A few weeks ago both Gunnar Henderson and Jordan Westburg gave interesting quotes to the media highlighting the fact that the Orioles had dealt the team’s clubhouse leaders at the trade deadline and that the team needs outspoken veteran leadership.
Henderson and Westburg are the two guys who are most suited to taking on a leadership role on the team so the fact that they are the two most vocal people in suggesting that the team could use some veteran leadership is a pretty strong indication the veteran leadership void needs to be filled this offseason.
But how do you find the right guy to fill that void?
It’s a tough needle to thread. They need to find a personality/leadership fit, who is affordable, and that fits in with the team positionally. The perfect answer might just simply not exist so the Orioles front office will have to get creative.
I started off writing this blog with the idea that I would write about “realistic” veterans the Orioles could acquire and I was about halfway through a Paul Dejong write up when I got so bored I just closed my laptop and did something else.
When I came back to it I decided this blog would be about more aspirational veterans the Orioles could target. The key for me is that everyone I’ve written about COULD be available although it will not be a layup for the Orioles to bring them in. Whether it’s being aggressive in free agency, convincing a player to waive a no trade clause or just stomaching a unique personality for each of the following guys the Orioles will have to get out of their comfort zone a little bit.
Now a lot of what I’m writing about in this piece as far as leadership is very subjective and intangible but I do have some objective criteria that I would like whoever the Orioles bring in to have and you’ll see that in this little check box under everyone’s name. I think it’s pretty self explanatory.
Also as a note they will all be position players because even though a veteran pitcher can be a leader, pitchers and hitters are different. When guys like Henderson and Westburg talk about needing veteran leadership they mean they want someone they can talk to about working through slumps and stuff like that.
Kyle Schwarber
Before you even get to the fact that Kyle Schwarber might hit 60 home runs this season if you just look at who he is as a leader and a veteran he’d be a perfect fit for what this Orioles team needs. Experiencewise he has 11 seasons under his belt, he has a World Series ring and he’s been a part of deep playoff runs with 3 different organizations. He’s always been known as a good clubhouse guy but the last few years in Philly in a clubhouse full of veterans he’s become “the guy” for the Phillies young players to talk to and lean on.
There’s not a big moment in all of baseball that Kyle Schwarber hasn’t seen. When the Orioles young hitters are white knuckling their bats in batting practice before a big game Schwarber will be able to tell the room to take a deep breath and remember it’s just another game and have the cachet for that message to sink in.
Can you think of a better mentor for Samuel Basallo than Kyle Schwarber?
If anything, the fact that he’s an incredible hitter is a negative for the Orioles because it makes getting the perfect clubhouse leader more expensive. I’m kidding of course, this Orioles offense needs someone who is definitely an incredible hitter and not just someone that might one day be an incredible hitter.
As far as the question of how incredible he is, here are some fun numbers.
He has a career playoff OPS of .906. That’s not some small sample size being lifted by a game where he hit 2 home runs. That’s over the course of 278 plate appearances, that’s an entire Jordan Westburg season.
In the 5 seasons since the Cubs non tendered him he has averaged 42 homer runs per season. He’s a metronome with a bat.
This season he’s slashing .313/.431/.733 in innings 7-9. I know that recently the Orioles have been late inning heroes but before this week that was something they severely lacked.
According to Baseball Savant he’s in the 98th percentile or above in xwOBA, xSLG, Barrel %, Hard hit %, Average Exit Velo, and bat speed. Again imagine him in the batting cage everyday with Samuel Basallo.
Besides being this good in general Schwarber is really good against left handed pitching. The Orioles have long struggled against left handed pitching and they signed O’Neill and Sanchez this offseason with the hope that they’d help cure the LHP blues. Schwarber has an OPS of .951 against lefties this year so signing him is basically like signing a right handed lefty masher except you’re not paying a premium for someone that specializes in the short side of the platoon.
The last benefit of the Orioles signing signing Kyle Schwarber that I’ll mention here is that because he will be 33 next year and positionally he is pretty much a pure DH the contracts that teams will be offering him will be for much less than you’d think for someone who will be coming off a season where they hit 50+ homers.
