They will be playing in a game that doesn’t count, and it won’t even be a nine-inning game. But in mid-March at spring training in one game, we will be able to see many, maybe even just about all, of the Orioles' top young prospects on the field at one time.

It is a cool concept called “Spring Breakout,” a four-day event from March 14-17 in which each big league club’s top prospects will play another team's top group as part of a spring training doubleheader. Major League Baseball announced the event on Wednesday afternoon.

The Orioles' prospects will play the Pittsburgh Pirates' prospects on March 14 at Lecom Park in Bradenton, Fla. The schedule lists the clubs playing the major league spring game at 3:05 p.m., with the second part of a doubleheader being the prospects match starting their seven-inning game at 7:05 p.m.

No broadcasts for spring have been announced yet, but MLB Network was promoting a broadcast of the O’s and Pirates on the airwaves on Wednesday when this event was announced.

One of the neat things every year in spring training is seeing the prospects play in major league spring games. Whether they are there for just a short time or for longer, it has to be thrilling for the young players and also cool for the fans to see this young talent taking the field wearing the orange and black and representing the Orioles.

The Orioles rotation – whether they add to it this offseason or not – just might be good enough now to take another run at an American League East championship. Currently, I expect that four members of that rotation look firm: Kyle Bradish, Grayson Rodriguez, John Means and Dean Kremer.

A fifth or even someone that could bump someone else out of that four could be in a group that includes Tyler Wells, DL Hall and Cole Irvin.

Surely, the Orioles could call on five of that group of seven and feel pretty good about their rotation right now. And again, they may add to that list of pitchers and maybe add someone who is pretty good. At least that was part of the plan when this offseason began.

The O’s rotation ERA of 4.14 for the 2023 year was just seventh-best in the AL for the full season. But it was much better in the second half at 3.74. An ERA of 3.74 for the year would have ranked first in the AL as Minnesota at 3.82 led the AL in rotation ERA for the season.

Kremer and Bradish got off to slow starts this year and Rodriguez had a 7.35 ERA at the end of May. The Orioles were 35-21 at the end of May and four games out of first place. So they were doing just fine, but things would get better in the second half when their pitching – especially among their starters - really got going.

Analysts have used words like "astounding" and "amazing" while noting that the Orioles have had three straight players move to the No. 1 spot on the national top-100 prospects lists. Adley Rutschman went to No. 1, and then so did Gunnar Henderson. And during the 2023 season, Jackson Holliday ended the year at No. 1.

Rutschman, Henderson and Holliday, all going to No. 1. The first two are already productive major leaguers. The third could join them on Opening Day 2024.

Talk about building an elite talent pipeline. You can’t get more elite then No. 1.

During the Winter Meetings, I interviewed Jonathan Mayo, MLBPipeline.com prospects analyst. He talked about this remarkable run of No. 1 prospects by the Orioles.

“It is really astounding,” said Mayo. “Adley and Jackson being No. 1, that is sort of how it’s supposed to be when you have the No. 1 pick. But they have not missed on the No. 1 pick. At least not yet. Jackson Holliday has not played an inning of big league ball, so we don’t put the cart ahead of the horse. I think we all expect him to be a good big leaguer. They didn’t miss on those, and people miss on No. 1 picks often. Even if they end up being OK big leaguers, they don’t wind up becoming that No. 1 prospect.

NASHVILLE – The Orioles' search for a back-end-of-the-game reliever and a starting pitcher may now be down to just a search for a starter. The club is, according to numerous reports, closing in on a deal with free-agent right-hander Craig Kimbrel, a pitcher who is a nine-time All-Star with 417 career saves.

Even at 35, Kimbrel could be impactful for the Orioles in the later innings and could wind up as the 2024 closer with all that experience saving games on his resume.

For the 2023 Philadelphia Phillies, he went 8-6 with a 3.26 ERA and 1.045 WHIP in 71 games covering 69 innings. He recorded a 3.7 walk rate and 12.3 strikeout rate. He allowed just 44 hits over 69 innings for an average of 5.7 hits allowed per nine innings.

