For as good a year as Kansas City’s Bobby Witt Jr. had and same for the Yankees Juan Soto, we knew they were not going to win the American League's MVP award. On Thursday that went to New York’s Aaron Judge, who got all 30 first-place votes as a unanimous selection.

Witt was second in the voting, Soto was third and the Orioles' Gunnar Henerson was fourth. A strong showing for the Baltimore shortstop, who was eighth in the AL MVP vote in 2023 when he was the AL Rookie of the Year.

Soto finished with 229 points in the balloting by the Baseball Writers’ Association of America and Gunnar was at 208. On six of 30 ballots, the writer placed Henderson third, ahead of Soto.

What O’s fan would not celebrate that?

An Oriole being voted on a few ballots ahead of a Yankee, especially one with hot dog tendencies that has the cocky approach of Soto.

We’ve entered a fresh week and the Orioles, like so many other teams, are waiting to make that huge strike in free agency or via a trade. The 40-man roster underwent some adjustments. Arbitration-eligible players were tendered contracts. Some minor league depth moves have been completed, with more to come.

Executive vice president/general manager Mike Elias appeared yesterday on MLB Network Radio, and he barely heard his introduction before a host playfully asked when he would announce his first big move of the offseason.

“You want to do it right now?” Elias asked, playing along with the bit. “I’ve got to make one first.”

Talks were held at the general managers meetings in San Antonio and will heat up again at next month’s Winter Meetings in Dallas. Elias is talking to other executives and to agents. But the shopping list remains the same.

“We’re working on it,” he said.

In the Orioles' search for a top-of-the-rotation type starting pitcher, they could turn back to a pitcher whose name came up a lot at the midseason trade deadline – lefty Garret Crochet. 

Baseball insiders feel he is a prime trade prospect right now. He has two years of team control left for the Chicago White Sox, but they are not likely to win much in those two seasons. He could help them more in the future when they hope to be better by acquiring young position player talent to help them down the road.

To get Crochet for the next two years, a team will have to part with some premium talent very likely. If the Orioles were willing to part with one of Jackson Holliday, Coby Mayo, Samuel Basallo or Heston Kjerstad they could get the White Sox's attention. But that is a pretty big if. Very big.

MLB Network insider Jon Heyman recently said four clubs - the Orioles, Red Sox, Dodgers and Phillies - are showing the most interest in acquiring the left-hander.

Crochet, age 25, went 6-12 with a 3.58 ERA for a 121-loss team. Over 146 innings he allowed 123 hits with a 1.068 WHIP with 2.0 walks per nine and 12.9 strikeouts. He didn’t have enough innings to qualify for league leaders but would have been first in K/9, sixth in WHIP and 10^th in opponent OPS at .642.

The mailbag is stuffed again like a Thanksgiving turkey.

I’ll do my best to provide answers but at times will just have to wing it.

This is the latest sequel to the beloved 2008 original. Editing rules are trashed like a two-week-old green bean casserole.

Also, my mailbag carves the turkey at the head of the table and your mailbag heats up a Hungry Man dinner.

Which unprotected players are most vulnerable in the Rule 5 draft?
Before I begin, let’s remember that losing a player in the Rule 5 draft doesn’t mean he won’t come back to the organization. It’s hard to carry one throughout a season. OK, pitcher Alex Pham is the No. 25 prospect in the system per MLB Pipeline and he had 138 strikeouts in 119 innings at Double-A Bowie. Reliever Keagan Gillies had a 4.94 ERA with the Baysox, but he fanned 54 in 47 1/3 innings and surrendered only four home runs. He’s averaging 11.4 strikeouts per nine innings in the minors. He’s an interesting guy, but again, challenging to stash in a major league ‘pen.

ANNAPOLIS, Md. – So now the score is 2-2. There are two Orioles full-season affiliates that use a very specific home name, as in the Triple-A Norfolk Tides and the High-A Aberdeen IronBirds. Now two have a more regional look: the Low-A Delmarva Shorebirds and, as of yesterday, the Double-A Chesapeake Baysox, formerly the Bowie Baysox.