If Kyle Tucker had had the season that Kyle Schwarber has had at the plate this year while playing a solid left field he’d be looking at a 10+ year 500+ million dollar deal. Because Schwarber is an older DH the deals he’ll be looking at will be 3-5 years around 120-150 million and that puts him in a sweet spot of affordability that could be very suitable to the Orioles.
If the Orioles were to sign Schwarber to a 3 year 120 million dollar contract he would come off the books right when Gunnar Henderson would be hitting free agency which is presumably when the Orioles will be needing to free up some money.
My typical stance has been that if the Orioles plan to spend a lot of money this offseason I would prefer if that money went towards the pitching staff or towards extending one of their young stars. However, it is possible that the Orioles could make their big pitching acquisition via trade without eating up too much payroll in which case I’d be happy to see the Orioles get involved in the Schwarber sweepstakes.
Some respectful concerns
The positional limitations with Schwarber have to be considered. Right now the plan for DH next season is that Adley Rutschman and Samuel Basallo will split time at DH and catcher. If you sign Schwarber and he can only play DH that limits your options. You can put Basallo at first but that only fixes everything when Adley is catching. On days where Basallo catches, where does Adley play? Does Adley start getting reps at first base? Does Schwarber? Does Schwarber play the outfield more because without Nick Castellanos in a corner everyday it’s ok for Schwarber to hide in right field? How would playing the field impact Schwarber at the plate?
Basallo isn’t quite good enough at the position of catcher to just say we’ll trade Adley to make room for Schwarber and I actually don’t think Schwarber is a good enough player for the team to say we’re willing to trade Adley Rutschman to make room for Kyle Schwarber. I’m not saying that this is an insurmountable barrier between the Orioles and Schwarber but it is a clunkier fit than you’d hope.
Besides jamming up Basallo and Rutschman it also makes it so you can’t give someone like Gunnar a day off at DH or if Cowser gets a minor injury you can’t have him DH for a few days to keep him off his feet. It also makes it very important for Tyler O’Neill to play the field everyday which almost guarantees he’ll be on the IL before the end of April.
I haven’t even mentioned that signing Schwarber almost certainly means you can’t fit Mountcastle or Mayo on the team. If that were the only price I’d be happy to pay it but the implications of bringing in someone whose primary position is DH get more complicated the more you think about it.
Besides playing time you have to think of the opportunity cost of spending that much money on Schwarber. I wouldn’t entirely blame the front office if they felt like “We just paid a left handed DH and now you want us to spend 40+ million dollars a year on another left handed DH?
Besides the fit you also have to acknowledge the other risks associated with signing a DH in their mid thirties. If Schwarber experiences any sort of physical decline then the swing and miss issues, that right now are totally acceptable considering what he does when he makes contact, become a much bigger problem.
Schwarber has been very consistent and very healthy so it’s not like an injury or a sharp physical decline is inevitable if you sign him to a 3-4 year deal. However, if you signed him to a big contract and he got hurt in the first year and then came back and wasn’t the same I don’t think anyone would be shocked. The overall attitude would be: “That’s what can happen if you sign an older DH.”
These are all legitimate reasons to not sign Kyle Schwarber but if you’re only going to sign free agents that are perfect roster fits that come with zero risk then you’re never going to sign anyone worth signing. Even with all these concerns laid out, my opinion is that if the Orioles have the chance to sign Schwarber to a 3-4 contract they should do it. Get the player in the door and figure out how it all fits later.
Byron Buxton
Buxton would make a ton of sense for the Orioles. Right handed bat that you can put at the top of the order? Check! Elite defense in center? Check! 10+ years of MLB experience to draw upon? Check!
WAR per game is not a real stat that anyone uses but if I was Buxton agent I’d be emailing Fangraphs and Baseball Reference everyday to get that added to the standard batting page. You look at his stats and it’s like he’s trying to set a record each season for most WAR accumulated while never playing more than 120 games in a season.
It is in many ways a difficult career to evaluate but the upside is undeniable. As far as what the Orioles could reasonably expect to get from him if they were to trade for him I would look at the past 2 seasons.
