SARASOTA, Fla. — If 2022 was when they laid the foundation and 2023 was when they exceeded expectations, then 2024 is the year the Orioles embrace them.
On the heels of winning the American League East with a 101-win season, the Orioles no longer feel like an up-and-coming team. They’ve already arrived. Though last year’s campaign ended in a sweep at the hands of the World Series champion Texas Rangers in the AL Division Series, confidence isn’t hard to come by in Baltimore’s clubhouse this spring.
“I feel like guys came in ready to go from day one,” catcher Adley Rutschman said. “Guys were showing up early. It was cool to see. Everyone seems a little bit more confident. Everyone knows what we’re trying to do.”
The ALDS sweep was a humbling experience for the Orioles’ young core. Rutschman, one of many homegrown stars making his first playoff appearance, went 1-for-12 at the plate. Right-handed pitchers Grayson Rodriguez and Dean Kremer didn’t make it past the second inning of their respective starts. The Orioles put up a .689 OPS on offense and their pitchers finished with a 7.27 ERA.
But that team wasn’t supposed to make it as far as it did. The Orioles took the league by surprise with their dominant regular season, and while they would’ve liked to make a deeper postseason run, their window of contention is wide-open with the strong stable of ascending talent they’ve assembled. Now, the expectations are real.
“I see us playing as a team that’s expecting to win, that’s expecting to play well,” manager Brandon Hyde said. “That’s from just experience, a lot of guys just having an extra year of experience has been really helpful. Some of the younger guys are more comfortable in the big leagues now. So, I just see guys who are more comfortable.”
Repeating as AL East champions is no given. The New York Yankees went all in on contending in 2024 by trading for four-time Silver Slugger Award winner Juan Soto, though reigning AL Cy Young Award winner Gerrit Cole is expected to miss 10-12 weeks with an elbow injury. The Tampa Bay Rays and Toronto Blue Jays both reached the playoffs as wild-card teams last season. Even the Boston Red Sox, widely projected to finish last in the division, have over a 25% chance to make the postseason, according to FanGraphs.
Yet the Orioles know they have a roster as deep as any team in the AL, and they have the hardware to back it up. Rutschman and infielder Gunnar Henderson both won Silver Slugger Awards last season. Henderson was named AL Rookie of the Year. Newly acquired starting pitcher Corbin Burnes is a former NL Cy Young Award winner. Outfielder Austin Hays and reliever Yennier Cano were among the team’s 2023 All-Stars.
“I think you see a lot of similarities when the team had a lot of success here when I first got called up” in 2017, outfielder Austin Hays said.
“Everywhere I looked in the locker room, it was All-Star, Silver Slugger. I was starstruck when I walked into this clubhouse and after this last season, you’re starting to see a lot of guys now with top-three finishers in Gold Gloves, we got Silver Slugger winners, Rookie of the Years, All-Stars that are guys that are tops in their position. So, maybe not quite there yet but you can see that it has transitioned back into that where there’s just top-tier players at multiple positions on the diamond.”
While fans were thrilled just to see the Orioles become competitive again in 2023, a season in which the club doesn’t advance deeper into the playoffs will be considered a disappointment. The front office showed how much it believes in this year’s roster with the Burnes trade, in which executive vice president and general manager Mike Elias sacrificed two controllable prospects and a first-round draft pick for a player who might leave next winter.
It’s not necessarily World Series or bust; the Orioles are built to contend for a long time. However, even the most well-constructed rosters don’t always get as many shots at winning a championship as they thought they would when their team first broke out. The time is now for the Orioles to test the limits of their potential.
“Last year, we played really well for the second half the year before so I think that got us a lot of confidence and then I think there was a lot of people that were thinking that we were going to regress so I think that was motivating for a lot of our players and now, I think we played really well last year so I think our guys have even more confidence,” Hyde said. “That’s how I see us playing right now.”