Cal Ripken Jr. hasn’t had a material impact on the Orioles since his retirement in 2001, but now, since he’ll be a part-owner of the team after the Angelos family sells them, things will be different in Charm City.
On Thursday night, the Orioles pulled off a mega-trade that sent Corbin Burnes from the Milwaukee Brewers to Baltimore in exchange for a first-round compensatory pick in the 2024 MLB Draft and two players that barely grazed the surface of Baltimore’s number-one-ranked prospect pool. Burnes’s addition to the AL East champs’ rotation only adds to the scary thought for Yankees, Blue Jays, Rays, and Red Sox fans that the orange reign over one of the best divisions in baseball isn’t ending so soon. With their attendance inevitably on the rise and a new ownership group, Burnes might stay in Maryland for a while.
But the Orioles aren’t the only team in their position to continue their luck from 2023 and manifest it into longing success for 2024 and beyond. 2023 saw a major paradigm shift in the balance between good and rich teams compared to bad and poor teams. The two World Series teams, for example, have no reason to think that they can’t compete in the season that starts a little less than two months away. The Rangers haven’t done much this offseason, not that they really need to, given their potent lineup and deep rotation (eh, maybe their bullpen could use some work), but the Diamondbacks have been quite busy for a team in the bottom half of attendance. The signing of Eduardo Rodriguez and Lourdes Gurriel and the trade for Eugenio Suarez can only signify that the Dodgers’ beefing up with their brand spanking new rotation doesn’t scare away Wild Card chances in the desert. And good on them, because with all the weird trades the Giants and Padres have made this offseason, second place in the NL West in 2024 seems to have the Diamondbacks’ name on it.
And then there are the Central divisions, who have no business as a collective even being compared to their East and West counterparts, but are still working their ways towards competition. The Tigers are revamping their rotation with signings of Jack Flaherty and Kenta Maeda and are expecting big things out of their young lineup this season, while the Reds made smart moves in signing Emilio Pagan, Jeimer Candelario, and Frankie Montas to bolster areas of their roster for another Cinderella run to claim the Brewers’ old domain for the Queen City.
Sure, we can talk about the Ohtani signing, the Soto trade, or the Cardinals revamping their entire rotation in one offseason, but I think it’s way more important to realize how critically baseball changed in 2023 and how it’s impacting future seasons. This league is still imbalanced, that’s for sure, but for now the parameters for winning don’t feel stale. Teams are actually trying here. As a Yankees fan, I obviously hate the Burnes trade. But how can a grumble about 13 enticing matchups against an orange-and-black-uniformed roster that I really admire? When more teams have a chance to win, they go for it, and when they go for it is when the game becomes fun for everyone.
Коментарі