The Baltimore Orioles: From 52-110 in 2021 to a winning record in 2022

What's the secret sauce?

After the 2018 season, the Baltimore Orioles hired Mike Elias as general manager. Elias had served as assistant general manager of the Houston Astros and was credited with much of the success of that organization.

In response to the hiring of Elias, and the fact that three of the Orioles’ minor league teams are within reasonably comfortable driving distance of my house, I resolved to follow the team’s progress closely. I hoped to learn something about how to turn a baseball franchise around in this era of “analytics.”

Elias set out to turn the Orioles around the same way it was done in Houston — by losing lots of games at first, making great use of draft picks, using modern technological tools to enhance player performance, and, in general, being smarter than others in the industry. Let’s look at each component.

Losing big is the easy part.

The O’s had lost 115 games in 2018, the season before Elias arrived. In 2019, they lost 108. They were somewhat better in the shortened pandemic season, but lost 110 in 2021.

Were the Orioles tanking? Yes, in the sense that they traded some of their best players for prospects. But considering that, in addition to being awful at the big league level, the Orioles also had one of the worst farm systems in baseball, making these trades was clearly the way to go.

This year, Baseball Prospectus projected that the Orioles would lose 101 games. The expected 9-game improvement might have been largely reversion to the mean, but some O’s fans probably would have been happy with that much progress.

However, with two games left to play, the O’s are 82-78, and therefore assured of a winning season. According to Orioles beat writer Dan Connolly of The Athletic, no team since the 1899 St. Louis Perfectos had ever lost 110 games one year and finished .500 or better the next.

Shining light on the draft.

All those losses in 2018-2021 meant high draft picks for the Orioles. Elias used them well.

Consider the top three picks from his first draft (2019). The Orioles’ number one pick (and number one pick in the entire draft) was catcher Adley Rutschman. I had the pleasure of watching him play at three different minor league levels. There was never much doubt that he would be a star.

Rutschman was slated to be Baltimore’s starting catcher this season, but an injury held him back. He didn’t debut in the majors until May 21.

At the time, the Orioles were showing signs of significant improvement, but their record was well below .500. Since then, they have gone 66-53, and 49-33 when Rutschman has been the catcher.

That’s no coincidence. Behind the plate, Rutschman is wise beyond his 24 years He does a great job working with his pitchers.

At the plate, Rutschman is a walks-doubles machine. He leads the Orioles in both categories in spite of his late call-up.. His OPS (on-base percentage plus slugging average) of .814 also leads the team, as does his WAR (wins above replacement player) of 5.3 (in only 112 games).

Yesterday, Rutschman was named the Orioles’ most valuable player. He will likely finish second in the Rookie of the Year voting (to Seattle’s phenom Julio Rodriguez).

Elias’ second pick in 2019 was Gunnar Henderson. He also made it to the O’s this season in time to play 32 games so far. The 21 year-old infielder has excelled in the field, shown outstanding speed, and chipped in at the plate to the tune of a .771 OPS, third highest on the team.

The third pick, Kyle Stowers, is an outfielder from Stanford. He has held his own in 33 games with an OPS of .722, quite respectable for a rookie.

Behind this group is an excellent core of 2020-2022 picks — all non-pitchers, by the way (more on that later). Thus, a farm team rated at or near the bottom of the major leagues when Elias took over, moved all the way up to number one in some ratings. A few top prospects were obtained in trades, as the O’s dealt Manny Machado and lesser talents. But most of them, and the best ones, are Elias draft picks.

How does Elias do it? What’s the secret of his success in the draft?

I think the main factor is that, for the most part, he uses his top picks on college position players, as opposed to high schoolers and pitchers. He does this, I understand, because the tools he uses to evaluate players work best for college position players.

For high school players, data is less reliable because they play fewer games against weaker competition and maybe because the scouting technology is inferior. For pitchers, the problem seems to be uncertainly about the future health of their arms.

When I first heard that this was Elias’ approach, it reminded me of the drunk who looks for his car keys under a street lamp. He didn’t lose them there, but the light is better.

The analogy is inapt, of course. There is plenty of talent under the “light” of Elias’ preferred evaluation tools. And it lowers risk to select players whose evaluations you trust the most.

On occasion, Elias does use high picks on high school position players. Henderson was one. And this year, with the first overall pick in the draft, Elias selected Jackson Holliday, son of former major league star Matt Holliday. The four most highly-rated players in the draft were all high schoolers, so it made sense for Elias to pick one of them. But Elias’ next three picks were college hitters. I’ve seen all three and each looks promising, especially Dylan Beavers an outfielder from Cal.