Between 2024 and 2025 he’s slashing .275/.333/.545 averaging 4.1 WAR per season while only playing ~100 games. Even if the Orioles traded for him knowing he could only give you 100 games in a season max that would be very impactful.
He has steadily increased his games played per season over the past 3 years and he has been more responsible with his body not laying out for every ball in the gap. There is a chance that if you traded for Buxton you could get the magical year where he manages to play 145 games and puts up 7 WAR.
Unlike with Schwarber the fit for Buxton on the Orioles is seamless. He takes over in center, Cowser goes back to left, Beavers goes back to right and O’Neill gets preemptively moved to the IL. Suddenly everyone is playing their natural position and the Orioles have a good defensive outfield.
There are parts of trading for Buxton that are tricky and I will get to those but just from the Twins perspective they just completed a full tear down that included salary dumping Carlos Correa for nothing. If the Orioles tried to trade for Buxton I’m sure the Twins would play ball and if the Orioles offered to take the full weight of the contract it might not even cost that much to get Buxton but that brings us to the real issue.
Some Respectful Concerns
Obviously with Buxton there are injury concerns and it would be very Orioles to jump through all the hoops to get Buxton just for him to be hurt for the duration of his contract but the real issue with trading for Byron Buxton is that he doesn’t want you to.
Buxton has a no trade clause and when you read the quotes he gave post deadline he was emphatic that he is not interested in being traded. Here is the quote that stands out the most:
“It’s always good to be wanted. Don’t get me wrong. But the only place I want is Minnesota. All of my choices are easy. I ain’t got but one place on my mind. That’s how it’ll be.”
Things have been pretty miserable in Minnesota since he gave that quote. They’ve been terrible and when you look at the trade deadline they just had I think it is fair to assume that they aren’t gearing up this offseason to put together a World Series contender in 2026. They are going to be maybe the worst team in the league next year and not much better the year after that.
Plenty of players have told fans and media that they want to stay somewhere for their entire career and then left shortly after so Buxton wouldn’t be the first person to go back on one of these kinds of promises but he did sound quite serious.
So the question is; is going through the second half of this season and staring down the barrel at being on a really bad rebuilding team for the rest of his prime enough to change Byron Buxton’s mind?
I appreciate that Buxton wants to stay in Minnesota. In general I am in favor of players staying on the same team for a long time. I think long term relationships between a player and team benefit both sides and the league as a whole and I’ve always hated seeing Yankees fans and Dodgers fans act like teams owe it to them to trade them their best players for nothing. However when a team intentionally goes into the tank the way the Twins have it makes sense for both sides to part ways.
That being said if Buxton doesn’t see it that way then that’s the end of the discussion.
Last thing I’ll say is that if Buxton needs a little more motivation to waive that no trade clause the Orioles could give him a pay bump. They could restructure his contract to give him a higher AAV or add more years something like that. I’m not saying they should lead with that but if they’re talking to Buxton and he’s interested but still struggling with cold feet they could use it as sweetener to get the trade across the finish line.
Nolan Arenado
Today Nolan Arenado is not nearly the player that Kyle Schwarber and Byron Buxton are BUT he is almost a lock for the Hall of Fame and it would be valuable for the Orioles young players to play with a Hall of Famer and see how that guy carries himself, how he gets ready for games, what his routine is and ask him questions.
The best player, as far as their standing in the league historically, that these young Orioles have played with is probably Corbin Burnes. If you change that to just position players, the best player that these young Orioles have played with as far as career accomplishments is??? Gunnar Henderson maybe?
Nolan Arenado is an 8 time All Star, 10 time gold glover, and 5 time silver slugger. Even if he is a little washed, this is the kind of veteran that a group of young players can learn a ton from. The Orioles trio of young infielders could learn a lot from a 6 time platinum glove winner.
In addition to the experience and the defense, he’s slashing .296/.346/.408 against left handed pitching this year. They don’t hand out a lot of awards for OPSing .754 against lefties but it’s a better number than almost anyone on the Orioles this year including Tyler O’Neill so there is a role on offense that he could fill.
