Last week it was announced that Corbin Burnes would require Tommy John surgery. This announcement sparked conversation on a number of topics surrounding the inevitability of pitching injuries but one bit of discourse in particular caught my attention; the idea that The Orioles had been smart to avoid paying Burnes.
Keith Law made a post on Bluesky that more or less sums up the position that some people were taking:
Law went out of his way in his follow up post to clarify that he doesn’t think that the Burnes’ TJ validates the Orioles offseason which I appreciate but as I read and listened to other media members’ reactions to the injury I found that when the Orioles came up many of them were reluctantly giving the Orioles credit for avoiding this injury.
I don’t blame anyone in the national media for forgetting that Orioles made Burnes an offer that would have made him the highest paid pitcher in baseball on AAV basis because stories about contracts that didn’t signed aren’t that interesting, but to me the fact that O’s offered Burnes such a unique short term deal means that they actually don’t deserve credit for avoiding this injury and only their stubbornness about long term contracts saved them from signing Burnes to what would have been an instant albatross contract.
Shortly after Burnes signed with the Diamondbacks he was asked about the offers he had gotten from other teams and he said that the only other teams he had received concrete offers from were the Jay and the Giants and when it came to the Orioles he said “[There was] some verbal stuff with Baltimore and Boston, but nothing I had seen in writing”
The O’s did not really respond to the report at the time, maybe they were too busy convincing Charlie Morton not to retire I don’t know, but by the time the O’s went to Arizona in early April they were already cratering to the bottom of the standings and perhaps anticipating an ugly narrative about their unwillingness to spend on pitching the Orioles front office gave out a rare morsel of behind the scenes info.
On April 8th MASN’s Roch Kubatko reported that the Orioles final offer to Corbin Burnes was 4 years 180 million dollars.
Sometimes when teams know they are going to let a player walk they will make an offer that is enough to not be insulting but that they know the player won’t accept. You could call this kind of offer a “cover our ass offer.”
4 years 180 million dollars is not a “cover our ass offer”. 4 years 180 million is a serious amount of money and by offering that contract the Orioles were saying that they VERY STRONGLY believed that Corbin Burnes was going to be an elite pitcher for the next 4 seasons.
If Burnes had signed that deal it would have been seen as both David Rubenstien and Mike Elias’ arrival at baseball’s big kids table. Even if the season played out exactly the same if Burnes had signed that deal with the Orioles the headlines and vibes around the team would be very different.
When I saw the report about the Orioles offer I was impressed. I was impressed that Rubenstien was willing to spend that amount on a player and I was impressed that Elias was willing to take that kind of risk. I did not think they had it in them to make that kind of an offer.
That being said, that offer represents why this front office has fallen short so far and here is why.
Reason #1: It wasn’t enough.
When you are dealing with a superstar free agent who has multiple suitors who are offering him exactly what he wants you don’t get to dictate terms like the Orioles seemed to think they could.
Burnes’ intention from the jump was to sign a long term deal that would take him through the end of his prime. That meant that he was looking for a 6-8 year deal and he had multiple teams willing to offer him that length of a deal.
So even though you could argue that signing a shorter deal with a higher AAV would give Burnes the best opportunity to maximize his career earnings, that clearly wasn’t something he was interested in and you could tell from his quotes that he gave that very same day that the contract offer was leaked.
Here is what he said courtesy of Andy Kostka of the Baltimore Banner:
“The way it was lined up, these guys (Diamondbacks) were going to be serious and have a fair offer, then this is where we were going to be. … We were kind of scratching our head where they (Orioles) got the years from.”
Imagine free agency as an auction and Scott Boras is the auctioneer and he goes to the podium and says “Alright we are going to start the bidding for Corbin Burnes at 6 years 200 million” and the D-Backs, Blue Jays and Giants all make their various offerings of 6-7 years 200+ million and then the Orioles smugly raise their paddle and say “4 years 180 million”. The auctioneer would literally scratch their head trying to make sense of that offer. Maybe he would have to pull Mike Elias aside and have the following conversation:
Elias: “What’s wrong with my offer?”
Boras: “When the bidding starts at a certain number you can’t offer less than that number”
Elias: “Why not? I think my offer makes a lot of sense”
Boras: “That’s not how it works we started the bidding at a specific amount of dollars and years because that’s the minimum of what we’re looking to get”
Elias: “Yeah but if you do my offer you can come back 2 years sooner and get even more money.”
Boras: “We don’t want to come back in 4 years, contrary to popular belief this is not a very fun process so we’re hoping this is our last big bidding war.”
Elias: “But this is the most I’ve offered for anything ever.”
Boras: “If you think you’re upset talk to the guys from Canada they’re offering more than anyone and we’re going to turn them down because my client wants to live in Arizona of all places.”
Elias: “Any chance I could do some early bidding on Gunnar Henderson and keep him off the market?”
Boras: “No, I’ve already got a handshake agreement with Rob Manfred and Andrew Friedman. He’s going to the Dodgers to be the star of the late Ohtani years.”
Elias: “Do I get anything?”
Boras: “You could get Burnes if you make an acceptable offer.”
Elias: “Well I’m not doing that, what if Burnes is bad in 6 years?”
Boras: “What if your team sucks next year and you get fired? We can play this game all day.”
Elias: “That’s not going to happen.”
Anyway what was I talking about?
It’s not like Burnes wanting to sign a long term deal is a weird thing, almost every single MLB star that reaches free agency signs an absurdly long deal that will take them well past their prime. There is not a single MLB star who is signing shorter deals by choice.
