Small checkpoints don’t measure up
O’s biggest offseason tasks await new leadership team
Almost a full month after they dismissed executive vice president Dan Duquette and manager Buck Showalter, ushering in a new era of Orioles baseball once new hires are made, what that means for the offseason is only now coming into focus.
The team’s addition of right-hander Branden Kline to the 40-man roster Tuesday was the first step in that, and a feel-good one. The checkpoints will be coming hot and heavy over the next few weeks — activating players off the 60-day disabled list and making room for them back on the 40-man roster; adding players to keep them from the Rule 5 draft; tendering contracts to arbitration-eligible players.
And considering the wide-ranging implications of the Orioles’ front-office and on-field management search, it all rings a little more hollow than it would when the team is searching for every advantage or edge in a competitive offseason.
For instance, with the roster additions like Kline’s, much of the team’s work in protecting players from the Rule 5 draft was done in-season when the likes of Luis Ortiz, Josh Rogers and Cody Carroll were added. All that’s left now is Dillon Tate, and they’ll probably have plenty of ways to add him to the roster.
Same goes for Mark Trumbo, Austin Hays, Richard Bleier, Pedro Araujo and Gabriel Ynoa, who need to be added back to the roster by 5 p.m. Friday. The players who come off the roster for them will feel like an insignificant transaction in comparison to the need to select leaders for the organization and begin the big business everyone is waiting for. Back to Seattle: The Orioles lost outfielder John Andreoli on waivers to the Seattle Mariners, the team announced, in a reversal of the roster move that brought him to Baltimore in August. Andreoli, 28, hit .232 with a pair of doubles in 23 games for the Orioles after joining the major league team on Aug. 18.
The team was interested in his speed and minor league hitting track recor, but he struggled to break through a crowded outfield picture.