3 front office mistakes that cost the Baltimore Orioles dearly in 2023

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The Baltimore Orioles' season ended rather abruptly when they were swept out of the ALDS by the Texas Rangers, but that shouldn't take away from what they accomplished in 2023. The sheer amount of young talent on this Orioles roster, especially on the position player side, is absolutely absurd and it sure looks like they will be a force in the AL East for years to come.

Baltimore won 101 games and the AL East despite the fact that they have a very...challenging payroll and ownership situation. That success should be credited to the Orioles' scouting and player development departments as well as the coaching staff, but the 2023 season also had some decisions made by the front office that left a lot to be desired.

Here are 3 front office mistakes that cost the Baltimore Orioles dearly in 2023

The goal here isn't to overstate problems that couldn't be foreseen or were outside the Orioles' control. Whenever a team's season ends sooner than expected, there is a whole lot of hindsight analysis that goes on and that isn't particularly fair. Sometimes, you just have a bad series at the worst possible time or have a key player get hurt (just ask the Braves and Dodgers). However, there was decision-making that was suspect from the time it happened and only looks worse now that the Orioles are watching the postseason from home.

Let's take a look at some of the mistakes that the Orioles made that cost them in 2023.

Baltimore didn't do nearly enough to bolster the pitching staff last offseason

Going into the offseason, it was a known fact that the Orioles needed some pitching. Having Grayson Rodriguez waiting in the wings was nice and all, but Baltimore's young pitching depth left a lot to be desired after him. After general manager Mike Elias talked about Baltimore increasing their payroll for 2023, the hope was that they would be in play for some of the top arms on the free agent market like Carlos Rodon and Jameson Taillon.

However, that is not how things went down at all last offseason. Instead of making waves in free agency or the trade market, the Orioles did more of the same as they stayed away from the deep end of either market and instead shopped in the clearance aisle of the free market and only made one very modest trade in exchange for some cash.

In fairness to the Giants, the free agent market last offseason got to be pretty nutty and they did sign Kyle Gibson to a one year, $10 million deal to at least pay lip service to their pitching needs. Gibson obviously didn't do much in Baltimore, though, as he posted a 4.73 ERA in 33 starts. The only reason the Baltimore pitching staff was respectable at all was because Kyle Bradish and Felix Bautista had the seasons of their lives. Hopefully the Orioles aren't banking on that type of luck happening again going into 2024.

The Orioles overvalued their depth all season long

While this mistake sort of bleeds into both the Orioles' offseason as well as the moves they made during the 2023 season, but it is worth discussing on it's own. One consistent thread that was true throughout the last year or so is that Baltimore really stuck to their guns about developing their roster internally and valuing the players they had very highly.

On the surface, this makes a ton of sense. Their position player group in particular is very young, but it also features some of the most top end talent in the entire league at several different positions. Having guys like Adley Rutschman, Gunnar Henderson, Grayson Rodriguez, and others under cheap team control has a lot of benefits especially for a team that seems like it is going to be payroll averse as long as the Angelos family owns the team.

The problem is that this has both made the Orioles too willing to go with internal candidates that may not be as good as outside options and very, very reticent to use their prospect depth to make trades to improve their roster. Having a ton of hitting prospects is great and all, but there is no way all of these guys are going to have roster spots Baltimore and their pitching prospects aren't good enough to warrant this strategy. Baltimore's prospect hoarding and minimalist strategy regarding player acquisition was a big problem in 2023 which leads us to....

The trade deadline was a disaster for the Orioles

By all accounts, the trade market at the deadline was a total mess. There weren't anywhere near enough sellers to meet demand given the addition of another wild card slot in the playoffs and many of the bad teams around the league have been bad for a while and didn't have much to offer. By simple supply and demand, that meant that trade prices were much higher than we are used to seeing.

However, if any team could have taken advantage at the deadline, it was the Orioles. Sure, they did end up acquiring Jack Flaherty and Shintaro Fujinami at the trade deadline, but no one should have realistically thought that either of those guys were going to move the needle much. Fujinami had been terrible in Oakland and Flaherty hasn't been good or healthy since 2019 when he finished in the top 4 of Cy Young voting.

Baltimore's hesitancy to move their young players did allow them to avoid some trade disasters that befell teams like the Angels (wow was Lucas Giolito bad), but there were some really high impact arms that got moved in Jordan Montgomery, Justin Verlander, and Max Scherzer. Scherzer ended up getting hurt and both he and Verlander are owed a lot of money, but that doesn't explain why the Orioles weren't bigger players for Montgomery despite having more than enough prospect capital to get a deal done and all of it is indicative of a decision-making process that isn't nearly aggressive enough.

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