NASHVILLE – The Orioles' search for a back-end-of-the-game reliever and a starting pitcher may now be down to just a search for a starter. The club is, according to numerous reports, closing in on a deal with free-agent right-hander Craig Kimbrel, a pitcher who is a nine-time All-Star with 417 career saves.

Even at 35, Kimbrel could be impactful for the Orioles in the later innings and could wind up as the 2024 closer with all that experience saving games on his resume.

For the 2023 Philadelphia Phillies, he went 8-6 with a 3.26 ERA and 1.045 WHIP in 71 games covering 69 innings. He recorded a 3.7 walk rate and 12.3 strikeout rate. He allowed just 44 hits over 69 innings for an average of 5.7 hits allowed per nine innings.

Kimbrel pitched three scoreless innings in the first two rounds of the playoffs, but yielded four runs over three innings when the Phillies lost the National League Championship Series to Arizona, and he took two losses in that series.

Opponent batters hit just .181/.273/.337/.611 off Kimbrel, who recorded 23 saves for the Phils with a save percentage of 82.1, which was a bit under the percentage of O’s closer Félix Bautista at 84.6. Bautista will miss the entire 2024 season after Tommy John surgery, so Kimbrel’s addition, when and if it becomes official, would deepen the Baltimore bullpen and allow Yennier Cano to move back into a setup role. The O’s would also have the likes of Danny Coulombe, Cionel Pérez and Dillon Tate for late-game innings. Pending their roles, Tyler Wells and DL Hall, among others, could also pitch significant bullpen innings.

NASHVILLE – The Orioles made news of sorts yesterday without making any signings or trades. The news was that there is “very definitely a strong possibility” that No. 1 ranked prospect Jackson Holliday will be on the Opening Day roster March 28. That is how O’s executive vice president and general manager Mike Elias answered when asked about the possibility of the kid being there for the opener. 

Earlier in the winter, Elias was indicating the O’s were open to his chance to make it on Opening Day but also that they would make that decision during spring training. Yesterday’s pronouncement gives Holliday, who turned 20 Monday, a great chance to be there for the opener against the Los Angeles Angels at Camden Yards.  

"It's definitely a very strong possibility,” Elias said during an interview session at the Winter Meetings. “I don’t want to put the cart before the horse, but he had a historic first full season in the minors. Probably you have to go back into like the 80s or 90s to find something similar to that in my opinion for an American kid out of high school. Got to Triple-A. Wasn’t there a huge amount of time, didn’t tear the cover off the ball, but he more than held his own and did well.”

Holliday rose four levels, from Low Single-A to Triple-A, batting .323/.442/.499/.941 while rising to become the No. 1 prospect in the sport and he also played in the All-Star Futures Game in July.

“He’s now going to be back in spring training. He just turned 20. To me that’s a big year of development – 19 to 20. You get taller, you get heavier, you get more mature. Just a lot of good things that can happen. We just want to see what he looks like,” said Elias of Holliday, who led all of the minors scoring 113 runs and he was fifth in on-base percentage.

NASHVILLE – In late October, coming off a season that produced 101 wins, an American League East championship and a top-rated farm that produced the No. 1 prospect in the sport for the third straight year, the Orioles made several promotions in their scouting and player development departments.

Matt Blood was promoted from director of player development to vice president of player development and domestic scouting. Joining Blood to help head up player development now will be Anthony Villa, 29, who has been with the Orioles since the 2020 season. He is Blood's replacement as director of player development. Villa was first an O's minor league hitting coach, then a minor league hitting coordinator for the lower levels of the farm and last year he was hitting coordinator for the entire system.

His promotion was first reported here on MASNSports.com.

A 19th-round draft pick of the White Sox in 2016, Villa played in the minors for three seasons. He's been a fast riser in the O's organization. Now he'll have even a larger role in player development. 

“First of all, Anthony and I have been working closely on running this player development system for a while," said Blood. "He’s one of the leaders of our hitting department, but he also has great energy just toward the well being of players and their development. He has always had great ideas and thoughts on how we can do better by our players.

NASHVILLE – Saying you “have to give something to get something,” Orioles executive vice president and general manager Mike Elias is in somewhat of an enviable position when it comes to making a trade. Whether it would happen here at the Winter Meetings or later.