And as long as I’m wearing rose colored glasses that say Buxton might play 140 games at some point I feel like I should also give Arenado the benefit of the doubt that he hasn’t played the last good season of his career. Paul Goldschmidt looked pretty washed his last year in St. Louis and has put together a pretty good season in New York. Arenado is only 34 years old so I’d say it’s not out of the question that he has another good season.
The Cardinals are transitioning their front office and should be looking to offload their more expensive veterans. Arenado has 2 years and 31 million left on his deal. With how Arenado has played the last few seasons I would think that the Cardinals would have to eat a chunk of that money if they wanted to get anything back in the deal so I don’t think this would cost the Orioles much and wouldn’t put any sort of significant dent in their payroll.
Assuming they can make the positional fit work I would view it as a low risk high reward move.
Some Respectful Concerns
I just mentioned the positional concerns so I’ll start there. Nolan Arenado is an all time great defender at third base. The Orioles have a good third base man in Jordan Westburg so how would that fit work.
I have a few ideas but I don’t feel great about any of them.
The first idea is that you move Arenado to first base, which his agent said he would do to facilitate a trade last offseason. The idea is that he would platoon at first with Basallo and maybe play third when Westburg or Holliday need a day off.
There are a few issues with this. Number 1 most of the value that Arenado can provide at this point of his career is from playing good defense at third. Number 2 first base is a position where you expect to get some offensive juice and Arenado hasn’t had a great offensive season since 2022. Number 3 that means you have to get rid of both Mayo and Mountcastle which is a lot to have to do for the sake of bringing in 34 year old Nolan Arenado.
The next idea is that you have Arenado be the primary third baseman and you move Westburg to second and you have Holliday move to the outfield.
The question is, is that worth doing? Westburg is better at third than he is at second but he’s better at second than Holliday so you’d be upgrading there. But do you really want to bail on Holliday as an infielder before he turns 22? I’m not sure making him change positions twice before he plays 210 big league games is the best thing for his development. I think it’s an iffy move.
So it’s not a great fit and that’s before you factor in that he has been rapidly declining for several years now AND he also has a no trade clause. He has been open about being willing to waive that no trade clause but he used it last year to avoid going to Houston so clearly he won’t just waive it to go anywhere.
To me trading for Arenado is something the Orioles should only do if it’s late in the offseason and they’ve struck out on all the other veterans they had their eye on and Arenado is still in St. Louis because nobody traded for him again and they are able to bring him in with the understanding that he’s there to fill more of a bench role. Similar to what Ramon Urias has been doing in Baltimore for a few years.
Brandon Lowe
You may look at the checklist of objective criteria and think “Wow Lowe has almost none of what you said you were looking for.” and that is true but rules have to have exceptions. I was looking at this offseason’s upcoming free agents and Brandon Lowe’s name kept jumping off the screen at me.
I tried to scroll past it. I told myself “He’s a lefty platoon bat, that’s the last thing we need”, “He’s only got about 100 more PAs than Ryan Mountcastle, he’s barely even a veteran”, and “We already have a really bad defensive second baseman what are we supposed to do with two of them?”. No matter what I told myself I kept thinking about how cool it would be for Brandon Lowe to be an Oriole.
Injuries and playing in Tampa Bay has made Lowe super underrated even though he’s a multi time All Star and has gotten MVP votes in multiple seasons.
You look at what he’s done over the years and it’s a pretty consistent high .700s to low .800s OPS and you look at the Orioles hitters this year and that’s just not something you see from anyone except Henderson and Westburg. The Orioles lineup is full of guys that could be good hitters but they lack guys in the lineup that have a long major league track record of actually being good hitters. Lowe has a career OPS of .811. Over the past 3 seasons he’s slashing .248/.318/.469.
Signing Lowe would help recover what the Orioles lost when they traded away Ryan O’Hearn as far as here is a veteran guy that might not be in the lineup everyday but you trust him to rake against righties and provide clutch pinch hit ABs late in games. They’ve been pretty similar productionwise over the last few seasons and I think Lowe would also become a fan favorite in Baltimore especially considering that he’s a local guy.
