Maybe it was the appetizer before the main course. Three members of the Orioles picked up awards via the Sporting News yesterday. Once considered the key authority and publication on baseball, these awards have been handed out by TSN since 1936.

For the second year in a row, Brandon Hyde was named American League Manager of the Year by the outlet. Gunnar Henderson was named AL Rookie of the Year and Mike Elias was named MLB Executive of the Year.

So, Baltimore gets honors for the front office, dugout and clubhouse. Not bad and well deserved after 101 wins and an AL East championship.

All three could win similar honors from other outlets.

The sport's official awards so to speak, from the Baseball Writers' Association of America, come out next month. This year I voted for AL Manager of the Year, and we are asked not to reveal how we voted until the awards are announced.

Major League Baseball moved to a 12-team playoff field, six from each league, for the 2022 season. We have just two years under the new format.

But after the Orioles pushed so hard and worked so hard for so long to hold off Tampa Bay and win the AL East, they would join three other teams that had five days off getting byes in the wild card round, by losing in the Division Series.

In two years under this format, teams that won 100 or more games have gone 1-5 in the Division Series. 

Last year the top seeds were Houston and the New York Yankees in the AL and Atlanta and the Los Angeles Dodgers in the NL. They went a combined 2-2 in the Division Series.

This year the top seeds were Baltimore, Houston, Atlanta and the Dodgers and they went 1-3 in the DS. 

The 2023 season got off to a good start for the Orioles' Ryan Mountcastle. But it didn’t stay that way. On April 11 at Camden Yards, he tied a team single-game record with nine RBIs versus the Athletics. He homered twice in the game and hit a grand slam. An Oriole with nine RBIs had happened before just twice since the team moved to Baltimore in 1954. Jim Gentile drove in nine runs May 9, 1961 at Minnesota. And Eddie Murray did the same on Aug. 26, 1985 at California.

“Two greats,” Mountcastle told reporters that night of the first nine-RBI game in the majors since 2020. “To tie them in, I guess, any category is super special, pretty cool.”

So that was a special game and Mounty looked prime to have a big year.

And then he struggled and struggled some more. In early June, we learned he was dealing with the effects of vertigo, and he didn’t play again until July 9. When he took the field that day, he was batting .227 for the year with an OPS of .686.

Fans were not only questioning his presence in the lineup daily but also his future on the team in the long term. His critics seemed vast and were loud. When the season ended, we heard the sounds of mostly silence.

For the Baltimore Orioles - a division champion coming off 101 wins, a team with higher expectations than they've had in years and a team with a talented young roster - it's nice to have options.

And I don't mean player options, although that roster flexibility is always important for any club.

No, I mean options for the front office. I mean choices. As they look to improve this club there are a lot of different directions they can go to look to do that.

There were no glaring weaknesses on the 2023 Orioles. There are no areas that you can say this team better have this or that or they won't win again.

One of the strengths of the '23 club was that it had a lot of strengths. They were good home and road. They were strong in close games. They scored the fourth most runs in the AL and finished fifth in team ERA. They finished first in team ERA in the second half. The defense featured playmakers. They even ran the bases pretty well. They had plenty of young talent and more is on the way.

The Orioles averaged 4.98 runs per game in the 2023 season to rank fourth in the American League and seventh-best in the majors among the 30 teams. 

Only six teams this year averaged 5.00 runs per game or better for the full year. The Orioles came up just short of that scoring 807. That was seventh-most in team history and the most since the 2004 O's team scored 842.

Here are the six teams that outscored the Orioles this year.

5.85 - Atlanta
5.59 - Los Angeles Dodgers
5.44 - Texas
5.31 - Tampa Bay
5.10 - Houston
5.06 - Chicago Cubs

The Orioles were keeping pretty good company being among this group. Had they scored just three more runs to finish with 810, they would have averaged exactly 5.00 runs per game.

Emptying out the mailbag isn’t as easy as it sounds. Questions are missed or held, the latter to keep the post at a reasonable length.

I’m not worried about breaking the internet. Just your spirit.

Here are some leftovers from last week, with a smattering of newbies. Enjoy my disregard for editing. And be aware that my mailbag leads the parade, and your mailbag follows the elephant with a shovel.

Is the Orioles 49-game improvement over two seasons the record now?
The Orioles tied the 1890-92 Cleveland Spiders for seventh, according to STATS. The 1884-86 Detroit Wolverines are first with a 59-game improvement. In more modern baseball times, the 1981-83 Blue Jays improved by 52 games. However, the ’81 season was shortened by the players’ strike that lasted from June 12-July 31.

Is the rotation or bullpen the No. 1 offseason priority?
Don’t know whether the Orioles post official rankings. The business can be conducted simultaneously. Whatever gets done first is first. And bullpens tend to be a little easier based on cost and supply.

