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Hello, friends.
There are now 95 days remaining until Orioles Opening Day 2026. If this weekend is any indication, things are not going to be sleepy from now until Christmas or even from then until the new year. Does Mike Elias have another (perhaps the last) substantial move in him before the calendar turns?
A couple of days after the Shane Baz trade, in some ways I feel like I did after the Orioles signed Pete Alonso. I can’t believe that it happened! This is not something that Elias has done before now, making a big trade that included multiple players who might have been regarded among the team’s top 10 prospects in an aggressive deal to try to shore up one of the team’s weaknesses for seasons at a time.
He is serious about doing something different this year. Going out and getting Baz is of a much different character than settling for short-term signings of Tomoyuki Sugano and Charlie Morton. There is an upside here that not much of what he did last offseason had going for it. My efforts to talk myself into the Baz trade center largely around how much better he was on the road this past year (3.86 ERA), which will hopefully prove to be a more representative floor for his performance than his results from George Steinbrenner Field – a minor league stadium that won’t be in use in 2026 and won’t be Baz’s home park in any case.
Even so, I’d like to see the Orioles go in and aim for the top end of the free agent market. If they go out and get whoever they like the best between Framber Valdez, Ranger Suárez, and Tatsuya Imai, and then turn out to be right about that guy, that would set up a potentially pretty darn good rotation for the team. Crucially, they would be in a position to have much better backup plans than they did a year ago, too. I think there’s going to be some movement coming in the top end even as we slide towards Christmas and then the new year.
Orioles stuff you might have missed
If you can imagine this, everybody has still got a lot to say about Shane Baz!
You don’t have to look very far in the mainstream baseball media to find people who like Baz and what the Orioles are aiming for in this deal.
Birthdays and Orioles anniversaries
Today in 1995, the Orioles signed future Hall of Famer Roberto Alomar to a three-year contract. Alomar averaged about 4.2 bWAR per season of the contract. Two of those years were 1996 and 1997, great years for the franchise. Pretty good signing!
There are several former Orioles who were born on this day. They are: 2019-20 pitcher Asher Wojciechowski, 2012-13 catcher Taylor Teagarden, 2006 reliever LaTroy Hawkins, 1995 outfielder Andy Van Slyke, 1996 pitcher Roger McDowell, and 1977 outfielder Elliott Maddox. Today is Maddox’s 78th birthday, so an extra happy birthday to him.
Is today your birthday? Happy birthday to you! Your birthday buddies for today include: dog breeder Jack Russell (1795), actress Jane Fonda (1937), musician Frank Zappa (1940), actor Samuel L. Jackson (1948), tennis star Chris Evert (1954), and French president Emmanuel Macron (1977).
On this day in history…
In 1620, the pilgrims from the Mayflower came ashore in what is today Plymouth Rock, Massachusetts.
In 1879, the play A Doll’s House by Henrik Ibsen had its world premiere in Copenhagen.
In 1913, a new thing called the “word-cross,” designed by Arthur Wynne, was published in the New York World. This was the first published instance of what we now know as a crossword puzzle.
In 1988, all 259 passengers and crew of Pan Am Flight 103 and 11 people on the ground were killed when a bomb exploded in the plane and the wreckage crashed onto Lockerbie, Scotland.
And that’s the way it is in Birdland on December 21. Have a safe Sunday.