The Orioles got some national attention this week when MLB Network aired its “30 clubs in 15 days preview” on the Orioles on Thursday afternoon. 

If you missed it, the analysts are high on the 2024 Orioles with former player Cliff Floyd projecting another 100-win year.

Yes, expectations are very high for a club that was 47-115 in the 2018 season and won just 54 games in 2019 and 52 in 2021. That was before the big leap to 83 victories in 2022 and last year to 101 which included a return to the playoffs for the first time since 2016 and an AL East title for the first time since 2014.

Players that once were expected to be on a team predicted for last place, now have very different expectations. How will they handle that?

“You know our guys are not fazed by anything,” manager Brandon Hyde told MLB Network. “We have taken such strides the last couple of years. Last year is something we are really proud of, winning the AL East with this group.

If there is one computer projection that seems consistently confounded by the Orioles, it is PECOTA. From Baseball Prospectus, that stands for Player Empirical Comparison and Optimization Test Algorithm. PECOTA is the Baseball Prospectus proprietary system that projects player (and also team) performance based on comparison with historical player seasons.

The algorithm has seldom shown the ability to project the Orioles win total well. There have been rare years where it was close but many more with big, big misses.

Last year would be one, unless you don't consider predicting the eventual AL East champs for 74 wins and last place is a big miss. They were off by 27 victories.

Here were the projected 2023 AL East standings:

99 - New York (won 82)
90 - Toronto (won 89)
86 - Tampa Bay (won 99)
81 - Boston (won 78)
74 - Orioles (won 101)

It’s still very early in spring training but never too early to take a shot at guesses – and that is what they truly are, guesses – at the makeup of the Opening Day roster.

Today I will take a shot at projecting an eight-man bullpen that would work behind a starting group of five pitching in some order to include Corbin Burnes, Grayson Rodriguez, Dean Kremer, Cole Irvin and Tyler Wells beginning March 28.

At the back-end closing games is righty Craig Kimbrel, who will have that job for the opener barring a big surprise or an injury issue.

The Orioles, minus Félix Bautista for this season after his surgery, will be turning over the job to a very experienced pitcher who is a nine-time All Star that ranks eighth all-time with 417 saves.

He led the NL in saves four straight years from 2011-2014 and has 11 seasons of 20 or more saves.

For a player that was limited by injuries to 115 games and 470 plate appearances in the 2023, Ryan Mountcastle still did some nice things with his potentially potent bat. Especially in the second half when his OBP soared to heights when have not seen from him in the big leagues.

On the year Mounty hit .270/.328/.452/.779 producing career bests in batting average and OBP and producing his best OPS+ in his three full years of 117.

In the lineup he was topped by Adley Rutschman (128), Gunnar Henderson (125), Ryan O'Hearn (122) and Anthony Santander (121).

In the second half Mountcastle hit .322/.404/.489/.893 as he showed the better batting eye and got into some deeper counts. Per hit career this stretch was an outlier for a player with a .309 OBP in 2021 and .305 in 2022. 

A big outlier. But maybe it was part of an improvement that will serve him well during the 2024 season.

Orioles catching prospect Samuel Basallo can make a nice first impression. Like when he reported to Low-A Delmarva last April for his first shot at full-season minor league ball. He homered in each of his first two games with the Shorebirds.

His manager then was Felipe Rojas Alou Jr. and the kid had long since made a nice first impression on Alou. As he remembers it, he first saw Basallo at the O’s Dominion academy, not the new one that just opened but the previous edition.

On a sunny field then, somewhere around January of 2020 or maybe earlier, Alou recalls that he saw the young kid with a potent bat that the Orioles were looking to sign.

The skills impressed him that day as he watched Basallo and another young man work out. But it was as much about how well he handled himself that impressed the man who would be his future manager.

“I remember his first day at the academy when he was having a tryout. You could see right there, for a young kid, his demeanor and body language,” recalled Alou recently. “Everything about him looked good from the beginning, but it was the fire he had to be better that really came through.

They are three of the Orioles' longest-tenured players. They have been teammates for a long time and are three of the biggest contributors on the team.

Again this year for the Orioles, a lot is expected from their starting outfield of left fielder Austin Hays, center fielder Cedric Mullins and right fielder Anthony Santander.

With Santander a free agent at the end of the 2024 season, it's possible this coming year will be their last together in Baltimore. Hays and Mullins are eligible to be free agents after the 2025 season.

The trio enjoyed helping the Orioles return to the playoffs last year, and now they'd love to get back again and lead the team to a longer October run.