Yes, it is the first time this offseason that we put some specific questions your way. Every day here is an open forum for topics on the Orioles. Today we get a bit more specific about it.

It was quite the season for Birdland in 2023. And while there is disappointment with the playoffs still going on without Baltimore, there is plenty of optimism for more winning in the future.

The O's went 101-61 to finish with the second-best record in the majors and best record in the American League for the first time since 1997. The 101 wins tied the 1971 Orioles for fourth-most in club history. The O's posted back-to-back winning seasons for the first time since 2013-2014. The Orioles won their 10th AL East title.

“It was a really successful season," said manager Brandon Hyde at his season-ending press conference. "You know, overcoming so many odds and obstacles that were against us and so many people thinking that we weren’t going to be a playoff team. Then all of a sudden we win 101 games and the American League East. That says a lot about a lot of people in the organization and the guys in our clubhouse. So, really proud of that.

“We had so many awesome moments. Huge wins. And close wins. And the amount of close games we played was ridiculous. And how we won some games during the season, it was just a total team effort, and that was how we played all year. The postseason, we just didn’t play our best and ran into a little bit of a buzz saw, but I’m going to have great memories of this team.”

On an Orioles team that produced 101 wins, their first 100-win year since 1980, along with making the postseason for the first time since 2016 and winning the division for the first time since 2014, several veteran players made key contributions.

But the Orioles have five free agents and all five could be playing somewhere else in the 2024 season. Infielder Adam Frazier played in 141 games and had an OPS of just .696, but that number was .932 with runners in scoring position. Outfielder Aaron Hicks is a free agent also but his OPS was .806 in 65 O’s games.

On the pitching side, right-hander Kyle Gibson is a free agent after leading the team with 15 wins, 33 starts and 192 innings. He tied for third in the AL in wins and was sixth in innings. He was a leader in the clubhouse and outside of it as seen by his Roberto Clemente Award nomination. The guy sure gives back – within the clubhouse and outside of it.

I see value in having Gibson back on the team to provide pitching depth. I just have concerns of a price tag of $10 million or more for such depth. Hard to put a dollar figure on what his mentorship for young pitchers and leadership for all players meant. But the club might have to look somewhere else for the same thing next year if they decide to try and get what he brings at a lower price.

Pitchers Jack Flaherty and Shintaro Fujinami are also free agents. It’s hard to see a scenario where the club pursues Flaherty, but maybe there is one out there. Fuji was given every chance to hold down a spot in high-leverage relief and spent a few nights looking like a steal. And a few looking like much less than that. I say the O’s let him walk and look for more consistency elsewhere, even if it comes in a package that doesn’t feature a 100 mph fastball.

Maybe even the Pecota projection system will expect the Orioles to be good in the 2024 season. Yeah, crazy talk, I know.

When the 2024 season begins the Orioles will have an opponent that is hard to define and one that has no win-loss record or playoff appearances. There are no advanced stats or metrics for it. It is expectations.

For the first time in a long time the team will be expected to do well and maybe even favored to win the AL East. This is uncharted territory for the Orioles in recent years.

Even the 2023 team, which had a stated goal to take the 83 wins from the year before, build on that and make the playoffs, had plenty of doubters.

The scores of the games will tell us that the Orioles offense had its problems late in the 2023 season. They scored two runs or less seven times in the last 11 regular-season games. They did that twice more in the American League Division Series as they scored three runs total in games one and three.

But if we were to judge this offense over the full season, it likely ends up getting decent or better grades. Unless you consider ranking fourth in the American League and seventh in MLB at 4.98 runs per game not good enough. It was not good enough to be first or the best, but it was better than most. It was well above the AL average of 4.55 runs per game.

The average AL team scored 738 runs this year. The Orioles scored 807. That was seventh-most in team history and the most since the 2004 O's team scored 842.

So, in the best stat to judge offense, they scored well.

The Orioles ranked sixth in the AL in team batting average (.255), tied for seventh in OBP (.321), seventh in slugging (.421) and eighth in OPS (.742).

The Orioles will try again for their first multiple Rawlings Gold Glove Award winners since 2014.

They have three candidates this year – catcher Adley Rutschman, first baseman Ryan Mountcastle and left fielder Austin Hays.

Rutschman is pitted against the Rangers’ Jonah Heim and the Blue Jays’ Alejandro Kirk. Mountcastle joins the Yankees’ Anthony Rizzo and the Rangers’ Nathaniel Lowe. Hays joins the Blue Jays’ Daulton Varsho and the Guardians’ Steven Kwan.

Winners are determined from voting by the managers and coaches in each league who are prohibited from choosing their own players. A sabermetric component accounts for about 25 percent of the vote total.

