The Next Orioles Playoff Roster

Given an infinite timeline anything is possible. My cat will use the litter box. Condensed milk will smell like cheese. I will leave my house. Even the craziest of the crazy, the most unfathomable of the unfathomed, will happen: the Orioles will make the playoffs! This may seem particularly difficult to wrap one’s head around right now given the state of both the world and the Orioles roster, let alone the actual lack of baseball at present, but I assure you it will happen eventually. So what will the next Orioles playoff roster look like? Let’s take an educated guess!

(You can discuss this on the BSL Board here.)

Let’s begin by looking at the playoff-quality pieces the Orioles have on their major league roster right now. To my internet-eyes, those pieces are not many. There is Trey Mancini, Austin Hays, and maybe John Means. As I said, it’s not a long list. And it might be even shorter for two reasons. First, Mancini is currently recovering from surgery to remove a malignant tumor from his colon, and his timeline for recovery remains unspecified. Second, Mancini is 28 years old now, and figures to be at least 30 and likely older by the time the Orioles field their next playoff team. Unless the Orioles extend him, he doesn’t figure to be in Baltimore for the next O’s playoff game. Before Mancini’s illness he was a prime trade candidate, but now things are more up in the air. Hopefully a return to health and a return to form means the Orioles can get something for Mancini at the next trade deadline, when ever that actually happens.

Beyond him, we have Hays, who I like as a defensively league average center fielder with some pop. That’s not exactly a championship caliber player, but even 100 win teams don’t have All Stars at every position. Hays as a two-to-three win player seems realistic if he can stay healthy, and that’s not bad at all. What’s more, even if Hays plays the full season in Baltimore, he won’t hit arbitration until 2023. So we’ll start with Hays in center.

I’m not a big believer in John Means. Pitchers who don’t strike hitters out and give up a ton of fly balls aren’t great bets for success in today’s style of baseball. Probably the best case for the O’s is Means puts up another good half season and the team is able to get something good for him at the trade deadline. That said, the bar for a cromulent fifth starter isn’t high, so maybe Means can meet it long term. He won’t be particularly old even in three years, so let’s pencil him in to the back of the rotation. 

The next place to go is the minors, and the easiest place to start is with recent number one overall pick Adley Rutschman. Projecting even stand-outs like Rutschman isn’t a sure thing but it seems safe to say Rutschman will be a league average hitting catcher with plus defense, and quite possibly more than that. Even if he only reaches that floor, he’s a championship quality catcher in his prime, and those are hard to come by. You have to go back to 2015 to find a World Series winning team that didn’t sport an also-ran at catcher. If Rutschman develops into what the scouting community expects, i.e. a better than league average hitter and defender behind the plate, he gives the O’s a huge step up on the competition. 

The consensus next two best Orioles prospects, DL Hall and Grayson Rodriguez, are both very young starting pitchers drafted out of high school. Both look extremely promising now, but the road to the majors is littered with the corpses of formerly promising high school pitching prospects. It’s a dangerous pedigree, which makes projecting them both for successful major league careers very difficult. So in the interest of fairness, let’s say one of them makes it and one doesn’t (and that is probably generous). We’ll call him Grayson Hall and slot him towards the top of the rotation. 

Beyond Grayson Hall, there isn’t much in the way of top starting pitching in Baltimore’s system. There are a few guys though who could fill out the back of the rotation, and that has value. Neither Michael Baumann nor Dean Kremer are likely to be top of the rotation guys, but there is a good chance they can contribute as number four or five starters. Due to the attrition of pitchers and pitching prospects, let’s count on just one of them contributing. 

As for position players, I’m not high on Ryan Mountcastle due to his lack of patience and general inability to play the field, but his bat has worked at every level so far and I imagine the Orioles will give him a chance to see if he can keep that stretch going. The ceiling on a guy like Mountcastle is likely average DH and backup first baseman, so let’s be generous and stash him there for now. There are other prospects in the Orioles system as well, but a low either ceiling or age makes them too difficult to count on as a major league regular at the moment. Still, that gives us a starting center fielder, two starting pitchers (say a two and a four), a starting DH/backup first baseman, and a starting catcher. That’s not a bad beginning.

