Baltimore Orioles have the same trade deadline this year as last year’s, but their overall goal is the same. The ultimate goal is to use the young core to support a series of controversial works, even if it means saying goodbye to short-term assets in the process.
The club’s process has been somewhat mixed so far, with a deal apparently failing last year’s deadline continuing to plague the club. When Baltimore acquired left-handed Trevor Rogers for outfielder Kyle Stowers and third baseman Connor Norby, they thought they were exchanging some of the excess position player talent for the 27-year-old pitcher who was rising and could help with the rotation.
Instead, Rogers was in a dilemma, recording 19 innings as a 7.11 ERA before being injured, and a string of setbacks ended his season prematurely and postponed his 2025 campaign for months. Meanwhile, Kyle Stowers bloomed in Miami, winning the All-Star nod with a three-family head in the final game before the All-Star Game and burned the O with two-thirds.
Orioles need to avoid further mistakes ahead of the 2025 trade deadline if they wish to maximize their young core
The idea of exchanging Mrs. Stowe for Rogers was to transfer an asset that was now 27 years old, which was seen as another 27-year-old surplus, at least satisfying a larger demand on paper. Even though Rogers’ hot streak to start the season gradually begins to change that narrative, things haven’t gone as planned.
Now, since clubs find themselves in a position of selling, rather than buying before the deal deadline, they have to stomp carefully to make sure they don’t waste their valuable assets again. The sell-off may include not only upcoming freedom promoters, such as Cedric Mullins, but also controllables such as felix bautista.
This is the mistakes that the Orioles need to ensure past, taking the Stols trade as an example, no more repeating. When it comes to the best trading chips, they need to ensure maximum value is obtained in return.
If they continue to effectively utilize their controllable but unrelated assets, they will soon find that the core they work to build will wither and will waste once-in-a-lifetime opportunities.
For Mike Elias and the company, they need to be much better than the deadlines they have to do in the past few years, and if it fails, it is no surprise to see regime change sooner rather than later in Baltimore.