After spending about a week at spring training, one impression that struck me is how hard some players worked over the winter to get better. And it’s not just the hard work they put in, but that much of it is very specific, very targeted, and there is a clear plan at work. 

It is one of many things this organization is doing well right now. They take good players and make many of them better. Heck, they have taken some little-known players and some that once looked like longshots to make and/or help the team and turned them into All-Stars.

That has happened over the last few years for relievers Félix Bautista and Yennier Cano. Both were 2023 All-Stars for the Orioles.

Bautista’s first pro year was 2012 with Miami. The Marlins released him in 2016. On Aug. 4, 2016 the Orioles signed him. Through 2018 on their watch he never got out of rookie ball. In 2019 and 2021, he walked nearly six batters per nine innings on the farm. That same pitcher had a 3.5 walk rate and 1.85 ERA in 2022 and 2023. In the big leagues.

Cano in 2022 gave up 23 runs in 18 major league innings. A year later he started the season lights-out with the Orioles, was an All-Star and had a 2.11 ERA.

SARASOTA, Fla. – The Orioles’ No. 1 ranked farm system has been on display pretty much every day this spring training in Florida with young players and prospects excelling in the Birds’ Grapefruit League games - helping the club to an 11-2 record.

The O’s farm will have another chance to shine, this one on national television on March 14 at 7:05 p.m. when MLB Network televises their Spring Breakout game in Bradenton against the Pittsburgh Pirates.

The first annual four-day event, from March 14-17 in Florida and Arizona, features teams playing each other in seven-inning games featuring each organization’s top prospects.

The O’s have a roster of 24 for that game featuring 16 of their top 30 prospects via MLBPipeline.com, seven of their top 10 and three that get top 100 recognition.

They are infielder Jackson Holliday, the No. 1 prospect in baseball, catcher Samuel Basallo ranked as the O’s No. 2 prospect and No. 17 in the MLBPipeline top 100 and infielder Coby Mayo, rated as the O’s No. 4 and No. 30 in the top 100.

SARASOTA, Fla – A lot has been going well for the Orioles during spring training 2024 as they've gotten off to a 9-1 start. But today something went wrong in the last of the first inning when starting center fielder Cedric Mullins walked off the field with a trainer as the Orioles faced the Minnesota Twins at Ed Smith Stadium.

During the game, the club announced Mullins left due to right hamstring discomfort.

For the Orioles, the good news is that manager Brandon Hyde said after the game that Mullins left as a precaution and they feel this will be a minor setback.

“I think he was doing it (coming out), really, as a precautionary measure," said Hyde. "Just felt a little sore and the right thing - I’m glad he did it - was (to) say something and come out of the game.

Asked whether Mullins would need to get magnetic resonance imaging done, Hyde replied: “No. Just got treatment inside. We’ll see how he is in the morning.

SARASOTA, Fla. – After missing the team’s first 10 games – and their 9-1 start – Gunnar Henderson will make his spring training debut today as the Orioles host a Minnesota Twins split squad at 1:05 p.m. He's playing shortstop and batting third.

Henderson has been rehabbing a sore left oblique, an issue that came up late in his winter workouts at home while long-tossing. The Orioles have been careful to nurse that along, and now the 2023 American League Rookie of the Year is ready to take the field.

“He’s doing great,” manager Brandon Hyde said this morning. “(Has) taken some live at-bats a couple of days ago and had kind of a normal workday yesterday and is cleared and ready to go.”

Hyde is not worried about Henderson feeling any pressure to produce or exceed his ’23 stats.

“Gunnar is so driven that sometimes you have to slow him down a little bit. He has got incredible makeup, unbelievable worker and plays the game as hard as anybody. You know you want him to enjoy it a little bit, but he is so easy to coach and so fun to watch play.”

SARASOTA, Fla. – The timetable for lefty John Means has not changed. He began spring training a month behind the other pitchers after he had an extended winter rest period. This followed his missing the American League Division Series with elbow soreness.

But Means is continuing to throw in Florida and his next step, he said today, will be live bullpen sessions coming in the next week or two.

