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.

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.

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.

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.

Changes being made in the Orioles organization are happening beyond the coaching ranks and in the front office.

Head athletic trainer Brian Ebel isn’t coming back for the 2025 season, according to multiple sources. Ebel just completed his seventh season in the role and his 40^th in the organization.

Assistants Mark Shires and Patrick Wesley remain with the Orioles and could interview for the opening.

Ebel began his career in 1985 as head athletic trainer with the Rookie League Bluefield Orioles during his summer breaks from college. He was promoted to Class A Erie in 1988 and Double-A Hagerstown from 1989-91, and worked as minor league medical coordinator from 1992-96.

The Orioles put Ebel on their staff as an assistant in 1996, and he became head athletic trainer when Richie Bancells retired after the 2017 season.

Jumping around the baseball world with a few random notes and takes.

Well at least this year the narrative that the top teams don’t win in baseball and that it’s hard to have a five-day layoff before the playoffs for division winners, were blown all to heck.

We need a new narrative!

Last year wild card teams played in the World Series when No. 5 seed Texas beat No. 6 seed Arizona.

This year’s matchup is the top-seed New York Yankees from the American League and No. 1 seed Los Angeles Dodgers from the National League.

The Orioles have some important roster decisions coming soon. Within five days of the end of the World Series they have to decide if they will pick up club options for 2025 on a few players to include reliever Seranthony Domínguez.

It comes down to a $7.5 million dollar decision. He’ll get $8 million if they pick up his option and a $500,000 buyout if they do not.

Looking at his overall numbers for 2024, where Domínguez went 3-4 with a 4.45 ERA in 58 2/3 innings with a career-high 1.8 homers allowed per nine, you might say do not pick up this option at that price.

On the other hand, he was better with the Orioles than Phillies despite still giving up a lot of home runs and provides another big bullpen arm in the late innings to join returning Félix Bautista. The O’s are hopeful Bautista will be his old self but bringing back Domínguez could provide some buffer. And added depth.

The O’s added Domínguez and since departed outfielder Cristian Pache from the Phillies for outfielder Austin Hays on July 26.

When I wrote about the Orioles' success in the early years of the American League Championship Series, in this story on Friday, it was a fun story to do.

It reminded me of my youth and falling in love with this sport watching the likes of Brooks, Cakes, Frank and Boog. Earl Weaver was there to run the show and fire us all up. Four 20-game winners, four World Series appearances in six years from 1966 through 1971.

The young tyke wearing his school tie heading off each morning to St. Michael’s in Fullerton was excited to talk about the Orioles with his classmates. Maybe my first version of taking calls on the Orioles! With no commercial breaks!

In 1960, the Orioles, who of course played for the first time in Baltimore in 1954, had their first winning season. They won 89 games but were eight games out. The 1964 club won 97 and finished two games out. Remember, the teams with the best records in the American and National leagues went straight to the World Series back then. The 1966 Birds, now with Frank Robinson on the club, won 97 games and then swept the favored Los Angeles Dodgers in the World Series, pitching shutouts in games two, three and four.

It was the first of three WS wins for the Orioles to also include 1970 and 1983. 

The Orioles acquired Ryan O’Hearn from the Kansas City Royals on Jan. 3, 2023 for cash considerations. And now, whether he remains an Oriole in 2025, will have a lot to do with how they consider using their cash.

He has a $8.0 million dollar club option for next season. It was originally $7.5 million but that could expand by $500,000 if he exceeded 120 games played, which he did at 142.

On the one hand, some might consider that pricey after he played for $3.5 million last season, an amount that was settled in February to avoid an arbitration hearing. On the other hand is it that pricey for a key player who took 76 percent of his plate appearances in the 2024 season by hitting either third or fourth?

It's a decision the club must make within five days of the end of the World Series. 

He's a middle-of-the-order bat on a team with an above-average major league offense.

The month of October can be slow for teams that aren’t in the playoffs. That’s sort of the idea. The spotlight shines on the ones who remain in the championship chase. The others quietly take care of their business and wait until free agency begins and other important dates arrive. Big announcements are frowned upon.

The last Orioles transaction is left-hander Tucker Davidson choosing free agency on Oct. 7 after he was designated for assignment on Sept. 29. However, changes are being made in the front office.

