Mancini, Givens top list of trade chips

CLEVELAND — Thanks to the hiring of Mike Elias atop the Orioles’ baseball totem pole and the continued focus on the farm system and player development, there’s something missing from the discourse around the Orioles that’s a welcome change from a season ago.

Partially because the bubble already burst last summer, and partially because of the roster construction, the idea that everyone might be traded by the July 31 deadline simply hasn’t taken hold yet with these Orioles.

Part of it is because players such as Jonathan Schoop and Kevin Gausman, who would be nearing the end of their club control this summer and thus prime trade candidates, were dealt last summer to keep payroll costs down.

Part of it is bad luck, with veterans such as Alex Cobb and Mark Trumbo working their way back from back and knee injuries, respectively, and unable to showcase what they can do for a contender down the stretch.

That’s cut the candidate pool pretty significantly, but considering this weekend is the midway point of the first half, and the trading period will pick up around the All-Star break, it’s worth a look at which players could possibly interest a team that wants to bolster its roster by picking from the productive and/or expensive corners of the Orioles’ clubhouse.

Here’s a ranking of the Orioles’ most appealing trade candidates to the least:

1 | Trey Mancini: For all of Mancini’s proclamations that Baltimore is where he wants to be, he obviously has no control over that. And the better he plays, the greater likelihood that he’ll play himself out of Baltimore. Mancini will have three more years of club control after this, and considering the numbers he’s accumulated, will be well-paid in those years. Considering how much needs to get better before the team can be truly good again, and the financial challenges the Orioles are facing, cashing in Mancini for a couple of legitimate pieces could be the right move as both his value and club control are at their highest. He’s going to be an All-Star and could add some thump to several playoff aspirants’ lineups. The life of the itinerant professional hitter-for-hire isn’t exactly as comfortable as staying in one place for an entire career, but Steve Pearce got a ring, a World Series Most Valuable Player award and a nice contract out of it.

2 | Mychal Givens: With two more years of club control remaining after this season, Givens is another player in a prime spot to get moved while he can still be considered a long-term asset to the acquiring team. As the Orioles’ best and most established reliever, Givens has been used in myriad ways, including two-inning outings, and is finding his footing with a scoreless May that has lowered his ERA to 2.75. Deployed in a more traditional role in a better bullpen, the way he was earlier in his career with the Orioles, Givens could be an ideal piece for a contender to add.

3 | Andrew Cashner: One of the few natural fits for a deadline deal because he is in the last year of his contract and has a reasonable salary of $8 million this year, Cashner is one player whose success could prove fruitful for the Orioles. His 4.10 ERA entering Monday’s start is over a full run better than the 5.29 ERA he had in his first year with the Orioles in 2018, helped tremendously by a jump in his strikeouts per nine innings (5.82 in 2018 to 7.45 this season). There’s also the thus-unexplored irony that he’s switched from a sinker-heavy approach to almost exclusively four-seam fastballs but has seen his ground-ball rate spike from 40.4% to 51.7%. He’s also been throwing a lot more changeups than past years, and has always had an effective breaking ball, so perhaps there’s enough different that a contending team who needs another arm can give Cashner a chance to make the playoffs for the first time in his career.

4 | Dylan Bundy: Perhaps Bundy figured something out with his pitch mix that could launch him back to being the high-end major league starter he’s been for stretches of his career. But in his first year of salary arbitration, Bundy is in a position in which he’ll have to be the best version of himself to justify what will likely be a climbing salary in the years to come. He’s not exactly in the position that Gausman was with two years of club control left — the stuff just hasn’t been there at that level for a while. But when he’s right, Bundy can eat innings and be the kind of steady pitcher to fill out the back-end of a rotation.

Honorable mentions: Jonathan Villar, Richard Bleier, Shawn Armstrong, Dan Straily