas Giolito
Notable departures: Chris Sale, Justin Turner, Alex Verdugo, James Paxton, Adam Duvall
The 2018 Red Sox were one of the greatest teams in baseball history. They ran roughshod over the American League with 108 victories and steamrolled the Yankees, Astros, and Dodgers en route to their fourth World Series crown since breaking the Curse of the Bambino, the most of any MLB team in the 21st century. By now, 2018 almost feels as long ago as 2004 itself. Just Rafael Devers remains from that mighty club and Boston has finished in last place in three of the past four seasons while undergoing two regime changes. It’s hard to be optimistic that the final result will change much in 2024.
To be clear, this is not a moribund cellar-dwelling franchise in the same vein as, say, the Rockies and Athletics. FanGraphs has Boston projected to go 81-81, and PECOTA only has them a few games under .500. The likes of Devers, Triston Casas, Jarren Duran, the trade acquisition O’Neill, and a recently-extended pitcher Brayan Bello offer enough base-level competence that the Red Sox will win more than their fair share of games, especially against the dregs of the league. They have a lineup that plenty of managers would envy!
Despite general optimism about new front-office head Craig Breslow, there is significant frustration with ownership. Back in November, chairman Tom Werner infamously said that his team was going “full throttle” this offseason. Instead, they’ve cut payroll, subtracted useful contributors from the MLB roster, and have continued to generally ignore their problems on the mound—much to their superstar’s chagrin. Losing their one major rotation addition in Lucas Giolito is bad luck, to be sure, but the ballclub clearly needed more pitching help even before Giolito’s elbow started barking. One can’t blame manager Alex Cora for already thinking about a possible future away from Boston.
Maybe if the hitters really carry the torch and the men on the bump at Fenway have some surprises in store, the Red Sox can catch their foes off guard and sneak into the Wild Card picture. At the moment, it’s looking like another listless, middling summer in Beantown.
2023 season: 82-80 (4th place)
Notable additions: Juan Soto, Marcus Stroman, Alex Verdugo, Trent Grisham
Notable departures: Michael King, Luis Severino, Wandy Peralta, Isiah Kiner-Falefa, Domingo Germán
The Yankees’ current streak of 31 consecutive winning seasons is the second-longest in MLB history behind … themselves (of course). 2023 might have extended it, but it was also New York’s worst campaign since 1992, the year before their run began. They just barely finished over .500 in spite of Gerrit Cole winning the AL Cy Young Award and Aaron Judge somehow producing another Mickey Mantle-esque season at the plate. The problem was that Judge missed almost two months after a nasty toe injury suffered in a collision with concrete on the Dodger Stadium bullpen fence, and the Yankees’ lineup was exposed for its age, fragility, and awful depth. Only the Tigers and White Sox had a worse OPS+ among AL clubs than the so-called Bronx Bombers’ 91 in 2023.
If the Yankees were a team in need of a spark to bring it back to life, then Soto is the AED. The Padres wanted to restructure their payroll, so they put the 25-year-old wunderkind on the trade market, and the Yankees paid the piper to get a powerful, patient lefty to pair with Judge.
It’s a big roll of the dice since Soto will be a free agent after 2024. Still, without a slam-dunk superstar available on the market this winter, it’s a gamble that the Yankees had to make with Cole and Judge still in their primes. Giancarlo Stanton can’t hit as well as he once did, and No. 99 needed more support in the batting order beyond the merely-solid Gleyber Torres. The former division rival Verdugo and defensive whiz Grisham should also help raise the floor for an outfield that saw far too much of Jake Bauers, Billy McKinney, and the disappointing Oswaldo Cabrera last year.
The flip side is that acquiring Soto drained a sizeable chunk of MLB pitching depth. King excelled after being bumped to the rotation deep in the second half, Drew Thorpe was a Top-100 prospect getting closer to The Show, and one of Jhony Brito or Randy Vásquez would probably make the current rotation as it stands. That’s because the Yankees just saw an injury to their most indispensable arm: Cole. While the game’s best pitcher seems to have avoided Tommy John surgery (for now), he’ll still likely miss at least two months.
Unless there’s a last-second Jordan Montgomery move in the offing, free-agent addition Marcus Stroman will have to team up with 2023 busts Carlos Rodón and Nestor Cortes to keep the pitching staff afloat in the meantime. If they can’t, or if Cole’s injury turns out to be worse, then even Soto and Judge—who’s had his own scare this spring—are going to have their work cut out for them carrying this Yankees team back to October.
