Makes no sense at all (an Orioles post)

The Orioles signed Tyler O’Neill, who is really good at hitting left-handers, for three years at $16.5m a year, and Tomoyuki Sugano, a 35-year-old pitcher with pinpoint control but whose fastball is down to 94 and doesn’t strike people out anymore, for one year at $13m. We are talking about trading for Dylan Cease, who’s a free agent in 2026, and who was very good last year but just good the year before that.

So the Orioles are adding payroll. We’re not cheaply Marlinning our way through the next few seasons. But unless reporting is badly wrong, it doesn’t look like they’re adding payroll by offering Corbin Burnes the $250m/8 year deal he’s likely to draw elsewhere.

There are teams for which this course of action would make sense. Probably most teams. For instance: if you had big holes at several spots, places where you were getting replacement-level performance, it makes a lot of sense to add 3-WAR guys for those spots.

But the Orioles aren’t that team. They have solid regulars all around the diamond. Unless Tyler O’Neill is playing only against lefties, he’s taking at-bats from Heston Kjerstad and (the probably gone) Anthony Santander, not Stevie Wilkerson. And Sugano is taking starts from Dean Kremer, not Asher Wojciechowski.

It also makes sense to focus on short-term deals if you have a one-year window because your best players are about to hit free agency. But the Orioles aren’t that team either. Adley Rutschman, the senior statesman of the team, isn’t a free agent until 2028.

In fact, if you were to imagine a team that should open the wallet and sign a huge contract for a free-agent starter, you’d say “it would have to be a team that had a good young core with multiple years of team control, so that at least four out of those eight years you’re paying for an ace to lead a contender. And you’d want the rotation to have enough depth to make the team a credible playoff threat every year, but lacking a guy with reliable #1 stuff.” And that is the team the Orioles are.