The results will be announced on Nov. 5 beginning at 7:30 p.m. on ESPN’s “Baseball Tonight.”

According to the Orioles postseason media guide there are seven hitters in the American League the last two years that have produced 250+ hits, 150+ runs, 100+ walks, and 60+ homers.

The list includes Houston’s Yordan Álvarez, Boston’s Rafael Devers, Adolis García and Corey Seager of Texas, the New York Yankees Aaron Judge, Shohei Ohtani of the Los Angeles and one other player. The Orioles’ Anthony Santander. That is one solid group of hitters he is keeping company with.

For me being on that list and for other good reasons, makes it a no brainer that Santander is offered salary arbitration by the Orioles this winter, as his salary is due to rise from $7.4 million this year to $12.7 million next season via MLBTradeRumors.com projections.

There may have been a time a few years ago that Santander would have priced himself out of Baltimore at that dollar amount. But barring something that would be a real stunner, this is not that time. They still need this guy.

There may have been a time when a player just one year before free agency – as Santander is now – might look to be traded by the club. Get something for him before he can leave, is that thinking. But don’t they need this bat right now? Even, in a worst-case scenario and he did leave via free agency after the 2024 season, don’t the Orioles badly need Santander to keep winning next year? To make another postseason run?

The task of constructing a 26-man roster for 2024, and it’s never too early to begin the process through staff meetings, is easier in some ways for Orioles executive vice president/general manager Mike Elias.

The backup catcher already is in place with another season left on the four-year deal that James McCann signed with the Mets. The Orioles usually hold a camp competition that involves players on one-year contracts and minor league deals, or with salaries set via the arbitration process. But next spring’s drama will be reduced to determining who’s the next man up in case of injury.

Anthony Bemboom headed north with the team again after McCann went on the IL with a left oblique strain.

The outfield already is crowded and Elias could be dissuaded from pursuing a veteran. He’s got to figure out how to potentially fit Colton Cowser and Heston Kjerstad. Not to block them.

The infield also is deep, and Jackson Holliday has a chance to make the Opening Day roster. Second baseman Connor Norby put up big numbers in Triple-A. Third baseman Coby Mayo mashed in Double-A and Triple-A, hitting a combined .290/.410/.564 with 45 doubles, three triples, 29 home runs and 99 RBIs in 140 games, and earning Most Valuable Player honors in the Eastern League.

There must have been times this summer when left-hander Dayton Lane Hall, once a highly-ranked Orioles pitching prospect, felt he might not make a return to the majors this year. Much less be on a playoff roster and pitch well in the postseason.

But his five-plus weeks spent in Florida in midsummer to build arm strength and get his fastball velocity back in the final analysis were five truly productive weeks for Hall.

He began this year at Triple-A Norfolk and was the 27^th man on the O’s roster for a doubleheader April 29 versus Detroit. But after that game, his next big league appearance would be nearly four months away. A back injury that limited him during spring training was such that he never fully regained his fastball velocity or strength. The Orioles sent him to Florida to find both. And while he was out of sight, out of mind for a while there, he never stopped working and always had pitching in key games late this year for the Orioles as a motivator.

He was in Florida from mid-June to early August and finally returned to pitch in games again July 25 in the Florida Complex League. Then he rejoined Triple-A on Aug. 5 and three weeks later was back with the Orioles. 

“It was a lot of working out and rehabbing,” he said of his time in Sarasota. “Just trying to get the stability back in my legs and back and just really crushing the weight room. It was something I couldn’t do when I was hurt. Couldn’t lift weights. I was trying to pitch at the beginning of the year without lifting and didn’t really have my strength. So I just focused on getting stronger down there.

One thing that has been true about fans throughout Birdland for a long time: They love it when national media reporters and outlets say nice things about their team, and some get really hacked when they do not. Or say something perceived as a slight.

My opinion is that MLB Network was on the O’s bandwagon pretty much throughout the 2023 season. The coverage was extensive and they were bullish on the Orioles just about from the start to the end of the season.

That continues even after the Orioles got swept three in a row by Texas in the American League Division Series.

A theme about the Orioles is that the team is just beginning its window to chase championships for the next few Octobers and maybe longer.

But on the network on Friday, former major league general manager Dan O’Dowd had a few suggestions for the Orioles to consider this winter. It will not come as a surprise that one of them is that the club should add to its major league roster by making deals from their fertile and No. 1-ranked farm system.

It used to be said that the Orioles worrying about a closer was akin – as opposed to Keegan Akin, which wasn’t said – to putting shiny hubcaps on a rusted Ford Pinto.

They had far bigger issues than worrying about ninth inning leads. Like, trying to get a ninth inning lead.

