Did the Orioles Do Enough Without Making a Big Splash?
Did the Baltimore Orioles accomplish enough at the trade deadline to make a real playoff push this season?
Just like that, the 2024 MLB trade deadline has come and gone. A week ago, there was all sorts of talk about which players the Orioles could be in on. Tarik Skubal, Garrett Crochet, and Mason Miller were thrown around in mock trade after mock trade.
At the end of the day, none of those players are Orioles. In fact, none of them were traded at all. Instead, Mike Elias stuck to his guns and held onto his prospects in a slightly reserved approach to the deadline.
If you are a buyer, two questions must be asked post-deadline: Are you a better team now than before the deadline, and how much better?
The Baltimore fan base had strong reactions to the trades the team executed this past week. The reaction to the Trevor Rogers trade in particular was quite visceral.
I am sure that Orioles fans were expecting a bigger splash than Rogers, who hasn’t been the same since 2021. However, at the end of the day, the Orioles did enough to strengthen the team for a playoff run.
MLB Trade Deadline: How the Orioles Got Better
Here is a look at every major league deal the Orioles executed in the days leading up to the trade deadline:
- RHP Zach Eflin sent to Baltimore from the Tampa Bay Rays for RHP Jackson Baumeister, OF Matthew Etzel, and UTL Mac Horvath
- RHP Seranthony Domínguez and OF Cristian Pache sent to Baltimore from the Philadelphia Phillies for OF Austin Hays
- LHP Trevor Rogers sent to Baltimore from the Miami Marlins for OF Kyle Stowers and INF Connor Norby
- OF Eloy Jiménez and cash sent to Baltimore from the Chicago White Sox for LHP Trey McGough
- LHP Gregory Soto sent to Baltimore from the Philadelphia Phillies for RHP Seth Johnson and RHP Moises Chace
- OF Austin Slater, INF Livan Soto, and cash sent to Baltimore from the Cincinnati Reds for a player to be named later
The obvious focal point of this deadline for the Orioles was to strengthen their pitching staff. They made moves to shore up the rotation while also adding significant depth to the bullpen.
Orioles Strengthen Their Rotation
Zach Eflin and Trevor Rogers will both slot right into the rotation for the Orioles. They are both improvements on the players that were previously occupying those spots in the rotation.
In the case of Eflin, we can say that he is going to step in for Albert Suárez and bump him into the bullpen.
Suárez has been an excellent find for the Orioles this year. His 3.62 ERA has provided the Orioles with stability while the team has navigated a number of injuries. With that said, in his last six starts, Suarez has a 6.28 ERA.
Eflin can step in and will be a significant improvement upon Suárez’s recent performances. At his best, he can pitch like a frontline starter, and at his worst, he is a really solid third starter. The move for Eflin elevated this team’s floor significantly.
Now let’s look at Rogers. He is stepping into the rotation as a replacement for the carousel that was Cade Povich and Chayce McDermott. Both Povich and McDermott will be MLB pitchers one day, but both appeared a little overmatched in the big leagues this season.
Combined, Povich and McDermott posted a 6.35 ERA on the season (McDermott only made one start). Those two are now replaced by Trevor Rogers, who has a 4.53 ERA this year.
With this trade, a theme started to present itself in the moves that Elias made. While Rogers has a 4.53 ERA on the season, which is not great, he has a 3.32 ERA in his last 11 starts. That is outstanding for the fifth starter in your rotation.
The expected stats say that Rogers is performing just as expected across the entirety of this season. However, during the aforementioned 11-start stretch, he has outperformed his expected stats by a significant amount. We might see him come back down to earth, but regardless, the Orioles upgraded the rotation.
Bullpen Upgrades
The Orioles made three significant additions to the bullpen at the deadline. They traded for Seranthony Domínguez and Gregory Soto from the Philadelphia Phillies. The third addition is Albert Suárez, who will move to the ‘pen after the O’s added two starting pitchers.
Suárez moving to the bullpen is exactly why the trade for Rogers should not be so heavily criticized. Elias essentially made a two-for-one deal to upgrade both the rotation and the bullpen. Suárez only has ten relief innings this year, but in those innings, he has a 0.90 ERA and a .401 OPS allowed. For comparison, he has a 4.03 ERA and a .757 OPS allowed as a starter.
Another addition to the bullpen is Domínguez, who fits the pattern I noted with regards to Rogers. In 41 appearances this season, Domínguez has thrown 39 innings to a 4.38 ERA. That does not exactly scream high-leverage reliever.
However, since May 1, he has made 29 appearances and thrown 28.2 innings to a 2.51 ERA. Domínguez had a rough start to the season that makes his overall numbers look bad. The reality is that he has been a very solid reliever for the vast majority of the season.
Soto is more of the same. He has posted an ERA just over 4.00 on the season, but since May 1, he has a 3.04 ERA. That includes a blowup in his last outing against the Yankees, in which he allowed three runs in an inning. If you eliminate that outing, he has a 2.10 ERA since the start of May.
I know that is cherry-picking a little, but the point stands that Soto is much improved since the first month of the season. He is also a lefty specialist with just a .602 OPS allowed. He fills a hole in the Orioles bullpen until Danny Coulombe returns.
Orioles Trade Deadline: Final Thoughts
One thing that Mike Elias and the Orioles front office took into consideration this deadline was next season. They deliberately targeted players that will not only help this year but next year as well.
Zach Eflin is under contract next season for $18M, which is a fair deal for a pitcher of his quality. With Kyle Bradish out for potentially the majority of next season, Eflin was a great get for Baltimore with regards to 2025.
Trevor Rogers is under team control through the 2026 season. Again, he was a great get considering that he is only 26 with some potential still left to unlock. Locking down an inexpensive fifth starter with higher potential for the next two and a half seasons was a very smart move by the front office.
Seranthony Domínguez has a club option for next season at $8M, and Gregory Soto has one year of arbitration left. If either of them impress, they can be brought back next season to help shore up the bullpen with the impending return of Félix Bautista.
It should also be noted, that all of the players the O’s moved were going to struggle to find a place on this team. Connor Norby was the only top-10 prospect moved, and he was close to graduation with no real fit on the team.
Norby and Kyle Stowers were both surprising names to see moved for a player of Rogers’ quality. Yet, at the end of the day, Norby’s best-case scenario in Baltimore was as a super-utility type player. Stowers was effectively the team’s fifth outfielder, bouncing constantly between Norfolk and Baltimore.
They are both good players who can be MLB regulars. It’s only right that they get an opportunity to do that somewhere else.
At the end of the day, the Orioles front office did enough at the trade deadline to get better. They have increased their floor significantly while also raising the ceiling of this team. It was wise to not move their top prospects in a market like this that would have undervalued them. Time will tell if they did enough to win it all.
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Growing up in Baltimore and Minneapolis/St. Paul, Harrison has been around baseball his whole life. He attended Northern State University as well as Oklahoma State University…