The Orioles have finally made some headway in getting core players secured to contracts.
Unfortunately, only one, through eight years of Mike Elias’s Perpetual Rebuild is a position player. The only asset their entire international investment to this point has yielded, and a unique 21-year-old power profile playing the most challenging position in baseball yet someone Elias and his puppet skipper see to revel in trying to make an example of – Samuel Basallo. All he’s done is hit for more power than anyone of his age at his position in the history of MLB.
And Elias has now secured 40 percent of a rotation moving forward, with Shane Baz getting his contract extension not too long after being acquired from Tampa, and then Kyle Bradish joining him with a $95M deal last week An executive hellbent on not giving out any long-term deals, also made his first real free-agent signing this offseason in Pete Alonso.
So I suppose that’s progress, though its also horribly too little, too late to win anything with that first three years of draft picks (2019-2021) who are starting to run out of team control. And it also begs the question, who could be next?
Who should be next? How many realistic candidates are there?
There’s one who stands out to me.
Jordan Westburg, for all of his injury history and even with him dealing with elbow surgery now, is a perfect buy-low candidate for me. He is of significant import to this franchise and even with him out all season, given the dearth of other options and the way this roster is shaping up throughout the minors, Westburg is uniquely positioned.
Consider that no one else in this entire organization can play third base at an MLB level other than Blaze Alexander. Consider that they still don’t have a real reserve shortstop option to get Gunnar Henderson off his feet and Westburg could do that (certainly he could do that far better than Jackson Holliday).
Consider that Henderson, and his agent Scott Boras, will not be inclined whatsoever to think about selling off prime years of his career given how askew things have gone this season. And Boras has to know that he isn’t going to remotely have a chance to reset any market like he still might one day with Henderson, and Westburg surely knows how fleeting all of this could be with what he’s been through already.
Consider that there is not an infield position prospect of any distinction throughout this entire organization that Elias used to pat himself on the back for being so allegedly overflowing with talent. Consider that Holliday (another Boras guy!) might not be an everyday MLB player – this franchise gives no outward indication from his usage that suggests they really think he is – and he also might be somewhat position-less.
And Henderson only has two years of team control left and has regressed at an astonishing rate. And Westburg – when healthy – is a natural run producer and one of their young bats that does hit in the clutch (though sadly his on-base profile is as awful as most of Elias’s selections.
So of this entire eight year stage – including every level of the minors – there is no one who could play third, second, short in a pinch, and first base of any esteem who would be at a stage where an extension would make any sense except for Westburg (Alexander, under this current CBA, has ample control).
Given his inability to stay on the field, but his natural maturity and leadership among a cohort that seems to have been quite short of it, and the positions he plays and the fact he might be very inclined to any sort of bird of hand even before new labor rules are put in place, It’s hard for me to make a case any anyone else on this roster.
Most are too close to free agency to really entertain it. Most don’t really warrant it. Having one middle-of-the-line-up bat from those heady days of top organization rankings and all those top 100 prospect would be nice. Westburg is the only one of that group to have showed enough to merit it, albeit between stints on the Injured List.
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