Are the Baltimore Orioles destined for October baseball? Well, general manager Mark Elias certainly provided a confidently-worded response to that question.
Before the Orioles get set to open their season against the Boston Red Sox on March 30, team chairman and CEO John Angelos claimed that Baltimore wouldn't be able to compete with the payroll of larger-market clubs around the league. Not a reassuring sign for an Orioles team that has missed the playoffs six consecutive seasons and resides in the American League East.
Yet, Elias sang a much more optimistic tune when sharing the organization's expectations heading into the new season.
"Yeah, I think it's realistic (to make the playoffs)," Elias told Jon Heyman and Joel Sherman on New York Post's "The Show" podcast. "It's certainly not a assured or anything like that. I think we have our internal expectations of kind of what our odds are so to speak. And we like them. So I do think we're gonna be scrapping it up all year long to get into the playoffs. And I imagine it's gonna be tight but that's absolutely the goal this year."
The Orioles front office didn't make any needle-moving transactions during the offseason. Since the month of January, Baltimore has signed 30 players, all to minor league contracts, according to ESPN's team transactions page.
Elias clarified that the Orioles have a bigger-picture vision in place.
"To me, this rebuild is not about 2023," Elias said. "We were doing this to set the organization up well for several years and then just also kind of permanently in terms of the way it does business going forward. ... We got a really fun group of players right now with more coming and I think this group has a really good shot to play in October in 2023."