As much as you’ll hear me rag on Tampa Bay for their style of “asset management” I do think they have a good culture where winning matters. Players are ok taking on platoon roles or playing different positions on defense, it’s a very team first mentality that’s all about competing and doing what it takes to win and they get the players to buy in. That’s why Kevin Cash is drowning in manager of the year awards. (That’s a really hard award to win twice, they usually just give it to whatever manager exceeds their pre season win total by the most and those guys were usually just lucky and end up getting fired shortly thereafter)
So I think it would be cool to bring some of that over to Baltimore. He could be a free agent this offseason if his 11 million dollar option is too rich for Tampa Bay’s blood but even if they pick it up these are two teams that have done business before. Call them and see what they’d want for him, they pried Bryan Baker out of your hands when you had no intention of moving him, return the favor.
Some Respectful Concerns
There are two real concerns I have with Brandon Lowe: the injuries and the fit. I’ll start with the injuries.
In his career Lowe has struggled to finish a full season. Some of the lack of games played comes from his platoon role but a lot of it comes from nagging injuries. It is ok to sign injury prone guys, in fact that’s a good way to get talented players at a discount but you do have to go into it with your eyes open. If you sign Lowe to a 3 year 45 million dollar deal then between him and Tyler O’Neill you’re spending a lot of money on guys who could spend a large chunk of the season on the IL.
I consider the fit to be a much bigger concern. Lowe’s position is second base where Jackson Holliday currently plays. I’ve already mentioned the possibility of moving Holliday to the outfield but Lowe is actually worse than Holliday as a defender so you’d actually be downgrading defensively while moving the player who has a better chance of improving off the position. As I said earlier I don’t think making Holliday learn another new position in the offseason is the best thing for him.
The other option would be to have Lowe play the outfield which he did a little bit in his first few years in Tampa Bay. This presents issues because when you are trying to sign someone and you tell them we want you to change positions they may very well take an offer for less money where they are guaranteed to play the position they want.
Also it would set the Orioles up with 4 outfielders that would expect plenty of playing time, 3 of them being lefties that don’t hit lefties well and only one that can play centerfield so it’s not the best roster construction.
How do you fix that? Do you sign a right handed centerfielder and role with 5 outfielders? Do you have Jorge Mateo be a super utility guy? What does that mean for Jeremiah Jackson’s playing time?
I think Mateo sticking around and the backup centerfielder is the best bet at making this work. With that configuration your 13 position players would be
C: Rutschman
1B: Last name starts with M
2B: Holliday
SS: Henderson
3B: Westburg
LF: Beavers
CF: Cowser
RF: Lowe
DH: Basallo
B: O’Neill
B: Mateo
B: J. Jackson
B: A. Jackson
I think this works but you’d be pretty vulnerable to lefties.
Tommy Pham
This veteran is not aspirational in the sense that it would be difficult to sign him but more so in the sense that it would be a major departure for the Orioles as far as the personalities that they’ve had in the clubhouse.
You hear that the Orioles really prioritize makeup when they are scouting their draft picks and the consequence of that is that this young Orioles team is full of very nice boys. They all get along, they’re all pretty mild mannered and laid back. They are competitors and you’ll see them get fired up in a big moment but none of them are aggro. (maybe Coby Mayo might have a little agro in him, he did do a little shoving against the White Sox but he’s been playing so bad he’s had to be pretty subdued. Heston Kjerstad hit Anthony with a gnarly go F*** yourself earlier this year so maybe he’s got some nasty to him but same deal with the not playing well)
It’s good to be good but in sports you need a little aggro. I liked that Manny Machado charged the mound, yelled at people in the dugout and that maybe he threw that baseball at Dave Roberts in the NLCS last year.
You look at the benches clearing brawl against the Yankees last year and who was at the front pushing and shoving? Ryan O’Hearn, Anthony Santander and Cedric Mullins. Who was in the back just kind of hovering? Colton Cowser, Gunnar Henderson and Jordan Westburg.
One of Hyde’s last locker room speeches was reportedly about how the league thinks the Orioles are soft.