He doesn’t feel pressure to make a trade. Just because he has probably the deepest farm system in baseball doesn’t mean he has to deal from it. During his press update with local media Monday, he talked about making good trades that are balanced and indicated just because you can outbid others for a deal doesn’t make it the right deal.

But he also knows when you cannot outspend clubs to sign free agents you may to have to outbid them with prospects in trades.

“We are as well-equipped as any team to rattle off prospect packages for any player,” said Elias. “That doesn’t mean that we want to do that just because we have the No. 1 farm system, and we could theoretically outbid any team. At some point it becomes a trade that you don’t want to do. It equips us to get involved in every conversation. But there is more to making trades than just being the high bidder. The trade has to make sense. A lot of our prospects are so close to the majors if they are not there yet. These are guys that are going to help the 2024 O’s too. We have to keep all that in mind.”

I asked Elias if the Orioles are prepared to lose some of their best prospects?

NASHVILLE – When you have one of the deepest and maybe the deepest farm systems in baseball, making trades from that prospect depth is a good way to add to your major league roster. For the Orioles, it’s a big change from the rebuilding years when they were trading to acquire prospects in dealing players such as Trey Mancini, Dylan Bundy and, going even farther back, Erik Bedard.

Now the Orioles are rumored to be looking to acquire a pitcher such as right-hander Dylan Cease via a trade. Cease has two years of team control left, at a cost of perhaps around $25 million. That is a pretty low dollar amount for two seasons of a pitcher of that quality, one who finished second for the American League Cy Young Award in 2022, going 14-8 with a 2.20 ERA. A pitcher projected to get $8.8 million this year via arbitration.

If, as reports indicate, his trade market is “robust,” it might take a team with numerous quality prospects to pull off that deal. A team like the Orioles could also offer one of several young veterans who already have a proven major league track record.

Jonathan Mayo, who covers prospects for MLB.com and MLBPipeline.com, shared a few thoughts this morning on the Orioles' prospect depth. Is now the time for Baltimore to pull the trigger on a deal to use prospects to get something to help the 2024 club?  

“That is what it is pointing to, not being privy to the conversations going on,” Mayo said. “They have infield and outfield depth and have choices, where they can make a trade and a team like the Chicago White Sox can get someone they can put right into their Opening Day lineup. Guys that are just about ready, and (the Orioles) bring in a starting pitcher like a Dylan Cease. And they could do it without completely stripping the system bare.

NASHVILLE – With the understanding that the MLB Winter Meetings and what happens here or doesn’t is not any finish line to the offseason, but just one milestone, the Orioles' front office contingent has arrived ready to seek pitching additions and perhaps make other tweaks to their big league roster.

The Winter Meetings began here last night and run through Wednesday.

The Orioles seek pitching and that has not changed. With closer Félix Bautista out for all of 2024, they could use an arm to add to the back-end of their bullpen. If that turns out to someone with closing experience, all the better. They would like to also add a starter that fits in the top half of their rotation. A pitcher who could join the likes of Kyle Bradish, Grayson Rodriguez and John Means (a current projected front three) to produce a formidable rotation to carry a contending team through the rigors of the 162-game season.

I interviewed O’s executive vice president and general manager Mike Elias after the early November General Managers' meetings in Arizona.

In that interview then he made it clear that a late-inning reliever is at or near the top of his wish list. Bautista, who posted a 1.48 ERA and 33 saves with a 16.2 K rate, underwent Tommy John surgery Oct. 9.

With the release of a new top 10 O’s prospects list this week by Baseball America comes confirmation of what we already knew: the O’s system remains loaded. They currently hold the title of top farm system in all of baseball.

The new top-100 prospects lists are likely to come out sometime in January and February. But on the latest lists from Baseball America and MLBPipeline.com, the Orioles have six top-100 prospects.

Here is how Baseball America ranked them this week on its new team top 10.

1) Shortstop Jackson Holliday: Did we expect anyone else? The player drafted No. 1 overall by the Orioles on July 17, 2022 has lived up to the hype and then some. He played at four levels last summer – ending the year at Triple-A Norfolk – and hit .323 with a .941 OPS and led all minor league players in runs scored, with 113. He played above-average defense and has 60-grade speed. He was the O’s Minor League Player of the Year and Baseball America’s National Player of the Year after a season in which he played in the All-Star Futures Game. Speaking of the future, his day in Baltimore could be close. Holliday will celebrate his 20^th birthday tomorrow.