But he is not likely to pitch in any spring training games, which run through March 24. And he is still expected to begin the regular season on the injured list. 

“Means, maybe, probably not,” manager Brandon Hyde said this morning when asked specifically whether Means will pitch before the spring games end.

Said Means, who went 1-2 with a 2.66 ERA in four starts last September: “I’m going to be doing some live BPs here coming up. We’ll see where it goes from there. We’re getting there.”

SARASOTA, Fla. – The Orioles currently hold the best record for the Grapefruit and Cactus leagues combined at 7-1 and have won four in a row.

They try to keep a streak alive today when they host the New York Yankees at 1:05 p.m. at Ed Smith Stadium. The game will be televised live on MASN.

This is the first of just two spring games between these American League East rivals, a year after the Orioles won 101 games and the Yankees won 82.

Center fielder Cedric Mullins, who is 2-for-7 this spring, will lead off, followed by catcher Adley Rutschman and Ryan Mountcastle, who returns to the field at first base after he served as DH Friday in North Port.

Coby Mayo, who is batting .417 (5-for-12) is starting at third base and batting sixth.

SARASOTA, Fla. - When Pittsburgh Pirates right-hander Paul Skenes, the No. 1 overall selection in the 2023 MLB Draft, faced the Orioles' Jackson Holliday, the No. 1 overall pick in 2022, on Thursday in Sarasota, it was a nice appetizer for a game coming later this month. 

Skenes, the LSU product, retired Holliday on the second pitch of the at-bat. He touched 102 mph during his scoreless inning versus the Orioles on Thursday. He threw 100 against Holliday.

On March 14 in Bradenton, the top O’s prospects will play the top Pirates prospects as part of a new series of games this year called “Spring Breakout.” Each club will have at least one game where it can send out its top prospects to play those from another club. That night we could see Skenes-Holliday part two.

The O’s-Pirates game that night will be the second part of a doubleheader at Bradenton’s LECOM Park that will begin with the regular Grapefruit League game between the O's and Pirates at 3:05 p.m. The prospects-only game will follow at 7:05 p.m., and that game will be televised live on MLB Network.

The roster reveal will be a live TV event, too, and that is happening March 7 at 11 a.m. on MLB Network.

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.

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.

The Orioles have a star-studded prospects list and the No. 1 farm in baseball, and their top three prospects are among their list of 20 spring training non-roster invitees announced today by the club.

The Orioles report on Feb. 14 to Sarasota, Fla., with their first workout for pitchers and catchers set for Feb. 15 and with the first full-squad workout to be held on Feb. 20.

Infielder Jackson Holliday, the No. 1 prospect in baseball, gets the expected NRI along with the club's No. 2 prospect, catcher Samuel Basallo, and their No. 3 (as ranked by Baseball America), infielder Coby Mayo.

The No. 4 and No. 5 prospects - outfielders Colton Cowser and Heston Kjerstad, who are already on the 40-man roster - will also report to Sarasota. All 40-man roster players join the club for spring training along with the NRIs.

The club recently dealt its No. 6 and No. 7 prospects, per Baseball America - DL Hall and Joey Ortiz - to Milwaukee for right-handed starter Corbin Burnes. The O's No. 8 prospect, infielder Connor Norby, is also among the non-roster invites. 

Orioles center fielder Cedric Mullins may well be a player driven and motivated this year by what happened last year.

And I don’t mean how the Orioles’ season ended against Texas. But how his season ended and went at times – he was on the injured list twice during the year. After missing nine games total in the 2021-22 seasons, he was limited to 116 games in ’23.

Mullins hit just .198 last September and then was 0-for-12 in the AL Division Series.

During Birdland Caravan, O’s first base and outfielders coach Anthony Sanders talked about Mullins late-season struggles. In the end was he just too banged up to play?

“We as a staff, we know the vibe of the players,” said Sanders. “We know the bumps and bruises they have. You have to trust in those guys that are professionals. Even though Ced’s bat didn’t probably show up, he still brought another element to the game that this team relies on. He’s a leader of this team and I would not have done it any different way.”