So someone like Tommy Pham would be a definitive change of pace for this Orioles team. Pham has been on a lot of teams in recent years and it’s been rare for him to leave a team and leave behind a Tommy Pham incident.
This year he was suspended for making jerking off motions at a fan and just this last month caused a stir against the Blue Jays because he thought the catcher was disrespecting him. He was famously suspended a few years ago for slapping Joc Pederson over a fantasy football disagreement when he was with the Reds. He was fined for threatening a fan when he was with the White Sox and when he was asked about it his response was that he’s “always ready to f*** somebody up” (lotta swears in the Tommy Pham section) and he torched the Mets on his way out the door announcing to the world that they were the least hard working group of position players he’d ever played with.
You look at this list of incidents and you ask yourself is a league average bat in the outfield worth all this? The answer might be no but before we say that definitively let’s look at the good.
After he left the Mets Francisco Lindor was quoted as saying that Pham “Taught him how to work hard again.” Pham has been on good teams and he’s been on bad teams, he knows what good looks like and what bad looks like and he’s not afraid to let people know that what’s going on around him is bad.
He brings a genuine wild card energy that might keep teams honest. Take the Yankees for example, last year their pitchers hit the Orioles a ton including beaning Heston Kjerstad in the head with a 98 mph fastball and this year they went right back to pitching up and in on the Orioles. Now ask yourself would the Yankees pitchers be so cavalier about throwing the ball inside against the Orioles if after the first high heater that backs Gunnar Henderson off the plate Pham pops to the top rail of the dugout and yells “IF YOU DO THAT AGAIN I’LL SEE YOU AFTER THE GAME!”?
IDK maybe I’m just writing Phan fiction here.
I’m doing some joking around in this section but in all seriousness Westburg said it would be nice to have someone whose personality is naturally boisterous and outspoken. That’s Pham! If he sees guys not working hard enough he’s going to say something.
Also it’s cool he hit .400 in the World Series in 2023.
Some Very Respectful Concerns
There is a real element of is the juice worth the squeeze. I don’t think it is a coincidence that Pham has been ping ponging around the league the last few years without finding a home. He has a personality that can wear on people and I think there is a risk that him entering a close knit young team of chill guys could go poorly.
Honestly it is probably more likely that Pham would be a bad fit than a good one. He will definitely be both available and affordable so it is up to the Orioles front office to know their clubhouse and determine if a personality like Pham would be a catalyst that gets the boys going or if he’d last 3 weeks before putting Cowser in a rear naked choke.
As far as the baseball fit he’d basically be filling the Ramon Laureano role.
Other realistic veterans
I figure since I’m not going to write an entire blog about realistic veterans the Orioles might target I’ll slide them in here at the end.
Harrison Bader
This makes a lot of sense for the Orioles. He’s right handed, can play centerfield and should be available to sign to a 1 year deal.
Lane Thomas
An even cheaper right handed centerfield option, plus he’s had good stretches before so there’s a little more upside than Bader but a much lower floor as well.
Rob Refsnyder
If the Orioles plan to spend all their free agent money on pitchers, Refsnyder would be a great veteran platoon hitter to have on the bench and he’d hardly cost anything.
Miguel Andujar
A chance to sign half of the legendary Andujar/Frazier trade package??? In all seriousness Andujar would be a decent fit for the Orioles. He’s been a high batting average guy for two seasons now and he’s been crushing lefties this year. The issue is that he might have played well enough to make himself expensive in which case I don’t need the Orioles winning a bidding war or “jumping the market” for the guy.
Paul Goldschmidt
Goldy’s not a great fit but he’ll likely be available and I don’t think a veteran needy team like the Orioles is really in a position to turn their nose up at a future hall of famer like Paul Goldschmidt. He could be a great mentor for Coby Mayo at first and he could teach Jackson Holliday how to steal bases. If he’s down for a more limited role then let’s do it.
Mike Yastrzemski
Full circle for the Yas man?
Isiah Kiner-Falefa
A slap hitting utility man with a fun name? I smell a Baltimore fan favorite.
Paul Dejong
The man can play a lot of positions.
The Dishwasher 
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