“I think when we looked at where our fans are coming from, we wanted to be inclusive of the entire Chesapeake Bay watershed,” said Brian Shallcross, in his 20^th year as Baysox general manager. “We saw people coming from the Eastern Shore, west of the Potomac. We were surprised when we dug into the stats of just how far and ranging our fanbase was. We wanted to be inclusive of all those fans without forgetting our roots.”

Shallcross noted that the club went through a two-year process to change the name and meet all Major League Baseball approvals. The Orioles were involved throughout. They don’t own this team, but it’s their farm system.

So, what changes now?

“Well, I think what changes, basically, is we want to make sure that everybody knows they are welcome in our ballpark," Shallcross said. "Anywhere within the Chesapeake - and, heck, you saw we’ve sold tickets to fans from 42 states and Maryland – but anywhere, really, in the watershed we want to be welcoming and a destination.”

The Orioles have made the following roster moves:

• Tendered 2025 contracts to LHP Keegan Akin, RHP Kyle Bradish, RHP Dean Kremer, INF/OF Jorge Mateo, INF Ryan Mountcastle, OF Cedric Mullins, LHP Trevor Rogers, C Adley Rutschman, LHP Gregory Soto, INF Ramón Urías, and RHP Tyler Wells, as well as all pre-arbitration 40-man players.
• Agreed to terms with INF Emmanuel Rivera on a one-year contract for the 2025 season, avoiding arbitration.
• Declined to tender a contract to RHP Jacob Webb, allowing him to become a free agent.

The Orioles’ 40-man roster currently has 38 players.

ANNAPOLIS, Md. – The Orioles current longest-running minor league affiliation is with their Double-A team since 1993, the Bowie Baysox. And as of this morning, the team has a new name, the Chesapeake Baysox.

The team found during the 2024 season, that it welcomed fans from 378 zip codes and all 23 counties across the state of Maryland and from 43 states nationwide.

To better reflect its regional drawing power, the Bowie-based team now becomes the Chesapeake Baysox. The club will remain at Prince George’s Stadium where it holds a long-term lease to continue as home base.

Today’s announcement, at The Chesapeake Bay Foundation in Annapolis, was made by Attain Sports CEO Greg Baroni. The announcement was attended by Orioles executive vice president and general manager Mike Elias and director of minor league operations Kent Qualls.

Attain Sports, which purchased the Baysox in January of 2022, also just recently bought a controlling interest in the O’s High-A Aberdeen IronBirds club with the Ripken family maintaining an ownership stake. Attain also owns the Frederick Keys of the MLB Draft League, the Spire City Ghost Hounds of the Atlantic League and Loudoun of the United Soccer League.

There is publicly available data from outlets like FanGraphs.com and BaseballSavant.com that can provide us some, shall we say, just beyond the basic stats information.

My curiosity yesterday led me to this question: How did opponents pitch the Orioles this season? Did they get more fastballs than other teams saw or less? Which pitches did they see more than others?

Here is what the O's batters were thrown this year and how that ranked in MLB and the ranking is from first (as in they saw the most fastballs to 30th, they saw the least) to least.

* Fastballs - 47.6 percent, 16th in MLB.

* Sliders - 20.1 percent, 30th in MLB.

For eight players from the Orioles organization, the 2024 Arizona Fall League provided some nice high-level additional experience. Not only did they play on a Surprise Saguaros team that had the best record in the six-team league at 18-10, they played in the AFL championship game.

Salt River beat Surprise 3-2, but players got in extra work the last few weeks that could benefit them down the road.

The Fall League experience was also nice for Surprise manager Roberto Mercado, who managed the Orioles High-A Aberdeen teams in 2022 and 2023 and was skipper this past season at Double-A Bowie.

The Baysox were 62-75 this season. Aberdeen went 147-120 in his two seasons there, advancing to the playoffs in a 2022 season which ended with Mercado being named the O’s Cal Ripken Sr. Player Development Award winner.

A former head coach at New Britian High School in Connecticut, who has several years' experience also coaching in the Cape Cod League, Mercado managed an AFL team featuring prospects from the Orioles, Astros, Guardians, Royals and Rangers.

I’m about 2 ½ weeks past my open-heart surgery and progress is slow but steady.

I just typed that sentence without having to lie down.