After their best season in years, one that saw the Orioles win in April and keep it going all year, one that saw them in the playoffs and one that saw them win postseason honors too, what do they do next?

How about keep winning and go deeper in the playoffs next time?

That sounds fair and would be a reasonable expectation for the 2024 season.

You might think, after 101 wins, the Birds had a year when everything broke right. Not exactly.

First, the Tampa Rays got off to a 13-0 start in early May were 29-7. They led the division by six games on the Fourth of July. But the Orioles produced more fireworks from that point on.

Take it for what it's worth, but oddsmakers are anticipating the Orioles take a big step back in their win total for the 2024 season. BetOnline.ag this week put the over-under for Orioles wins at 87.5.

The Orioles won 101 games last year, blowing by preseason over-under totals in the 76- and 77-win range predicted by multiple outlets.

So this is a projection for a lot more than a year ago, but still many fewer than the actual total from the 2023 season.

Going by current listed totals, BetOnline.ag has the Yankees with the most wins in the American League East in 2024, followed by Baltimore, Toronto, Tampa Bay and Boston.

And while Boston would finish last in this listing, its 80.5 total is much more than the number of wins they forecast for other projected last-place clubs, including the Chicago White Sox (63.5), Oakland Athletics (57.5), Washington Nationals (65.5), Pittsburgh Pirates (72.5) and Colorado Rockies (60.5).

One word for the MLB trade market right now would be frustrating. Frustrating for fans and maybe even front office execs alike that, while we have rumors, we have so much less actual movement and action.

The rumors about right-hander Dylan Cease never seem to end yet nothing so far has led to a move.

What might create further frustration here is that neither the Orioles or the Chicago White Sox need to make a move. They can simply keep what they have and go at it in the 2024 season. In the case of the White Sox, they could trade Cease next month, at the trade deadline, next winter or maybe never. And as for the Orioles, they may already have enough pitching.

The White Sox's Chris Getz was promoted to the general manager position on Aug. 31 and is going to want to make sure he makes the right deal if he trades Cease, a pitcher who was second for the AL Cy Young Award in the 2022 season.

Getz addressed the Cease trade talks with Chicago reporters this week.

He is 28, throws 95, 96 mph, has very solid whiff rates and has an ERA of 3.54 in 97 starts over the last three seasons. That includes his 2022 season, when he went 14-8 with a 2.20 ERA, a 1.11 WHIP and a second-place finish in the American League Cy Young voting.

Right now, it appears Chicago White Sox right-hander Dylan Cease is a hot potential trade piece, with the Orioles showing continued interest per numerous reports and now joined by, among other teams, the New York Yankees, in pursuing the 2022 All-Star. According to The Athletic, the Yankees, after losing out on free agent Yoshinobu Yamamoto, are going after free agents Blake Snell and Jordan Montgomery. But now they're also chasing Cease, via the trade market.

The appeal here, beyond his talent level, is that Cease is under team control for two more years. And his salary, through arbitration, could be about $25 million total for both the 2024 and 2025 seasons. That would make Cease obtainable at a much lower price than the top remaining free agents.

All it will take to get Cease is a package of young talent. We say that in a kidding fashion, since it could mean a massive package of prospects.

The Orioles, with the No. 1 farm system in the sport, have plenty of prospects to attract any team via a trade, including the White Sox. But how far would they go for this pitcher, a pitcher who had a 4.58 ERA and 1.418 WHIP last season in 177 innings?

During the Winter Meetings we found out the Orioles signed closer Craig Kimbrel, and also that top prospect Jackson Holliday could begin the 2024 season in the O's starting lineup.

We also got some very good draft news for the club. The assumption, confirmed in Nashville, was that the Orioles would have three picks well up in the draft.

Sure they won't have the No. 1 pick, as they did in 2019 and 2022, or a top five pick not No. 1, as they did in 2020 and 2021, but they will have three of the first 34 selections next July.

Executive vice president and general manager Mike Elias and his staff have led five previous drafts for the club since taking Adley Rutschman No. 1 in 2019, and they've never had three picks among the first 34.