These are three talented players, as Mullins and Hays have been All-Stars while Santander's .797 OPS last year ranked third on the team behind Gunnar Henderson and Adley Rutschman and 23rd-best in the American League.

When 29-year-old right-hander Corbin Burnes takes the mound today to start the first spring training game for his new team, the Orioles will get a look at their new ace in action for the first time in the 2024 season.

They hope he is the quality workhorse and clear No. 1 pitcher that the Milwaukee Brewers saw since his rookie season of 2018. He moved into a big league rotation for good in the pandemic-shortened 2020 season.

Burnes is no doubt worthy of being called an ace, and you can make a case that he is the best pitcher in baseball since that 2020 season.

In 2020, he went 4-1 with a 2.11 ERA and was sixth in the National League Cy Young voting. The next season he won the NL Cy Young Award, going 11-5 with a 2.43 ERA. In 2022 he was 12-8 with a 2.94 ERA and was seventh in the Cy Young vote, and last season he was 10-8 with a 3.39 ERA, finishing eighth for the top pitching award.

Between them, Max Scherzer, Shane Bieber and Gerrit Cole have five Cy Young awards (three by Scherzer himself), but they all trail Burnes in ERA since that 2020 season. So does every other pitcher.

With the acquisition of right-hander Corbin Burnes, the Orioles ended up with two starting pitchers and five players ranked on the list of MLB Network’s Top 100 players right now.

The list was completed this week with Atlanta’s Ronald Acuna Jr. ranked No. 1 after a season with 41 homers and 73 steals – becoming the first 40/70 player in baseball history.

Mookie Betts of the Dodgers was rated No. 2 with Aaron Judge of the Yankees No. 3 and Dodgers ranking No. 4 and No. 5 with Shohei Ohtani and Freddie Freeman. Three of the first five are Dodgers and two of the top nine are Yankees with right-hander Gerrit Cole at No. 9.

Baltimore catcher Adley Rutschman, who was No. 41 on this list last year, moves up to No. 19. He was one spot ahead of Kansas City’s Bobby Witt Jr., just as he was one spot ahead of him atop the 2019 MLB Draft.

Rutschman finished 2023 with an .809 OPS along with 20 homers, 84 runs, 92 walks and 80 RBIs. He finished tied for third in the AL in walks and fifth in OBP. He was ninth in voting for AL MVP.

With spring training games beginning this week – Saturday for the Orioles at Ed Smith Stadium versus Boston – some big-name free agents remain unsigned.

We have seen big names sign big dollar deals before with the season only weeks away. The Phillies signed Bryce Harper to a 13-year deal worth $330 million on March 2, 2019.

This can’t be good for the game or the players, wondering where they will be playing this year as teams are already in camp and games are about to begin.

The management of the sport would like a signing deadline of some sort – a time when free agent signings come to an end. Much like the mid-summer trade deadline. The players association is against this and really against anything that they believe limits the players free market in any way. This would not limit their earning power, but it would limit the time they would have to sign a deal.

As of last night, outfielder Cody Bellinger, infielder Matt Chapman and pitchers Blake Snell and Jordan Montgomery, some of the biggest names in this free agent class, were unsigned.

The Orioles would certainly love to duplicate a few things this season from last season. They’d love to win 101 games again. They would love to win the AL East and make the playoffs again.

And, to that end, they would love to do another thing the 2023 Orioles did – get off to a fast start that set a great tone for the 162-game grind.

The Tampa Bay Rays got off to an even better start, but the Orioles could have been buried but by starting 22-10 they held their own early on.

At that point on May 5, 2023, they were playing .688 ball with the second-best record in the majors. Behind only the 27-6 (.818) Rays. Tampa Bay’s amazing start put them eight games ahead of Toronto and 10 games up on New York on May 5. But just 4.5 games up on Baltimore.

The Orioles took advantage of a schedule that was less challenging early on to establish they could be very good, and they went on to be very good for the full season.

Time for more Orioles facts and opinions as we get closer to their spring training opener on Saturday at Ed Smith Stadium versus Boston. 

Fact: The Orioles acquired Craig Kimbrel in December with the intent that he serves as the club’s closer in the 2024 season.

Opinion: Despite the fact that Kimbrel is a 9-time All-Star and ranks eighth all-time with 417 saves, there is some concern about him around Birdland.

And while yes, he did struggle last year in the NL Championship Series, there are reasons to believe Kimbrel will do a good enough job for the Orioles. Experience for one – few have as much as a closer and he may blow some games, but it won’t be because he is not up to the moment.

