The Orioles have made the following roster moves:

• Agreed to terms on 2025 minor league contracts with C David Bañuelos, RHP Yaramil Hiraldo, and RHP Rodolfo Martinez.

It might have been, on the one hand, an indication that the new O’s ownership group might spend more on player salaries moving forward when they added a pitcher in July that is signed for $18 million in 2025.

Not only did the Orioles give up three top 30 prospects when they acquired right-hander Zach Eflin from Tampa Bay on July 26, but they took on that salary for next season as well.

Eflin pitched quite well in nine O’s starts in the regular season and one more in the postseason. Right now, he is likely the No. 1 pitcher in a rotation that might be adding a pitcher or two over the winter and one that looks to get Grayson Rodriguez back as a full go when 2025 begins. A rotation that could see free agent Corbin Burnes signed for $200 million or more elsewhere leaving the club a draft pick, but a hole at the top of the starting five.

No one is saying Eflin is the equal of Burnes, but he was close to that since the start of 2023.

In that two-season span, Eflin has made 59 starts, going 26-17 with a 3.54 ERA and 1.085 WHIP. In the same two-season span, Burnes has gone 25-17 with a 3.15 ERA and 1.083 WHIP.

The first day of the offseason includes some Orioles moves within baseball operations, which they announced this afternoon.

* Senior director of pro scouting Mike Snyder is promoted to vice president of pro scouting.

The Orioles explained in a press release that Snyder will continue to oversee their pro scouting and player analysis across the majors, minors and Asian professional leagues, and also assist with contract negotiations, 40-man roster construction, player transactions and departmental hiring. He’s one of the most important behind-the-scenes guys in the organization.

Snyder’s tenure with the Orioles goes back to 2009, when he worked as a baseball operations intern. He moved up to baseball operations assistant and international scout in 2010-11, assistant director of scouting and player development in 2012, assistant director of player personnel in 2013-14, director of pro scouting and director of Pacific Rim operations and baseball development from 2015-19. He jumped to director of pro scouting in 2020.

Snyder graduated with honors from Princeton University (NJ) in 2008 with a degree in economics, and he received his master’s degree in applied and computational mathematics from Johns Hopkins University in 2019.

Eight players elect free agency

The Orioles today announced that they have acquired outfielder DAZ CAMERON from the Athletics in exchange for cash considerations.

Cameron, 27, slashed .200/.258/.329 (34-for-170) with five doubles, one triple, five home runs, 22 runs scored, 15 RBI, 13 walks, one hit-by-pitch, and five stolen bases in 66 games with the A’s last season. He opened the season with Triple-A Las Vegas and batted .307/.424/.577 (42-for-137) with 15 doubles, two triples, six homers, 32 runs scored, 27 RBI, 27 walks (1 IBB), one hit-by-pitch, and eight stolen bases in 41 games for the Aviators before having his contract selected on May 23. In his Athletics debut that same day against Colorado, Cameron launched a game-tying solo home run leading off the ninth inning as the A’s rallied for a 10-9 victory in 11 innings. He earned Pacific Coast League Player of the Week for the period April 29-May 5 with Las Vegas.

Cameron was a non-roster invitee to Spring Training with Baltimore in 2023 after being claimed off waivers from the Detroit Tigers on November 9, 2022, and was outrighted to Triple-A Norfolk on December 2. He spent the entire 2023 season with the Tides, helping the team win the Triple-A National Championship and International League Championship. Cameron was originally selected by the Houston Astros in the Competitive Balance Round A (No. 37 overall) of the 2015 First-Year Player Draft out of Eagle's Landing Christian Academy (GA). The Astros traded him to the Tigers as part of a five-player deal that involved Justin Verlander going to Houston on August 31, 2017.

He’s the son of 2001 American League All-Star and three-time Gold Glove Award winner Mike Cameron.

The Baltimore Orioles today announced the following promotions within Baseball Operations: MIKE SNYDER from Senior Director, Pro Scouting to Vice President, Pro Scouting; BRENDAN FOURNIE from Director, Baseball Strategy to Senior Director, Baseball Strategy & Operations; DI ZOU from Director, Baseball Systems to Senior Director, Baseball Systems & Analytics Operations; RYAN HARDIN from Senior Data Scientist, Pro Player Evaluation to Director, Pro Player Analytics; MICHAEL WEIS from Senior Data Scientist, Draft Evaluation to Director, Draft Analytics; JIM DANIELS from Senior Software Engineer to Assistant Director, Baseball Systems; PETER ASH from Senior Software Engineer to  Principal Software Engineer; BEN MacLEAN from Analyst, Pro Scouting to Senior Analyst, Pro Scouting; BEN REED from Analyst, Pro Scouting to Senior Analyst, Pro Scouting; and SAM KIM from MLB Fellow to Analyst, Pro Scouting.