In 2019, they selected 1, 42 and 71. In 2020 they picked 2, 30 and 39. Then it was 5, 41 and 65 and then 1, 33 and 42. Last year they selected 17, 53 and 64.

The 2021 Orioles went 52-110 and finished 48 games out of first place. In an American League East where fourth-place Toronto won 91 games that season, the Orioles were 39 games out of fourth place.

No one could forsee that team two years later would win the AL East. The Orioles went from 52 to 83 to 101 wins in two seasons. It was quite a run and rise to the top of the division. They won the division last year for the first time since the 2014 season and made the playoffs for the first time since 2016.

The Orioles, coming off that many wins - the most in the AL and second-most in the majors - are now going to have to deal with higher expectations when a new season begins, from fans and media alike.

Heading into the 2023 season and coming off a 31-win improvement, some thought the club might regress a bit before moving forward again. On their way to 100 wins, some teams surge forward, hit a bump in the road and then resume winning again. The O’s hit no speed bumps in 2023.

They got off to a good start and were 19-9 at the end of April versus a somewhat soft schedule. As the opponents got tougher in May, the Orioles held their own, perhaps showing that their winning ways of April were legit. The Orioles entered July at 6 1/2 games back of Tampa Bay, which got off to an amazing start, winning each of their first 13 games. But by July 19 the Orioles were tied for first as Tampa Bay was losing night after night. No one saw that coming, but it did.

The Orioles continue to see strong signs that their international program is really starting to hum. As they get set to open a brand-new Dominican complex, in recent weeks they had four international players ranked among the top prospects in the Florida Complex League. They had seven players taken in September in the Dominican Winter League draft, led by catching prospect Samuel Basallo.

Basallo is the shining star right now among the O’s international talent, but is far from the only talent starting to get noticed.

“In recent years we planted some seeds and the flowers are starting to come up,” said the O’s Koby Perez, promoted recently from senior director of international scouting to vice president of international scouting and operations. “Our staff and scouts on the ground have done a fantastic job finding talent and I can’t say enough about our player development system. Some of the fruits of our labor are starting to show.”

Perez and the Orioles will unveil a new international signing class when the signing date arrives on Jan. 15.

“We feel good about this upcoming class,” Perez told me at the Winter Meetings in Nashville. “We feel like we’re going to have a couple of players that are publicly ranked in the signing class. And there are other guys, maybe not publicly ranked, but that we value highly as we have in the past. We’re excited and can’t wait to Jan. 15 to get these guys under wraps.”

Time for more questions for Orioles fans. A pre-Christmas edition.

It's an occasional winter feature at Steve's blog. Answer one or all the questions. Respond to the answers posted by others. Just read it all and keep your opinions to yourself.

All is possible here today.

Now on to the questions:

1) We have debated often here recently the club's need or lack of such for a starting pitching addition. So do they roll the dice with what they have or add on?

Time to take a look at a few facts that came out of the 2023 baseball season and see how some of them may play out in 2024. This is where our opinions come in.

Fact: No. 1-ranked prospect Jackson Holliday has played just one full minor league season and just 145 career games on the farm. He rose four levels last year, but played only 18 regular season games and four more in the playoffs for Triple-A Norfolk. Now he could make the 2024 Opening Day roster for the Orioles.

Opinion: O’s executive vice president and general manager Mike Elias got everyone’s attention at the Winter Meetings when asked if Holliday could make it to Baltimore for Opening Day.

"It's definitely a very strong possibility,” Elias said during an interview session in Nashville. “I don’t want to put the cart before the horse, but he had a historic first full season in the minors. Probably, you have to go back into, like, the '80s or '90s to find something similar to that, in my opinion, for an American kid out of high school. Got to Triple-A. Wasn’t there a huge amount of time, didn’t tear the cover off the ball, but he more than held his own and did well.”

As I have written a few times this offseason, sometimes teams just want to “get on with it” with a top prospect. They know the talent is immense and they move the youngster to the majors to complete his development while at the same time helping the big club. Holliday, as talented as he is and as mature as he is for age 20, is about at that point.