Baltimore Orioles: The Rebuild Begins Against New York Yankees

Opening Day has finally arrived! Later today, the Baltimore Orioles and New York Yankees will square off to begin the 2019 season in what is the first year of a long rebuild.

The offseason is finally behind us. Raise your hand you thought a 115-loss team would make just one “major” free agent signing, a starting pitcher who hasn’t pitched in the major leagues since 2017? Nate Karns won’t be the reason the Baltimore Orioles turn it around in 2019, but he does represent what the 2019 season is all about.

We won’t see Adam Jones, Manny Machado, or Jonathan Schoop in the lineup on Opening Day. Even Caleb Joseph has found a home elsewhere. The pitching staff is largely the same, but we’re talking about a pitching staff that was one of the worst in Major League Baseball.

Names like Rio Ruiz, Hanser Alberto, Jesus Sucre, Pedro Severino, and Richie Martin will find their names penciled into the lineup often for new manager Brandon Hyde, names which casual fans likely aren’t familiar with. Despite either watching, talking, reading, or writing about baseball just about every single day of the year, I can’t even say I was familiar with Hanser Alberto.

Back to Nate Karns for a second. Karns wasn’t signed to be an All-Star starting pitcher for the Baltimore Orioles. Ideally, he can find a role somewhere on this team, show he can become a serviceable major leaguer again, and hopefully draw the attention of another major league franchise.

The same goes for guys like Dylan Bundy, Andrew Cashner, and even Alex Cobb. It isn’t fun to think about, but we’re really hoping many of the top players on this roster find their spark again to help add to their potential trade value. Bullpen arms such as Mychal Givens, Richard Bleier, and Miguel Castro also find themselves in this category.

Many fans questioned why Chance Sisco, Austin Hays, Yusniel Diaz, and Anthony Santander aren’t on the major league roster for this opening series. Because Mike Elias, and those who he has surrounded himself with to help lead the Orioles through this rebuild, is doing what’s best for these young players and the future of the franchise.

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It’s easy to sit back and say “trust the process” or “being patient will pay off” but once the losses start to pile up, it will be extremely difficult to spend every evening with this team. It will be harder to justify spending money for a night at Camden Yards, no matter how perfect the view is and mouth-watering those crab dip covered waffle fries are.

Cheer how you will and vent how you want, we will be here with you. Today is day one of a very long rebuild where decisions made will be all about the future, not 2019. Every single player on this roster has to prove they belong. Every single day will be an adventure. But at the end of the day, it’s baseball and it’s back.

First pitch is scheduled for 1:05 pm and can be seen on ESPN. For those of us within the viewing market, the game can be seen on MASN2. Stay tuned for starting lineups once they have been released.