“I am proud to announce these promotions, which reflect the growth of our front office and the ascent of the organization as a whole," said MIKE ELIAS, Orioles Executive Vice President and General Manager. “The pro scouting department has made a tremendous positive impact in shaping our roster and farm system. The baseball analytics group has provided the high-quality information and cutting-edge tools that shape everything we do in our offices in the Warehouse and across our scouting and player development operations. The work of these staff members has been indispensable in our winning more games than any team in the American League the last two seasons. I’d like to thank David Rubenstein and the entire ownership group for their commitment and investment toward continual improvement in baseball operations.” 

Snyder will continue to oversee the club’s pro scouting and player analysis across the majors, minors, and Asian professional leagues, and assist with contract negotiations, 40-man roster construction, player transactions, and departmental hiring. He previously served as the club’s Director of Pro Scouting (2020-23), Director of Pro Scouting Director of Pacific Rim Operations & Baseball Development (2015-19), Assistant Director of Player Personnel (2013-14), Assistant Director of Scouting and Player Development (2012), Baseball Operations Assistant and International Scout (2010-11), and Baseball Operations Intern (2009). In his time with the Orioles, he has had active involvement in the amateur draft, international scouting, compliance, contracts, and salary arbitration, in addition to his pro scouting leadership that has contributed to several impact acquisitions. He graduated with honors from Princeton University (NJ) in 2008 with a degree in economics, and he received his master’s degree in applied and computational mathematics from Johns Hopkins University in 2019. Snyder and his wife, Lindsay, reside in Frederick, Md. with their two children, Ellie and Jonah. 

Fournie oversees baseball economic research and advance scouting, while advising the baseball operations team on roster management, transactions, and contracts. He just completed his ninth season in Major League Baseball and third with the Orioles after spending his first six years in the industry in various baseball operations roles with the Houston Astros from 2016-21. Fournie attended the University of Missouri and received dual bachelor’s degrees in finance and sport management and received his master’s degree in sport management from the University of Florida, where he also minored in statistics and entrepreneurship.

Zou just completed his eighth season with the Orioles and third as the Director, Baseball Systems. He will continue to oversee development of internal baseball operations information systems and contributes to various initiatives related to baseball technology and analytics. Zou started with the organization in 2017 as Developer of Baseball Systems before being promoted to Manager of Baseball Systems in 2020. He graduated from the University of Maryland with a degree in mathematics and resides in Ellicott City, Md. with his wife and daughters.

We’re kind of just thinking out loud here today. But as the Orioles look to win more games and get back on top of the American League East next season, I believe changing or making some slight alterations to how the Orioles do business could be helpful moving forward.

Over the next few weeks, I will take a look in this space at some ways that could happen. 

Less aggressiveness on two-strike counts

Going back several years when I started hearing about and writing about the O’s working hard to make better swing decisions on the farm, I reported that this means essentially that a hitter does not shorten his swing with two strikes.

The thinking was, always put your best swing on the ball and try to drive it. In all counts. Shortening up the swing to just make contact works against that.

There’s fan interference, and then there’s grabbing an outfielder’s glove and ripping the baseball out of it with help from a friend. That’s a whole other level of intrusive, as well as dumb.

The media loves to shine a spotlight on these people, as ESPN.com did Tuesday night with tremendous enthusiasm. Editors drool over it. Reporters are ordered out of the press box and into the stands for an exclusive interview. Or in the case of the two imbeciles in the Yankees jerseys sitting in the front row for Game 4 of the World Series, race to a bar across the street and give the guys their 15 minutes of fame.

You pay an exorbitant price for tickets and get ejected in the first inning. Such a brilliant move. The decision came down to doing that or using a toaster oven as a bath toy.

Jeffrey Maier was too young to drink in 1996, and he wasn’t tossed out of Yankee Stadium after reaching out to deflect Derek Jeter’s fly ball into the stands in Game 1 of the American League Championship Series as Orioles right fielder Tony Tarasco camped under it at the wall.

Neither one caught it. Get the story straight. Maier knocked the ball into the seats for the tying home run and was treated like a hero, including appearances on national talk shows. The Daily News made arrangements for Maier to sit behind the Yankees dugout for the World Series.  

The last two Octobers, the Orioles have gone 0-5 in playoff games and three of those were decided by one run. A clutch hit here or a clutch out there might have made the difference.

The O’s did not have Félix Bautista available for any of those games in the late innings. He last pitched for the Orioles on Aug. 25, 2023 and had Tommy John surgery in October of 2023.