As for pitchers, Elias recognizes their value, of course. However, he prefers to have data from their pro careers before investing in them.

Thus, the two best starting pitchers he has obtained so far came in trades — Dean Kremer (the only Israeli citizen in MLB) in the Machado deal and Kyle Bradish in a deal that sent Dylan Bundy to the Angels.

Now that the Orioles are respectable and can think about making the playoffs (which they narrowly missed this season), Elias will likely bolster his pitching staff with free agents signings or through trades (using his now well-stocked farm system). This is what the Astros did when Elias was with Houston. Justin Verlander and Charlie Morton are the two best examples.

Any pitcher comes with the risk of arm trouble, but established big league starters carry vastly less risk than high school and college pitchers.

The spin starts here.

Although the Orioles’ turnaround corresponds to Rutschman’s call-up, the farm system’s contribution to the team’s success is secondary, so far, to the team’s ability to coach its players.

In 2021, Baltimore’s team ERA was 5.84. This year, it stands at 3.97. This, despite the fact that the O’s best starting pitcher, John Means, has been unavailable since mid-April.

Part of the improvement is due to a change in ballpark dimensions. It is now much harder to hit a home run to left field.

But the other element is coaching. The Orioles staff is obsessed with spin rates. Austin Voth illustrates the value of the obsession.

The Orioles picked Voth up when the dreadful Washington Nationals waived him. The Nats had good reason to waive Voth. His ERAs for Washington from 2000-2022 were 6.34 (in 50 innings), 5.34 (in 57 innings), and 10.13 (in 19 innings).

But the Orioles liked the spin rates on some of his pitches. Thus, they claimed him off the wavier wire.

Their faith in Voth (and their analytic tools) paid off. The veteran right-hander has filled in beautifully as a starter, pitching to a 3.04 ERA in 83 innings.

From what I understand, Baltimore’s coaches have had Voth rely on the pitches with the excellent spin rates — the ones that made him attractive. They have also worked with him on a “sweeper” — a variation on the slider with more horizontal break and less drop.

Voth isn’t the only starting pitcher who has turned things around. Dean Kremer’s ERA dropped from 7.55 last year to 3.23 this season.

Then, there’s the Orioles bullpen. It’s anchored by Jose Bautista, a Miami Marlins castoff who now consistently hits 100 mph with his fastball and has one of the best splitters in all of baseball. Earlier, it was anchored by Jorge Lopez who was dreadful as a starter for Kansas City and Baltimore, but lights-out once Elias and company turned him into a reliever, after observing his success the first time through the opposing batting order.

(The O’s traded Lopez to Minnesota for pitching prospects at the trade deadline. I thought it was a bad trade, but so far with the Twins, he’s reverted to his old form.)

The other stars of the bullpen are Dillon Tate, obtained as a prospect from the Yankees in 2019, and Cionel Perez, a Cincinnati Reds castoff whose ERA with the Reds was 6.38 last year, but is only 1.43 this year with the O’s.

Perez is a refugee from Cuba. After his escape, he was scouted by Eve Rosenbaum, an assistant in the Astro’s front office who was in her mid-20s at the time. Elias brought Rosenbaum with him to Baltimore. When Perez hit the waiver wire last off-season, Rosenbaum recommended signing him.

Not all geniuses are created equal.

Eve Rosenbaum, now 32, was two years behind my younger daughter at our neighborhood high school. From there, she went to Harvard. Mike Elias, now 39, attended Thomas Jefferson High School, the elite public high school for exceptional math and science students in Northern Virginia (currently involved in litigation on the matter of how elite it will be). From there, he went to Yale.

These backgrounds and ages are typical in the industry today. As I understand it, nearly every big league team is either run by a math-science genius or has a backroom well stocked with them.

When the “analytics revolution” began, I assumed that every team would staff up with geeks, and that the competitive advantage of having them would diminish as a result. The latter assumption is open to question.

For example, Elias’ approach to the draft seems to be unique, at least right now. And if the cases of Voth and Perez are any guide, the Orioles are doing a much better job than some organizations of coaching their pitchers.

I don’t mean to suggest that there’s only one sound approach to the draft or to player development. I gather that other geniuses have come up with different ways of approaching the draft that are proving highly successful.

It’s a fine thing that not all great minds think alike about baseball. Let 1,000 flowers bloom.

Some flowers are more fragrant than others, though. Orioles’ fans should be delighted with the ones Elias and company are growing.

I just hope that my Washington Nationals, who are about where the Orioles were three years ago, will bloom as beautifully as their I-95 neighbors seem to be doing.