On paper, the Baltimore Orioles are worse right now than they were last season.
Losing two All-Stars who were their most productive players in the pitching staff and lineup certainly will make any team look like a lesser version of themselves. That has been the point of criticism levied at general manager Mike Elias entering the spring, with a clear hole at the top of their rotation and high-risk, high-reward replacements on offense.
But, there is reason to believe the Orioles are actually better equipped to take a step forward this year.
It’s no secret Baltimore has accrued some of the best young talent in Major League Baseball through elite drafting, savvy buy-low trades and top-notch development.
With the majority of their superstar prospects now reaching The Show, the ceiling on this team is greater than it’s ever been during their resurgence the past two seasons.
Sure, all those youngsters have to prove they can do it at the MLB level, with Jackson Holliday, Coby Mayo and Heston Kjerstad needing to reach the same type of production that Gunnar Henderson, Adley Rutschman, Jordan Westburg and Colton Cowser have produced before them.
Time will tell if that’s the case, but that’s what the Orioles are banking on.
They’re also banking on Rutschman putting whatever issues caused his offensive output to crater in the second half of this past campaign behind him.
It was strange to see him struggle so much at the plate, going from a .275/.339/.441 slash line with 16 homers and 59 RBI prior to the All-Star break, to a measly .207/.282/.303 batting line with just three homers and 20 RBI after it.
Baltimore is confident he’ll regain his form that already has him in consideration for being the best catcher in baseball, but what exactly the reasoning for those struggles was continues to be a mystery.
Rutschman didn’t shed any light on what his issues were at the Birdland Caravan event.
He did say that he had “tough conversations” with the Orioles hitting coaches and that “a lot of factors” went into his offensive numbers plummeting, but he didn’t get into specifics per Jacob Calvin Meyer of The Baltimore Sun.
An injury was speculated upon by media and fans alike, but neither the star catcher nor the team gave any credence to those rumors.
So, the mystery still remains.
But if he can produce like he did early last season, then pretty much all will be forgotten since he would, once again, be putting up massive numbers from the catcher position.
The good news is he’s also confident that will happen.
“I really like where we’re at right now,” Rutschman said.