But in 2025, Mountain time returns in Baltimore.

It’s like they signed or added an All-Star reliever. Bautista was a 2023 All-Star, and that year finished 11^th in the AL Cy Young voting.

Now, knock on wood, he should be a full go from the first day of spring training in February. At that point he will be 16 months removed from his procedure.

The Orioles haven’t swung at a pitch or thrown one since Oct. 2 in Game 2 of the Wild Card series against the Royals. Gunnar Henderson struck out on a changeup from Lucas Erceg and walked back to the dugout with his head down. The visiting team celebrated in its clubhouse and on the field.

"Feel terrible," said Ryan O'Hearn. "Feel terrible for our fans. Feel like we let them down. Just sucks.”

What can the Orioles do next season to say that they’ve lost that losing feeling?

Here are three more ways:

Adley Rutschman being the best version of himself.

Game 1 of the 2024 World Series between the Los Angeles Dodgers and New York Yankees was seen by 15.2 million viewers on Fox television.

That number was up 62 percent from last year’s Game 1 when 9.35 million watched the Diamondbacks and Rangers. It was the most-watched World Series opening game since Astros-Dodgers was seen by 15.33 million in 2017.

A Baseball America article called the audience “massive” and noted that often the World Series total average viewership for the series exceeds the Game 1 number.

Said BA: “While 2016’s 22.8 million average viewership is unlikely to be exceeded, an average of 15 million viewers would blow away any recent World Series. Last year’s Rangers-Diamondbacks World Series averaged an all-time low 9.1 million viewers per game, and there hasn’t been a World Series to top 12 million in average viewership since 2019. A 15-million average viewership would rank as the third highest since 2010, which is impressive given TV viewership for anything but football has dwindled dramatically in the past decade-plus thanks to the demise of cable TV and the rise of streaming services and social media.”

According to Sports Media Watch, Game 2 on Saturday averaged 13.44 million viewers on FOX (13.8 million across all Fox Sports platforms). That was the largest audience for Game 2 since Dodgers-Red Sox in 2018 (13.51M) and a 65% increase from last year’s record-low 8.15 million for Diamondbacks-Rangers.

The Orioles will try next season to make the playoffs in three consecutive years for only the second time in franchise history and the first since 1969-71.

The Wild Card lessens the challenge but it remains a daunting task.

They won only one World Series in that span, beating the Reds in five games in 1970, and aren’t labeled as a dynasty because of the other October failures. The 2025 team, meanwhile, would be viewed in a positive light by advancing past its first playoff round.

The Orioles are tangled in a 10-game postseason losing streak that dates back to the 2014 ALCS. How can they wiggle free?

Let’s discuss three of the ways.

It has been true for quite a while now. While catcher Samuel Basallo is the shining star of the Orioles surging and improved international program, he is not the only possible future big league talent on the horizon.

On the MLBPipeline.com Orioles top 30 prospects list right now there is a whopping 13 international players, a high mark since Mike Elias and his staff took over in November of 2018.

Not long after, in January of 2019, Koby Perez was hired as senior director, international scouting. Now with the club for six years, in October of 2023, Perez was promoted to his latest role as vice president, international scouting and operations.

He has presided over four international signing classes. In January of 2021, the O’s signed their first two international amateurs to bonuses of at least a million dollars in Basallo and Maikol Hernandez. They now have five players that have signed for a million or more.

The latest examples that the O’s international program is becoming a bigger force came this month via Baseball America.

Was Robert De Niro robbed of an Oscar in 1992 for his portrayal of Max Cady in “Cape Fear?”

De Niro was amazing in that role. A brilliant performance. I would have chosen him. But I also can’t argue with Anthony Hopkins winning for his portrayal of Hannibal Lecter in “The Silence of the Lambs.”

See, you ask and I answer. It’s that simple. Or in this case, I ask and answer to set up the latest mailbag entry.

(Martin Scorsese was robbed twice – for Raging Bull and Goodfellas – by first-time directors Robert Redford and Kevin Costner. And he’s been the victim of other snubs. Those just irk me the most. But I digress …)

I’m serving mailbag leftovers as we trudge through another week in the offseason. Any thoughts of editing for clarity, length and style were scraped into the trash.

Well I was not there and only saw a brief story or two on Tony Clark’s comments about use of pitchers. They were made at the World Series before the opening game on Friday.

Clark is the executive director of the Major League Baseball Players Association.

"The conversations that we've had with our players have suggested that unless or until you draw a line in the sand and force change, that the decision-makers on any one particular team are going to continue to make the decisions that they're making, which is have pitchers' - starting and relievers - max effort for the period of time that they can have them," Clark said at Dodger Stadium. “As soon as they seem to run out of gas, as the data suggests that they're going to, recycle them out and (move) to burn out another pitcher."