So that’s what the Orioles have. Now let’s discuss what they can get to fill out the next Baltimore playoff roster. The Orioles possess the second overall pick in the upcoming draft. The draft isn’t like last year’s in that there isn’t one huge name at the top. Still, the Orioles should come out of it with a big name at number two. One player projected to them repeatedly is Arizona State first baseman Spencer Torkelson. Torkelson is a big middle-of-the-order power bat who would make a great Eddie Murray to Adley Rutschman’s Cal Ripken. So let’s say they grab Torkelson and he and Mountcastle cover first base and DH.

Of course there will be other picks in the 2020 draft (though maybe not that many more). The Orioles should be able to come away with a few other major leaguers due to their high picks in each round and their large spending limit, but projecting anything specific outside the first round seems silly to me. It’s also worth mentioning that the team will be spending on the international free agent market as well, but most of those kids are extremely raw 16 year olds, so while the team will certainly hope to get some contributions from these players, projecting any of them for anything specific is a fool’s errand. 

Given what the major league roster looks like now and how the projection systems see the Orioles 2020 season going, Baltimore looks like a solid bet to pick high in the 2021 draft as well. So let’s say they get a good power hitting outfielder with the first overall pick (where numerous projection systems have them finishing) in 2021. We’ll call him Tencer Sporkleson and slot him into left field.  

Now we get to money. Between last year’s draft, this year’s draft, and next year’s draft, the Orioles should be able to fill out a strong farm system, but even so they’ll likely want to dip into the free agent market to supplement their roster when the time is right. The Orioles have one of the lowest payrolls in baseball at about $65 million. There is a lot of room between where they are and the major league median payroll of $145 million (2019 numbers). Some of that payroll room will go to the young players on the roster as their salaries rise over time, but even so, they are set up to make some splashes in the market as they build up their roster. 

After the 2020 season, the two best free agents will be outfielder Mookie Betts and catcher J.T. Realmuto. The Orioles probably aren’t ready to spend $400 million or so that Betts will get and if things go to plan they won’t need to spend at the top of the market for a starting catcher either. However, there are a few players not at the top of the market who could help them. Two I like are shortstop Marcus Semien and starting pitcher Marcus Stroman. Stroman steps into the top of the rotation (for now) while Semien and his all star bat play an up the middle position. 

Following the 2021 season though is the free agent class where the Orioles could really do some work. Francisco Lindor will be a free agent, as will Kris Bryant, Carlos Correa, Trevor Story, and Noah Syndergaard. Imagine Kris Bryant and Noah Syndergaard in Orioles uniforms! Obviously that will take some top-of-the-market money, but the team has it to spend. Heck, Chris Davis comes off the books after the 2022 season, giving the team even more money to work with. 

So here’s our lineup. 

Catcher: Adley Rutschman

First Base: Spencer Torkleson (2020 first round pick)

Second Base:

Shortstop: Marcus Semien

Third Base: Kris Bryant

Left Field: Tencer Sporkleson (2021 first round pick)

Center Field: Austin Hays

Right Field:

DH: Ryan Mountcastle

Starting pitchers: Noah Syndergaard, Grayson Hall, Marcus Stroman, one of Kremer or Bauman, John Means

 * * *

I didn’t try to project a bullpen or a bench because it’s hard enough to do that one season out, let alone three or more. Beyond that, there will be other draft picks in 2020 and 2021 that we can’t know about now, but you can expect the team to fill in the roster with those picks, with trades (hopefully they can get someone useful for Mancini), and lower level free agent signings. That should account for right field and second base, among other spots. But with some development, good scouting, some draft luck, and some honest to goodness spending in the free agent market, the bones of the next Orioles playoff roster are right there. I think it looks promising, assuming I know what that looks like anymore.