2) Catcher Samuel Basallo: He turned 19 in August. He is a super-fast riser that has become the shining star of the O’s international program. He rose three levels last year, producing 20 homers and a .953 OPS. He played four games at the end of 2023 at Double-A Bowie, where he will likely start the 2024 season. It could end for him at Triple-A. The tools and production are loud for this guy. While Holliday is the third straight O’s farm player to be No. 1 in prospect rankings, Basallo could be the fourth. Yes, impressive by the Orioles. 

It is no secret that on those top 30 prospects lists, the Orioles have many more hitters than pitchers. But a recent article in Baseball America was interesting and enlightening about the O’s pitching on the farm. In several spots, Baltimore's farm pitchers scored well.

It was Baseball America’s Farm System Statcast Pitching Rankings, co-authored by Geoff Pontes and Dylan White. It is a deep dive into minor league pitchers, aggregating full-season pitchers data, metrics and stats for hurlers between ages 17 and 26.

The BA goal was “to more accurately understand which organizations have the highest quality of overall pitching talent.” And they were attempting to “view the developing pitching talent in each organization, not the team’s ability to stock quality MiLB free agents into Triple-A bullpens.”

In an all encompassing stat called “Stuff+” per BA it “is a blended metric of each organization’s STF+ (based on their internal model), per pitch Run Value, xwOBA, and pitch quality metrics such as in-zone whiff% and chase %. The resultant number was then scaled on a wRC+ scale where 100 is average and a standard deviation is 10 points.”

The Orioles organization ranked tied for third with the New York Yankees with a score of 114, behind only the Los Angeles Dodgers at 116 and Tampa Bay Rays at 119.  

If you look at the Roster Resource section on FanGraphs.com, they list their current projected pitching rotations for each club. It might surprise some to note that the Tampa Bay Rays, a team known for producing good pitchers and solid pitching development, does not have one homegrown pitcher listed among its top five.

Tyler Glasnow, Aaron Civale and Shane Baz were added via trades, Zach Eflin in free agency and Zack Littell was added on waivers.

Of the O’s listed five, just John Means and Grayson Rodriguez were drafted by the Orioles. Kyle Bradish, Dean Kremer and Cole Irvin – listed fifth right now – all came via trades.

So, for the top two AL East teams from last year, 80 percent of their current rotations came from outside their own organization.

The bigger message is get good pitching wherever and whenever you can. At the end of the year, they count only wins, not wins generated mostly by homegrown talent.

When lefty John Means pitched on the night of April 13, 2022, against Milwaukee, we headed into that game assuming it was just another night watching a pitcher emerging as one of the league’s best take the mound for the Orioles.

No one could have known then he would not take the mound in another major league game until Sept. 12, 2023 – that was 517 days later.

Means had one long road back.

He underwent Tommy John surgery in April of 2022 and the hope was he could be back by midseason in 2023. But last May he had a setback – a strained muscle in his upper back and it would be longer before he made it back.

But Means finally returned to pitch in a rehab game for Double-A Bowie on Aug. 10. He would throw in six rehab games between Bowie and Triple-A Norfolk, going 1-1 with a 3.74 ERA in 21 2/3 innings. That led to Means' Sept. 12 return to the Orioles, and he made four starts down the stretch.

It has been rather quiet thus far in baseball free agency. Unless you are the St. Louis Cardinals, who have added three of the five starting pitchers signed to this point.

If you are just looking for a juicy rumor involving the Orioles, you may have a long wait. The team seems to work hard at keeping its business close to the vest and Mike Elias has often said essentially it is of no benefit to the team to put such information out there.

While rumors of signings and trades can be good for the game overall to keep fans talking about the sport 12 months a year, some already do that even without any good rumors.

But most teams don’t seem to want to generate rumors about which players they are talking to and pursuing. It could get their fanbase excited for a brief time, but signings, not rumors, truly excite fans.

Here are the few signings that have taken place thus far on free agent starting pitchers.

We found out during the 2023 MLB regular season that we could watch a game lasting two and half hours again and it would not be completely rare. We found out we could survive a game played without defensive shifts. We found out we could be completely okay with scoring and base stealing on the rise.