Because I have not seen many other quotes from Clark on this topic, I am not sure how he sees teams burning out pitchers. It is certainly not from use. Most starters are held often to about 100 pitches and teams pull starters often when they reach the third time through the batting order. Only four MLB pitchers even threw as much as 200 innings in 2024. Relievers are often held to one inning and seldom pitch more than two days in a row.

From this standpoint, teams are trying to protect pitchers and their investments in them.

The mailbag is filling up again, like the bases in the bottom of the 10^th inning in Game 1 of the World Series.

Freddie Freeman isn’t here to empty it, so I’ll take over.

You ask, I answer, and we have our latest sequel to the beloved 2008 blockbuster. I thought about editing for clarity, length and style, until I had a moment of clarity and decided against it.

Also, my mailbag clinches pennants and yours clutches pearls.

Can you get more specifics on Colton Cowser's hand surgery? Having broken my hand playing ball back in the day where I just got casted and healed for weeks, I am curious as to what they corrected with his surgery.
Sorry, but the Orioles aren’t sharing any information beyond how he had “successful surgery to repair a fractured left hand, and the procedure “was performed by Dr. Donald Sheridan in Phoenix, AZ,” and that the outfielder “is expected to be ready for spring training.” Anything else must come from Cowser during his next media availability.

Five days after the end of the World Series, which began last night, teams can sign free agents. It could be an active winter for the Orioles, who have two key free agents of their own hitting the market.

They are right-handed pitcher Corbin Burnes and right fielder Anthony Santander. Both are almost certain to get qualifying offers from the Orioles, which would net the team a draft pick if they leave and sign elsewhere.

The consensus opinions seem to be that Burnes is almost certain to leave while the O’s may have at least an outside shot at retaining Santander.

But if that were to come at the price from one prediction this week, I can’t see that happening.

Former big league general manager Jim Bowden predicted who top 45 free agents will be, where they end up and at what price in The Athletic this week (subscription may be required).

On the one hand, some complained about a lack of star-power last year when No. 5 seed Texas played No. 6 seed Arizona in a World Series matchup featuring teams that played in the Wild Card round.

This year is very different.

For just the fifth time since 1995, the World Series features the winningest clubs in each league. It is the first World Series pitting the major markets of New York and Los Angeles since 1981.

While some fans may not be excited about a Yankees-Dodgers matchup, the ratings figure to be good, maybe great. Last year’s five-game World Series with the Rangers and Diamondbacks was the least watched with an average audience of 9.08 million viewers.

According to a Forbes article, the TV ratings have been mostly good this year.

A common offseason activity for baseball media is flipping through pages of the last notebook used in search of tidbits that can be posted during slow times.

Any newsy or interesting nuggets that were missed or held. Notations that serve as reminders for later use.

I’m also reminded again that my handwriting looks like I’m wedging a pen between toes on a numb left foot.

Here’s a sampling of what I think that I found:

* A popular opinion inside the clubhouse is that Jordan Westburg provides some of the best at-bats on the team. He might string together the most among the bunch, which really impresses when you consider that 2024 was his first full season in the majors – not counting his time spent on the injured list.

During spring training, I asked O's center fielder Cedric Mullins to ponder a possibility. And that was that the 2024 season could be the last together for the trio of Mullins, Austin Hays and Anthony Santander. 

We knew then that Santander would be a free agent at the end of the season. We didn’t know then that Hays would be traded to the Philadelphia Phillies in July. The gang is already broken up.

On Opening Day next year, it’s possible that Mullins will stand alone. Hays is gone and Santander could be next.

“It’s has definitely popped into my head, that this could be the last go around,” Mullins told me during that March 2024 interview. “At the same time, we want this to be the best one if that is the case. We know how the business works. It is what it is. There is always that hope, that possibility that we stick around for the long haul. But if that is the case, let’s go out with a bang," said Mullins.

Winning 10 fewer games and winning none in the postseason is not what Mullins had in mind then.

Early this month, not long after the Orioles were eliminated from the American League playoffs by the Kansas City Royals, I expressed an opinion about the Orioles offense.

An offense that produced solid stats over the full season but fell off big time late in the year.

One way to break it down is with facts and going through a period where it was really good and then going through the period when it was not.

Through July 31, the Orioles were 65-44 (.596) with the third-best record in the majors. They were on a 97-win pace. In those 109 games, or 67 percent of the season, they scored 5.07 runs per game (third in MLB) and posted an OPS of .774 (first in MLB).

So, a top three record and offense.