But after a slow start last year, he pitched very, very well, going 7-5 with a 2.21 ERA from May 9 on. In that time, batters hit just .162 off him and his OPS against was .538. By the way that is still not up to Bautista dominance as last year he held batters to a .144 average and .460 OPS. But no one said they were getting another Bautista.

The first day of O’s spring training led to some shuffling of the Baltimore pitching staff. It was quite the day as we found out right-hander Kyle Bradish would begin the year on the injured list and likely be joined at that point by lefty John Means.

So, Tyler Wells and Cole Irvin, come on down.

Two pitchers we figured to have bullpen roles on Opening Day, now likely need to move to the rotation.

This is not bad news for the Orioles, as Wells was one of the American League’s best pitchers in the first half of 2023 and Irvin had an ERA of 3.22 from June 10 on last year. The ability to hold their own and then some in this rotation is there.

Ironically, both pitchers had three-start runs that marred their seasons in 2023. Irvin’s run came as the year began and his ERA was 10.66 on April 13 and he was sent to the minors. Wells was pitching so well in the first half and had an ERA of 3.18 at the All-Star break. But when the second half started, he was suddenly struggling. Three starts later, he had allowed four homers and 11 runs over nine innings and on July 30 he was optioned to Double-A Bowie. Wells would pitch well late in the year for the club out of the bullpen and made the Orioles' AL Division Series roster in the ‘pen. Irvin was not on that roster.

Another year - the third here at MASNSports.com - of producing a top-20 list attempting to rank Orioles international prospects has come and gone. It’s an exercise that takes some time and some help. The first one I need to take care of myself and the second one I get from some nice people around baseball.

This list of 20 this year was quite strong, and now the O’s have a shining example of what an international signing can turn into with catcher Samuel Basallo at age 19 becoming the No. 10 prospect in baseball per Baseball America.

Again this year, this ranking helped hammer home how far the O’s international program has come.

It produced these other takeaways for me:

The top 30 rankings: The international players are really breaking through now in the team top-30 prospect rankings. When I did the top 20 last year the O’s had five international prospects in the Baseball America top 30, and now they have eight. It would be nine had they not traded César Prieto to St. Louis, where he ranks No. 17 in the Cardinals’ top 30.

When a baseball player is said to have an 80-grade tool by a scout that is as good as it gets. That is like getting a 100 on a test. There is no better score.

On the 20-80 scouting scale, Baseball America recently described 80-grade this way: “ Top of the scale. Some scouts consider only one player’s tool in all of the major leagues to be an 80. Think of Shohei Ohtani's power, Corbin Carroll's speed or Devin Williams' changeup.”

In the Orioles' farm system, they have a center fielder that Baseball America provides not one, two 80-grade tools. He was their first-round draft pick last July, taken No. 17 out of Vanderbilt and Enrique Bradfield Jr. gets 80-grades for both his defense and speed.

Both were on display last season when, after the draft, he played three games in the rookie-level Florida Complex League, 17 at Low-A Delmarva and five at High-A Aberdeen where he will likely begin this season.

In a loaded O’s farm, he was ranked as the club’s No. 7 prospect by Baseball America and he missed their top 100. But he was ranked No. 64 by The Athletic and No. 94 by ESPN, making those top 100 lists.

For now, we have to put on hold any talk that this might be among the best O’s rotations ever. They added a stud pitcher in 2021 National League Cy Young Award winner Corbin Burnes, but on the first day of spring training we saw that injuries subtracted, at least for some period of time, two starters.

We’ve seen better days in Birdland.

Right-hander Kyle Bradish, who was fourth in American League Cy Young voting last year when he had a 2.83 ERA, is expected to start the new season on the injured list with a UCL sprain in his right elbow. He had a PRP injection. Now Birdland waits nervously with hope that eradicates the problem and it doesn’t get more serious later.

That news comes alongside the information that left-hander John Means is about a month behind the other pitchers. His winter of throwing moved slower than expected due to his elbow soreness that caused him to miss the playoffs. That followed his Tommy John surgery of April 2022. He has thrown just 31 2/3 big league innings the last two seasons. He was confident of pitching a full load of innings when interviewed during Birdland Caravan, but now he is likely to miss Opening Day.

The 2023 AL Rookie of the Year, Gunnar Henderson, experienced some mild oblique aggravation about two weeks ago while working out at home. At least he is expected to be ready for Opening Day.

During a season where he turned 30, the Orioles Ryan O’Hearn became a middle-of-the-order hitter on a 101-win Orioles club that finished atop the American League East.

Not bad for a player who was in the big leagues part-time between 2018 and 2022 with Kansas City. His career line with the Royals was .219/.293/.390/.683. He elevated his game with Baltimore and now has a new contract to show for it.