And we found that the game was not dramatically changed in any way.

As any of us that had seen the pitch clock used in the minors already knew, fans would quickly adjust to the clock. After a few games, they would forget it was even there.

For the avalanche of criticism Rob Manfred gets as MLB commissioner – and he did not implement any of this on his own – these changes worked, and I contend they were very good for the game.

The average time of a big league game lasting nine inning was two hours and 40 minutes last season, down from 3:04 in 2022 and 3:10 in 2021. Yep, we gained a half hour. Beautiful. And needed.

There are a lot of questions to be answered for the Orioles between now and Opening Day 2024 on March 28 versus the Los Angeles Angels.

The makeup of the pitching staff and starting rotation is a big one.

If the Orioles add a starter who could slot into the top half of their rotation – something they have said they seek – it will be getting pretty crowded in that starting five.

There are already the quartet of Kyle Bradish, Grayson Rodriguez, John Means and Dean Kremer who could easily take four of the five slots. A new addition could grab the last spot.

So where does that leave everybody else, including lefty DL Hall, once one of baseball’s top pitching prospects and right-hander Tyler Wells, a pitcher who had a 3.18 ERA as a starter at the 2023 All-Star break? And a pitcher who on the last day of the first-half led MLB in WHIP at 0.90.

Today in a unique edition and a variation on the usual "A Few Questions for O's Fans," I want to discuss not so much the present day Orioles but the Orioles of the past. For some of you, feel free to go back to the beginning of the Baltimore Orioles and their first year of 1954 if you choose.

Let's start there. For those that have that much history with the team. 

1) Not so much of a question but seeking out any fans that remember the very first year of the Orioles. What do you remember about the team moving to Baltimore and that first season of 1954?

2) Rank the Orioles' three World Series championships from most to least special. While any WS win is special, do you have a favorite? Use any reason that one WS could be your favorite, whether it was one you attended, you felt it was their most impressive win or any other reasons that are important to you.

3) Was the acquisition of Frank Robinson the best trade in O's history? Was there one that was better or more impactful?

We learned a few days ago that right-hander Kyle Gibson would not be back with the Orioles for the 2024 season. He signed a one-year free agent deal with the St. Louis Cardinals for $12 million and the team holds a club option for the 2025 season.

For Gibson, this represents a homecoming of sorts. He lives near St. Louis and went to college at the University of Missouri. Reports said the Cardinals had been trying to add him for years. They’ve got him now but today we should take a moment to appreciate his numerous contributions to the Orioles last season.

He went 15-9 with a 4.73 ERA over 33 starts and the Orioles went 20-13 in those 33 games. Gibson tied for third in the AL in wins, trailing only Chris Bassitt and Zack Eflin, who had 16 each. He was one of eight pitchers in the majors with 15 or more wins and the first Oriole to do that since Chris Tillman won 16 in 2016.

The Orioles signed Gibson to a one-year deal for $10 million last Dec. 5 and he went on to tie for third in the league in wins, finish sixth in the AL throwing 192 innings, he tied for first in starts and tied for 10^th in the AL with 17 quality starts.

Gibson became the first O’s pitcher in club history to start and win each of his three first appearances with the team. And he started a season 4-0 for the second time in his career, joining a 6-0 start with Texas in 2021. He became the fifth Oriole starting pitcher since 2004 to begin a year 4-0, joining John Means (4-0 in 2021), Bud Norris (4-0 in 2013), Wei-Yin Chen (4-0 in 2012), and Erik Bedard (4-0 in 2006).

A few weeks back, I wrote about three players that surprised us in a good way with their play during the 2023 season. It was easy to note Ryan O'Hearn and Yennier Cano, both were huge surprises and so big for the 2023 Birds.

I added Kyle Bradish and not that we didn't think he could be a good pitcher. But maybe not that good. But he was and he wound up fourth in the Cy Young Award voting.

Here is that earlier blog here. 

Here are a few more surprises from the season. 

Outfielder Aaron Hicks: On the same day the Orioles put Cedric Mullins on the injured list for the first time - May 30 - they signed Aaron Hicks. A few days before that he had been designated for assignment by the Yankees and later released.

Happy Thanksgiving to all my readers and fans of this blog today and I hope everyone has a great time with family and friends. Hope everything on your plate is hot and delicious.