In order to sign MLB stars in free agency you have to be willing to sign them to a deal that will keep them under contract well past their prime. Your options are either accept this reality or never sign an impact free agent and this Orioles front office has firmly entrenched themselves on the never sign an impact free agent side of that decision and that is a big problem.
The words Corbin Burnes used to describe the O’s offer was “head scratching” but I’m sure off the record the words were more along the lines of “What the f*** is their problem”
Reason #2: By trying to avoid risk the O’s open themselves up to more risk
MLB starting pitchers get hurt. They blow out their elbows, they get surgery, they rehab for a year and a half, they return and then it’s only a matter of time before they get hurt again.
When you sign a free agent pitcher to a big time deal you should just factor in that at some point in the deal they are going to miss a season or more due to Tommy John surgery. With that in mind longer deals actually protect the team.
In a world where a starting pitcher injury will cause them to miss multiple seasons, a short term high AAV deal like what the Orioles had offered Burnes is incredibly risky. If Burnes had accepted the 4 year deal he was offered and gotten hurt like he did the Orioles would be looking at paying Burnes 90 million dollars to make 6 starts in the first two years of a 4 year deal, basically turning the second half of the deal into a 2 year 180 million dollar deal which would have been just disastrous.
What we see here is the Orioles being so risk averse and determined not to get stuck with a bad contract or stuck paying a guy past his prime that they are willing to offer contracts that could single handedly tank the Orioles immediate competitive window.
I can understand not wanting to sign up to pay a 39 year old player 30 million dollars to either chill at home or sit at the end of the bench in 2034. I get why that is not appealing to a front office that thinks that they are going to die of old age in the Warehouse, but that is how it goes.
The Mets are going to feel the Juan Soto deal when he’s a 40 year old 350 pound DH and the Yankees might not enjoy paying Aaron Judge and Max Fried a combined 70 million dollars 8 years from now when they are both YES Netwrok co-anchors but those teams are good now because of those players.
And because those teams know how long those contracts are they can plan for 8-10 years from now and get prepared for the future. All you have to do to make a bad contract more palatable is get good production from someone on a rookie deal.
Paying 39 million dollars for 40 year old Manny Machado: Bad
Paying 39.8 million dollars for 40 year old Manny Machado and a young player who starts everyday at 3rd base: Not too Bad
Paying 40.6 million dollars for 40 year old Manny Machado, a young player who starts everyday at third base and a young corner outfielder who hits 25 homers: Totally fine.
The Padres know they have 8 years to find a couple of young players that can make up for what 40 year old Manny Machado isn’t giving you in 2033. Right now they are sowing, later they’ll be reaping and in the meantime they can prepare.
What the Orioles are trying to do to avoid getting stuck paying for any old players makes it so they always fail to sign an impact free agent and if they do sign one and that player gets hurt the contract will immediately be an albatross on their books because of the absurdly high AAV they had to put down to convince the player to sign a shorter deal.
Can Mike Elias Change?
Being a rebuild GM and being a contender GM are two different jobs that require different skills and so far we’ve seen Mike Elias struggle with some of his contender GM responsibilities.
Elias’ biggest shortcoming has been the lack of urgency with which he has approached the MLB transaction cycles ever since the team got good. He’s had multiple opportunities to push in some chips and acquire a star and every time he has opted to keep his powder dry.
The idea that it was ok that Elias refused to make the “all in” move was predicated on the idea that instead of one all in campaign the Orioles were going to be good for the next decade because of all the prospects he had stockpiled.
You could argue that against the validity of that idea but it is an idea that you can sell to a fanbase and as long as the team kept winning it was hard to argue against that approach. If your team wins the most games in the American league over a two year stretch and you try to tell people that the GM isn’t doing enough you sound a little unhinged.
Now that the team has played sub .500 baseball for a full year it is easier to look back and think “Wow, they really should have been more aggressive at the last couple trade deadlines”
If you think back on the 2023 and the 2024 seasons in both cases the team reached the trade deadline with one of the best records in the American league. Both teams had rosters full of position players producing at a high level, a need for more starting pitching and multiple top 100 prospects in triple A that were completely blocked from the majors.
At the past 2 deadlines Heston Kjerstad and Coby Mayo were both still very highly regarded and moving either one of them at either of the past two deadlines could have brought back the kind of starting pitcher who could change your playoff destiny and in both cases Mike Elias refused to make the splash move.
Even though both of the last 2 seasons ended with a whimper the Orioles 2024-2025 offseason showed that the front office had no intention of deviating from their extremely cautious approach to team building and now in the 2025 season it finally bit them in the ass.
Today Mike Elias finds himself with egg on his face. His team was basically eliminated from the playoffs 6 weeks into the season, he had to fire his manager and the failures of the team can be directly linked to his inaction.
O’s fans have to hope that the embarrassment of a last place season square in the middle the Orioles “contention window” is enough to convince Elias that he needs to be more aggressive.
This upcoming free agent class has a number of very interesting potential targets for the Orioles. Framber Valdez, Dylan Cease, Michael King and Tomoyuki Sugano to name a few and if Elias has learned his lesson he should be trying to walk away from next year’s free agency auction with at least 1 of not 2 of those guys signed to long term deals.
If we see Elias learn from his mistakes and come through in free agency next year then there are bright days ahead for the Orioles and maybe one day we’ll look back on the 2025 season as a blessing in disguise. If the Orioles big addition to the rotation for 2026 is someone like Jon Gray on a one year deal and cross your fingers Trevor Rogers has figured it out then 2023 might officially be the high point of this era of Orioles baseball.
The Dishwasher 
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