When the Orioles acquired him from Kansas City on Jan. 3, 2023, for cash considerations, there was no guarantee he would even see one day on the big league roster, much less become a key cog in the lineup and in the clubhouse.

But it comes later for some players, and it sure did for O’Hearn, who batted .289/.322/.480/.801 with 22 doubles, a triple, 14 homers and 60 RBIs in 368 plate appearances. His OPS+ of 122 ranked third on the team, behind only Adley Rutschman and Gunnar Henderson.

O’Hearn set career bests in most categories including games, hits, doubles, runs, RBIs, extra-base hits (37), multi-hit games (26), and multi-RBI games (13). He was 3-for-5 with five RBIs in his first three games with his new team, becoming the 10th Oriole in team history with at least five RBIs his first three games for the club and the first since Manny Machado (also five RBIs) in 2012.

It’s not necessarily the trade that keeps giving, but a deal where the Orioles seemingly did very well and that might be getting even better.

On Aug. 2, 2022, the O’s dealt righty Jorge López, their closer having a big year, to Minnesota for four pitchers. So far right-hander Yennier Cano has become a late-inning bullpen weapon while lefty Cade Povich is one of their top pitching prospects. Lefty Juan Rojas pitched in the lower minors last year and right-hander Juan Nuñez has a big fastball and leads the third day of the MASNSports.com O’s top 20 international prospect rankings.

He checks in at No. 11 after throwing in 13 games each in 2023 for Low-A Delmarva and High-A Aberdeen.

While he did not win a game – going 0-6 with a 3.96 ERA – Nuñez has shown a good strikeout rate and enough potential to rank 14^th on this list and to currently rank No. 22 by Baseball America on the O’s team top 30 list.

Nuñez pitched a combined 104 2/3 innings in 2023 with 58 walks, 125 strikeouts, a .220 average against and 1.36 WHIP. He posted a 10.75 K rate last year and that number is 11.18 for his career, spanning 201 innings.

Today, as we continue to rollout the MASNSports.com top 20 O’s international prospects, we find out yet again that teams can get big talents sometimes out of modest signing bonuses.

Some players sign late in the process as late bloomers and beyond that, it is just hard to project what someone at age 16 will look like and play like three, four, and six years down the road.

It is also quite exciting to see a pitcher ranked so highly now on this list as left-hander Luis De León, age 20, is the No. 2 prospect on the list for 2024.

He was signed by the club for just $30,000 in December of 2021 out of Barahona, Dominican Republic. He had an ERA of 5.14 in 28 innings in 2022 in the Dominican Summer League.

But last year, over six games in the rookie-level Florida Complex League and 10 for Single-A Delmarva, he went a combined 5-1 with a 2.01 ERA in 53 2/3 innings. It was a nice breakout performance by the lefty. Even after he moved up, he allowed just a .177 batting average and 2.39 ERA in his first go-around in full-season ball with the Shorebirds. De León walked 30 with 67 strikeouts (11.2 K per 9) and had a 1.30 WHIP. Among all O’s farm pitchers with 50 or more innings last season, his ERA was second-best.

It was not a tough call. There was no protracted debate. There was no brief debate. There was no debating at all. 

Catcher Samuel Basallo, signed to a $1.3 million bonus, the largest bonus in the Orioles' 2021 international class, is once again the club’s No. 1 ranked international prospect. He tops our third annual MASNSports.com ratings of the top 20 O’s international prospects.

Basallo was No. 2 on this list in 2022 and was No. 1 last year before he had even played one game of full season minor league ball. Before he went out and had a sensational season on the farm, one that took him as far as Double-A Bowie and also took him toward the top of several national top 100 prospect rankings.

He is the shining star of the O's international program, but far from the only top talent.

The wave of O's international prospects is now closer to crashing the shore than ever. To be a top team for an extended period, an organization has to be good in international scouting and signing players. The Orioles now are.

We are now just days away from the start of spring training and the first workout for Orioles pitchers and catchers is set for next Thursday in Sarasota, Fla. We are less than two weeks away from the first spring game on Feb. 24, when the Orioles will host the Boston Red Sox.

So it's time to survey the fan base and check in with Birdland on a few things. Time for a pre-spring edition of "A few questions for O's fans."

1) Here are some projected American League East starting pitching rotations. Rank them from best to worst.

Orioles: Corbin Burnes, Kyle Bradish, Grayson Rodriguez, John Means and Dean Kremer.

New York: Gerrit Cole, Carlos Rodón, Marcus Stroman, Nestor Cortes and Clarke Schmidt.