But the topic here is always baseball and the Orioles and O’s fans have a lot to be thankful for this year.

How about a playoff team, 101 wins and an AL East championship. The 2023 season was an amazing ride, one that started with the Tampa Bay Rays lapping the field and winning all the time. But they struggled badly in July and the Orioles gained about six games or so in the standings pretty quickly to pass them.

The club took the Rays’ best shots and stayed on top. Even when Tampa Bay came to town in mid September and took the first two games of a four-game series. That moved the Rays into a first-place tie with the Orioles. But on a Saturday night at Camden Yards, with first-place riding, right-hander Grayson Rodriguez pitched eight scoreless in an 8-0 win. The next day the O’s won a wild one in 11 innings to clinch a playoff berth and touch off a wild celebration.

They went 9-5 down the stretch after the Rays tied them atop the division and they answered the Rays’ first two wins in that series in Baltimore with four straight wins – two over Tampa Bay and two at Houston. It was their greatest chance to crack under the pressure on the year and they did not. Four straight wins against playoff clubs.

When spring training 2023 began we didn’t know how big a factor he would be on the Orioles last season. Okay, that was because he wasn’t even on the team yet.

Later we struggled to pronounce his name and those of us that had to write it may have taken a while to spell it without looking it up. But lefty reliever Danny Coulombe (say it KOO-lohm) sure was big for the Baltimore bullpen. And without Félix Bautista, he figures to be very important to the 2024 ‘pen.

Coulombe is yet another Mike Elias acquisition added for a low price that produced big results. He was acquired via a trade on March 27 from Minnesota for cash considerations. Coulombe had been signed by the Twins to a minor league deal and had an opt-out. If the Twins were not ready to give him a roster spot, but another team was, he could use the opt out. That led to the cash considerations deal that got him to Baltimore.

Once he got there his impact was vast.

He went 5-3 with a 2.81 ERA. In 51 1/3 innings he posted a 1.110 WHIP with a 2.1 walk and 10.2 strikeout rate. He allowed a .231 batting average and .605 OPS and was good against both left and righty batters. His 5.7 walk percentage and 27.6 K percentage were both the second-best of his career.

If the Orioles are going to add a pitcher that can work in the top half of their rotation and do it without spending a massive amount of dollars, then right-hander Dylan Cease may be a good target.

Cease, who turns 28 on Dec. 28, has two years of team control remaining before free agency and the Chicago White Sox have him on the market. A recent report said the Los Angeles Dodgers and White Sox had talks on Cease.

Cease has had an interesting three-year run of pitching. His ERA+ was 112 in 2021, soared to 180 as he finished second in the AL Cy Young voting in 2022 and was slightly below average at 97 last year.

After going 14-8 with a 2.20 ERA and 1.11 WHIP in 2022, he was 7-9 with a 4.58 ERA last year. Over 177 innings he had a 1.418 WHIP, allowing 1.0 homers per nine with 4.0 walks and 10.9 strikeouts.

It has been pointed out that Cease had a better than average .260 BABIP (batting average on balls in play) in ’22 but that elevated to .330 last season when he played on a 101-loss team.

Former Orioles general manager Andy MacPhail used to say pitching is “expensive and fragile.” Two cautionary words about spending big for a hurler.

That didn’t keep the Philadelphia Phillies from keeping one of their homegrown pitchers on Sunday and the expensive part was definitely on display. Over the last three years, right-hander Aaron Nola is 32-31 with a 4.09 ERA. But the Phillies, who drafted him seventh overall out of LSU in 2014, retained him Sunday for $172 million over seven years. Reporters said the deal does not include any option years or opt-outs.

National reporters like Jon Heyman and Jeff Passan reported that Nola could have gotten more money elsewhere and also that the Braves were in hot pursuit. And having a division rival chasing your player obviously helped pushed the Phillies to get that deal to the finish line.

And while Nola was not at the very top of this free agent pitching class, he was ranked as the No. 5 free agent by MLBTradeRumors.com and projected to get a six-year deal for $150 million. He exceeded that projection.

While Nola’s ERA was 4.46 last season, teams are clearly digging deeper than ERA numbers here and liking what they see with this pitcher. Durability is a real Nola strength. In the last six full seasons – not counting the shortened 2020 season – he has averaged a robust 194 innings, three times topping 200.