The heavier lifting comes as we move into December, into a new year and to Sarasota for spring training. The 40-man roster has 39 players and the Orioles have multiple items remaining on their shopping list. They also need to hire a bench coach and major league coach.

Let’s look at four more topics and decisions hovering around the Orioles, with you, the reader, telling me how they’re going to turn out.

John Means is rehabbing from his second Tommy John surgery and he’s a first-timer on the free-agent market. He has a second child on the way and the same desire to pitch.

The pending move from Nippon Professional Baseball to Major League Baseball by right-handed pitcher Roki Sasaki could create some chaos with MLB’s system to sign international amateurs.

Currently teams get limited pool amounts to sign these players, some as young as age 16. It is essentially a hard cap on the total amount a team can spend.

The issue here is that, at 23, Sasaki is too young to qualify to be signed as a “foreign professional” and he instead will be signed, per MLB rules, as an “international amateur” meaning he will be signed as a minor league free agent.

He is getting at most, the entire amount in the pool of the team he picks to sign with. In the international signing period that runs thru this Dec. 15, the Los Angeles Dodgers have the largest remaining pool amount, at $2,502,500 with the Orioles next at $2,147,300 followed by the New York Yankees at $1,487,200 and then San Francisco at $1,247,500.

Sasaki has not even been posted yet and that could lead his actual signing to occur after the beginning of a new international signing period on Jan. 15, 2025. At that point the bonus pools reset for all clubs for the Jan. 15 signing class. The top pools for several teams will have amounts of $7.555 million. The Orioles are in a group of teams that will have $6.908 million to spend.

The Orioles have made the following roster moves:

• Selected the contracts of RHP Kade Strowd and RHP Brandon Young from Triple-A Norfolk.

The Orioles’ 40-man roster currently has 39 players.

RHP Corbin Burnes and OF Anthony Santander have declined the club’s qualifying offers for the 2025 season.

When it comes to the Orioles offense, a much, much discussed topic in Birdland since the 2024 season ended, there are a variety of opinions.

Holding the one that counts most, Orioles executive vice president and general manager Mike Elias expressed his take on the Baltimore offense last Friday – the same day he announced the left-field wall was being moved in for next season.

That should help the team score more runs, but they were never lacking in homers actually, finishing second in the AL and MLB last year with 235.

Maybe the closer wall will help the O’s pursue a right-handed hitter via free agency, although Elias said that was not the reason for the move. This was more about the long-term and a continuing effort to get the home park to play more neutral with offense.

On a related matter, will the O’s offensive philosophy be changing, Elias was asked.

If the Orioles do not re-sign right-hander Corbin Burnes and are not in the final hunt for lefty Max Fried and find that Roki Sasaki gets posted but signs with another team, there is still another stud pitcher out there to potentially sign.

He is a two-time Cy Young Award winner with huge strikeout numbers and was the best pitcher in the majors last season starting July 9. Did we mention he does not have a qualifying offer attached to him and no draft picks would be lost for signing him?

He is lefty Blake Snell, who in, what could be his one year with San Francisco, went 5-3 with a 3.12 ERA over 20 starts and 104 innings.

A Scott Boras client, Snell had designs on a $200 million dollar or more deal last winter via free agency. But he did not get that and signed very late, during training, with the Giants for a two-year deal and $62 million. It included an opt out after this past season and he has taken that.

Snell got off to a terrible start after signing late. He had a 9.51 ERA after his first six starts and made injured list stints with a left adductor strain and left groin strain. 

The Orioles don’t have much of a presence in this week’s Baseball Writers’ Association of America Awards. Tonight is their one chance at a winner.

Colton Cowser is a finalist for American League Rookie of the Year with Yankees pitcher Luis Gil and catcher Austin Wells.

The BBWAA doesn’t provide odds, which would give away the result and kill the drama. However, Cowser feels like the favorite as an everyday player with the offensive and defensive resume. Gil is the stiffest competition.

Cowser, 24, already earned the Players Choice award last month as the league’s Outstanding Rookie after batting .242/.321.447 with 24 doubles, three triples, 24 home runs, 69 RBIs and 52 walks in 153 games. He became the third Oriole in four years to be recognized following Ryan Mountcastle in 2021 and Gunnar Henderson in 2023. Adley Rutschman was a finalist in 2022.