2023 season: 99-63 (2nd place, Wild Card)
Notable additions: Ryan Pepiot, Amed Rosario, José Caballero, Phil Maton, Naoyuki Uwasawa
Notable departures: Tyler Glasnow, Manuel Margot, Robert Stephenson, Luke Raley, Jake Diekman
It’s easy to forget, but the Rays actually had a brief fallow period from 2014-17 that saw losing records for four years in a row. In the long-term, that’s been proven to be a blip on the radar for their run of success dating back to the pennant-winning 2008 that first put Tampa Bay on the map. More recently, since the start of 2018, only the Astros have more wins than the Rays, who have done so without ever posting a $100 million payroll.
This achievement lies entirely on Tampa Bay’s baseball operations department; ownership has made investments there, albeit rarely in the team itself. So the churn continues. Cleveland castoff Yandy Díaz is now a batting champion and the feared slugger that his muscles always indicated he could be.
No-name additions Harold Ramírez and Isaac Paredes each posted an OPS+ of at least 125 in 2023. An elusive eight-figure free-agent contract for a guy who combined to make 31 so-so starts between 2021-22 turned out to be brilliant when Zach Eflin became a fringe Cy Young contender. There is a Delmon Young Trade Tree website for a reason. It will continue to grow, as Glasnow’s departure has brought Pepiot and Jonny DeLuca to the organization, just as Glasnow came from Chris Archer and Archer came from Matt Garza.
But to paraphrase Jesse from Breaking Bad, can they keep getting away with it? Glasnow is gone and Tommy John surgery in August for burgeoning ace Shane McClanahan will keep him out for the vast majority of 2024, if not all of it. Jeffrey Springs went under the knife in early 2023 as well and is still rehabbing. Josh Lowe will start the year on the IL with an oblique injury and DeLuca was removed from Opening Day contention due to a broken hand. And though this is nothing the Rays could have foreseen, former face of the franchise Wander Franco might never play an MLB game again due to his own horrific actions.
For the 2024 Rays though, any of trio of Díaz, Paredes, and the ever-exuberant Randy Arozarena can carry them on a given night, elite prospect Junior Caminero could be an immediate impact player whenever Tampa Bay recalls him, and their pitching factory is nothing if not remarkable. Zack Littell went from journeyman waiver claim to a 1.041 WHIP in 14 starts down the stretch. It’s best to assume that the Rays will just Figure It Out until they prove they can’t.
2023 season: 89-73 (3rd place, Wild Card)
Notable additions: Justin Turner, Joey Votto, Yariel Rodríguez, Isiah Kiner-Falefa, Daniel Vogelbach
Notable departures: Matt Chapman, Hyun Jin Ryu, Jordan Hicks, Whit Merrifield, Brandon Belt
Just imagine how much better the Blue Jays’ offseason would have looked if “Shohei Ohtani” was listed among “Notable additions.” They were so close. Even with all the wacky flight rumors, Toronto was reportedly “right there” with LA in terms of Ohtani contract scope; they were just unfortunate enough to have the MVP decide to stay in California.
The Jays deserve some sympathy for how that all transpired. They deserve very little for what they’ve done to augment the Vladimir Guerrero Jr./Bo Bichette core. They brought back Kevin Kiermaier, but Chapman and the still-available Belt combined for 5.8 fWAR in 985 plate appearances, and they both walked out the door. The 15-year veteran Turner is nearing 40 but might offset the loss of Belt at DH, as could Vogelbach or Votto. The latter made less of an impact in his final season with the Reds last year but is giving it one more shot at age 40 with his home country.
Chapman, however, is being replaced by Kiner-Falefa, which is a staggering step down, and even though Toronto eked into a Wild Card spot last year, John Schneider’s club is going to need serious bounce-backs from George Springer, Alejandro Kirk, and even Guerrero to feel comfortable about the team’s 2024 chances. For Vladito in particular, 26 homers and a 117 OPS+ from first base isn’t bad per se, but it was a dip from his excellent 2022, which itself wasn’t nearly as dominant as when he finished runner-up to Ohtani for AL MVP in 2021. They need more.
The pitching staff is its own tension convention. Ace and AL strikeout leader Kevin Gausman will likely miss Opening Day with shoulder fatigue. 2022 All-Star Alek Manoah is coming off a year on the complete opposite side of the spectrum and his shoulder is ailing, too. The supporting staff here is at least better than the Yankees sans Cole, as each of José Berríos, Yusei Kikuchi, and Chris Bassitt were commendable in 2023. Cuban pitcher-turned-NPB standout Yariel Rodriguez is determined to make himself a savvy pickup as well.
Toronto hasn’t made a World Series since Joe Carter touched ‘em all in ‘93, and they haven’t won a single playoff game since the mid-2010s club led by José Bautista. While that doesn’t feel that long ago, they’re 0-6 in three separate Wild Card Series and Joey Bats has been gone long enough that he’s now on the Jays’ Level of Excellence.
Bichette and Vladito are also two years away from free agency. Tick-tock.