But we’ve moved past bad teams. The Orioles won 101 games this season. They are expected to be the favorites to win the division again in 2024. Their odds to win the World Series won’t be 100/1.

The Orioles have tried their own relievers in the past, most recently Félix Bautista, who went from imposing setup man to imposing closer and made the All-Star team. Averaged an obscene 16.2 strikeouts per nine innings and entered the Cy Young conversation before tearing the ulnar collateral ligament in his right elbow and undergoing surgery that removes him from next year’s roster.

Jorge López went from starter to closer before Bautista replaced him. Jim Johnson was a minor league starter in the Orioles’ system and later a closer who saved 50-plus games in back-to-back seasons. Zack Britton was Zach Britton while starting and later closing for the Orioles, going 47-for-47 in 2016 and finishing fourth in Cy Young voting.

For Orioles right-hander Kyle Bradish, who pitched like an ace during the 2023 season, a key start along the way to doing that came on the West Coast in early June. He faced the San Francisco Giants. He would last just four innings and allow seven hits and three runs.

It was not a terrible start, but a short one, and it left Bradish with a 4.13 ERA after his first 10 starts of the season. Not a bad ERA at all, but it would get a lot better for him after that outing against the Giants.

“I'd say kind of the turning point was my outing in San Francisco," Bradish said before his start in Game 1 of the American League Division Series. "I had a rough inning and then got taken out in the fourth, and kind of there had a mindset shift. Just knowing that I can't keep doing that. It's hurting the bullpen, hurting the team. Just going out there, working for a quality start every time was kind of the mindset after that.”

The results that followed that start were stunning.

Over his last 20 games, he went 10-5 with a 2.31 ERA, a .191 batting average against, a .548 OPS allowed and 0.92 WHIP.

When the Orioles went to a six-man rotation late in the season this year it proved to be pretty important. How much so? At his season-ending press conference yesterday manager Brandon Hyde didn't pull punches on it.

Said Hyde: “For me, when we decided to go to a six-man rotation, that possibly was a season-saver. Because I feel like all those guys, that was kind of crunch time a little bit. And, it allowed all those guys to get an extra day. And they showed what they could be like when they were rested, and I think it was the right thing to do for every one of them because they were flying over their innings (totals from the previous year) because they were pitching so well and we needed them. So, for me, that was a huge part of our season, when we made that decision at that point.

“I’m excited about our rotation going forward. I’m not sure what’s going to happen from a roster standpoint, but I know that we have some guys in there that had great experience this year and had really good seasons. And are still really young in their career. Just go back at what Tyler Wells did in the first half. And what he did the last week of the season. Unbelievable. Arguably, our best starting pitcher of the first half, and showed the stuff he had out of the bullpen a couple of years ago.

“Our starting pitching is up and coming. And I think they are only going to get better.”

The extra innings some pitchers threw this year and pitching into October should benefit this group next season, even if they gave up 13 runs in eight combined October innings in three playoff games.

Since Jordan Westburg struck out at Globe Life Field on Tuesday night and the Rangers' sweep of the Orioles in the American League Division Series became final, there have been a few opinions expressed as to why they lost, how they lost and what went wrong.

OK, not a few, but an avalanche of opinions. Just when you think you can’t possibly hear or read another take, there will be one. No shortage of opinions, ranging - in my own opinion - from very possible and pertinent to flat out crazy. Whackadoo territory.

But the thing about a sports opinion is that no one is 100 percent right or wrong or can be proven that. They are opinions and in a social-media, sports-talk, hot-take world, it seems everyone has one. Some express them in interesting ways too.

Theories of why the Orioles lost include:

* Not enough playoff experience.

ARLINGTON, Texas - For the Orioles there was sort of a clear theme to their postgame interviews last night after the Game 3 loss to Texas. The Rangers took an early 6-0 lead on their way to a 7-1 win and a series sweep in the American League Division Series.

Proud of a very good season and AL East championship. But also hoping and truly believing this is just the first step for this talented group of players.

They got swept three straight by Texas and the country didn't get to see the Orioles that we saw most of the year. Take the experience and learn from it. Use it as motivation to return next season and go farther.

"We have a lot of guys who have never been to the postseason before. So, this hurts and it's okay to hurt," manager Brandon Hyde said. "It's okay to have this kind of fuel to your fire in the off-season. It's going to take a while for us to get over this a little bit. But I think our guys will come in hunting and hungry in spring training. The guys coming back, especially the young guys, know what this feels like, know what it tastes like, and it sucks. If they did soak it in a little bit, they're going to be better for it down the road."

Outfielder Austin Hays expressed similar sentiments. I asked him when he has time this offseason to look back on the 2023 season, what will come to mind?