The 172 strikeouts present an area for improvement in camp and during the upcoming season. Colton can get started on it after his left hand heals from surgery to repair a fracture.

The hurricane damage to the roof of Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg will send the Tampa Bay Rays to a new home for the 2025 season.

When Hurricane Milton tore through Florida on Oct. 9, the storm's winds destroyed a large portion of Tropicana Field's fiberglass roof. 

The Rays will play their home games for next season at Steinbrenner Field in Tampa, which is about 20 miles from Tropicana Field. The Yankees use Steinbrenner Field as their spring training home, and that will continue. They also have a Low-A Florida State League team that uses that facility, and that will also continue, although they are expected to use other fields and not the stadium field. There are more than 40 days when the Rays and Tampa Tarpons will both be scheduled to play at Steinbrenner Field. 

The Rays will continue to hold spring training at Charlotte Sports Park in Port Charlotte. Their first regular-season homestand will take place at Steinbrenner Field. They host Colorado on Opening Day March 27 and play the Rockies and Pittsburgh in those first six home games. Tampa Bay will play 16 of its first 22 games next season in their temporary home at Steinbrenner Field.

Next season the Orioles are scheduled to play the Rays on the road June 16-19 for four games, and they will play a three-game series versus the Rays in Tampa from July 18-20, the first series out of the All-Star break.

The Orioles today announced their 2024 Holiday Gift Guide, featuring a variety of ticket offers, gift cards, merchandise, and Birdland Memberships, ensuring there is something to make every O’s fan happy this holiday season. 

Fans can get a head start on their holiday shopping during the Orioles Team Store Black Friday Sale on Friday, November 29, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Deals will include 40 percent off all men’s, women’s, and kids’ apparel, with the exclusion of jerseys, as well as 40 percent off all headwear. The first 150 customers at the Team Store will receive an Orioles Holiday Ornament and fans who spend $150 or more will get an Orioles Holiday Mini Bat. All fans who make a purchase will have the opportunity to spin the O’s Holiday Prize Wheel. Complimentary parking will be available in the North Warehouse Lot. For more information, visit Orioles.com/TeamStore.

GIFTS FOR EVERY FAN

City Connect Bomber Jacket

Get ready for winter, and March baseball, with the brand-new City Connect Bomber Jacket. The nylon bomber jacket features Baltimore across the chest, allowing fans to show off their hometown pride. The jackets are available in-person at the Orioles Team Store.

For some pro baseball players, a long, long season will end tonight in the Arizona Fall League championship game. O’s top 30 prospect Creed Willems is one of that group.

Spring training was a long time ago and so was his Opening Day with High-A Aberdeen April 5. It was a year where he missed several weeks mid-summer with a left hamstring injury. But he also advanced to Double-A Bowie for the season’s final 16 games. He put up a .784 OPS between the IronBirds and Baysox. He’s had a strong 19-game run for Surprise in the AFL, which hosts tonight’s championship game at 8 p.m. ET on MLB Network.

Then he will drive home to Texas and finally get some rest after a solid season for the O’s No. 22 prospect via MLBPipeline.com and No. 25 on Baseball America.

A catcher and lefty hitter, the O’s drafted Willems in round eight of the 2021 MLB Draft. He had a strong college commitment to TCU. But an over-slot $1 million dollar signing bonus sent him on his way to pro ball.

In 19 games for Surprise in the AFL, he’s hit a robust .338/.391/.500/.891 with five doubles, a triple, two homers and 11 RBIs. He played in the Fall Stars game.

The big news yesterday wasn’t a free-agent signing or trade. It wasn’t impactful to the 40-man roster.

Maybe later.

Moving in and lowering the left field wall makes it easier to recruit right-handed hitters who otherwise might grew frustrated by fly balls dying on the track. The Oriole bird logo should be replaced by Ryan Mountcastle tilting back his head.

Orioles hitters lost 72 home runs over the last three years, according to Baseball Savant. Pitchers are happy. Batters are boiling.

The club isn’t returning to the old dimensions. The field will be tilted more toward neutral with the wall brought in as much as 20 feet and as little as nine.