After a season where the Orioles lost 115 games, and their top player based on WAR was a guy who left in July, with 2.9...really anything else could be seen as an improvement.
This Orioles team, thankfully, is a little better than last year's. Not by much, as they still lost 100 games, but...even for a last-place team, you can still see a bit more humanity and nuance than in the sprawling mess of unruly talents of 2018. A lot more worked, including another strong year from Jonathan Villar, who's becoming the main winner of the deal that sent Jonathan Schoop to Milwaukee.
Still, the best player on the team this year is John Means, a rookie pitcher who's managed to keep his numbers kind of solid despite an even W/L ratio, and...to be honest, I'm surprised more people aren't talking about him for Rookie of the Year. I mean, granted, it's probably going to someone like Oscar Mercado or Brandon Lowe, but...Means became the ace of his team within a year, made an All-Star team, and led his team in WAR. That's...pretty impressive. I hope he makes a career out of it.
Plus, you have other rookies who came up out of the woodwork and did decent jobs for the team this year, like Anthony Santander and Austin Hays, who were solid promotions after the starters crapped out. And then you have guys like Hanser Alberto, Renato Nunez and Rio Ruiz who didn't work on other rosters, but are doing admirably enough in Baltimore. I do think the team wishes they didn't have to start people like DJ Stewart, Stevie Wilkerson and Chris Davis, in lieu of more competent choices, but...this is last-place baseball.
Will the team be any better in 2020? Uh...I don't know. Because even the people that worked this year could regress again. This could be a 'lightning in the bottle' kind of bad team, but...if Villar, Trey Mancini and Means keep it up, there's a chance for SOME improvement. I can't say how much, because the Jays, Rays and Yankees look to be on the upswing, but...hopefully enough to put the team that won the World Series a year ago in last next year.
Coming Tomorrow- Still one of my favorite players, no matter how disappointing his numbers have been.
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