According to a source, Bill Wilkes, Ben Sussman-Hyde and Sam Berk will not return to the advance scouting and strategy department in 2025.

Wilkes served as the Orioles' manager of major league strategy since October 2021 after spending three years as advance scouting operations manager. Sussman-Hyde was major league video/run creation strategist manager after three years as major league video/advance scouting coordinator. Berk finished his first year as an advance scouting analyst after his promotion from advance scouting fellow.

Director of baseball strategy Brendan Fournie remains in the department.

There was a time in Major League Baseball when there were no divisions – just the American League and National League. The two winners “won the pennant” and went to the World Series.

In MLB, the first “modern” World Series was in 1903 and one team from each league would play in the World Series through the 1968 season.

But that all changed in 1969 – the beginning of divisional play in baseball and now there was an AL East and AL West, same in the National League. Now four teams would make the playoffs. Now for the first time ever there would an American League Championship Series. It was a best-of-five series. That changed when it became best-of-seven in 1985.

The Orioles played in, hosted and won, the first AL Championship Series game on Oct. 4, 1969 at Memorial Stadium. Led by Earl Weaver, they beat manager Billy Martin’s Minnesota Twins 4-3 in 12 innings and went on to a three-game sweep.

In that first-ever ALCS contest, lefty Mike Cuellar (23-11) started for Baltimore and Jim Perry (20-6) for the Twins, who sported a lineup featuring Rod Carew, Harmon Killebrew and Tony Oliva.

Will a team be slugging their way to a World Series title over the next couple of weeks. Do home runs now play well in the playoffs?

For years a narrative was that teams that hit a lot of homers won’t in the playoffs and that type of offense won’t work.

Are the 2024 Orioles evidence of that. They finished second in the majors in homers this year but hit just one and lost two games to Kansas City scoring one run on that homer.

But other slugging teams are winning and have won. The 2023 Texas Rangers finished the 2023 regular season third in the majors in homers and OPS (.790) and runs per game at 5.44.

On their way to the World Series, they swept the Orioles three straight out-homered them 5-3 in that series. For the postseason Texas hit 30 homers in 17 games, produced a .792 OPS and averaged 5.70 runs per game. They put up big offense during the year and in the postseason too. Their postseason team ERA was a respectable 3.83 and sure you are going to need some solid pitching too.

As the Orioles didn’t win as much in the final months of the season, the focus was often on the offense which was not performing at earlier levels.

But also, during those last two months and the in the postseason the team was without a key rotation pitcher (several of course) in right-hander Grayson Rodriguez.

Up until he got scratched for a start Aug. 6 at Toronto right before game time, he was having a pretty solid season. And I will post some stats later that make it look like he is trending toward becoming a top-of-rotation starter. Maybe Rodriguez will turn out to be that next ace the organization drafted, developed and produced.

His last start this season was July 31 and then he was out with right lat/teres discomfort, a similar injury that cost him three months on the farm during 2022. The O’s were hopeful he would get back late in the year, but he didn’t make it. He is expected to be a 100 percent full go to start 2025.

Rodriguez went 13-4 with a 3.86 ERA over 20 starts in 2024. In 116 2/3 innings he posted a 1.243 WHIP with a 2.8 walks per nine and 10.0 strikeouts.

Colton Cowser has a chance to be special in two more ways in 2024.

Cowser is trying to become the first Orioles outfielder chosen as the American League’s Rookie of the Year since Al Bumbry in 1973. Bumbry is remembered as a center fielder but he made 58 starts in left and 24 in right. He didn’t have more than one start in center until 1976 – making 53 in center and left.

Infielder Gunnar Henderson was named Rookie of the Year in 2023, reliever Gregg Olson in 1989, infielder Cal Ripken Jr. in 1982 and designated hitter/ first baseman Eddie Murray in 1977.

The Orioles never had a left fielder win a Gold Glove, but Cowser is a finalist. Rawlings began distinguishing outfield positions in 2011, but eight-time winner Paul Blair was a center fielder.

(Props if you remember the one game that Blair played at third base in 1968. He didn’t start but he totaled eight innings and committed an error.)