Kimbrel pitched three scoreless innings in the first two rounds of the playoffs, but yielded four runs over three innings when the Phillies lost the National League Championship Series to Arizona, and he took two losses in that series.

Opponent batters hit just .181/.273/.337/.611 off Kimbrel, who recorded 23 saves for the Phils with a save percentage of 82.1, which was a bit under the percentage of O’s closer Félix Bautista at 84.6. Bautista will miss the entire 2024 season after Tommy John surgery, so Kimbrel’s addition, when and if it becomes official, would deepen the Baltimore bullpen and allow Yennier Cano to move back into a setup role. The O’s would also have the likes of Danny Coulombe, Cionel Pérez and Dillon Tate for late-game innings. Pending their roles, Tyler Wells and DL Hall, among others, could also pitch significant bullpen innings.

NASHVILLE – When you have one of the deepest and maybe the deepest farm systems in baseball, making trades from that prospect depth is a good way to add to your major league roster. For the Orioles, it’s a big change from the rebuilding years when they were trading to acquire prospects in dealing players such as Trey Mancini, Dylan Bundy and, going even farther back, Erik Bedard.

Now the Orioles are rumored to be looking to acquire a pitcher such as right-hander Dylan Cease via a trade. Cease has two years of team control left, at a cost of perhaps around $25 million. That is a pretty low dollar amount for two seasons of a pitcher of that quality, one who finished second for the American League Cy Young Award in 2022, going 14-8 with a 2.20 ERA. A pitcher projected to get $8.8 million this year via arbitration.

If, as reports indicate, his trade market is “robust,” it might take a team with numerous quality prospects to pull off that deal. A team like the Orioles could also offer one of several young veterans who already have a proven major league track record.

Jonathan Mayo, who covers prospects for MLB.com and MLBPipeline.com, shared a few thoughts this morning on the Orioles' prospect depth. Is now the time for Baltimore to pull the trigger on a deal to use prospects to get something to help the 2024 club?  

“That is what it is pointing to, not being privy to the conversations going on,” Mayo said. “They have infield and outfield depth and have choices, where they can make a trade and a team like the Chicago White Sox can get someone they can put right into their Opening Day lineup. Guys that are just about ready, and (the Orioles) bring in a starting pitcher like a Dylan Cease. And they could do it without completely stripping the system bare.

With the release of a new top 10 O’s prospects list this week by Baseball America comes confirmation of what we already knew: the O’s system remains loaded. They currently hold the title of top farm system in all of baseball.

The new top-100 prospects lists are likely to come out sometime in January and February. But on the latest lists from Baseball America and MLBPipeline.com, the Orioles have six top-100 prospects.

Here is how Baseball America ranked them this week on its new team top 10.

1) Shortstop Jackson Holliday: Did we expect anyone else? The player drafted No. 1 overall by the Orioles on July 17, 2022 has lived up to the hype and then some. He played at four levels last summer – ending the year at Triple-A Norfolk – and hit .323 with a .941 OPS and led all minor league players in runs scored, with 113. He played above-average defense and has 60-grade speed. He was the O’s Minor League Player of the Year and Baseball America’s National Player of the Year after a season in which he played in the All-Star Futures Game. Speaking of the future, his day in Baltimore could be close. Holliday will celebrate his 20^th birthday tomorrow.

2) Catcher Samuel Basallo: He turned 19 in August. He is a super-fast riser that has become the shining star of the O’s international program. He rose three levels last year, producing 20 homers and a .953 OPS. He played four games at the end of 2023 at Double-A Bowie, where he will likely start the 2024 season. It could end for him at Triple-A. The tools and production are loud for this guy. While Holliday is the third straight O’s farm player to be No. 1 in prospect rankings, Basallo could be the fourth. Yes, impressive by the Orioles. 

Today in a unique edition and a variation on the usual "A Few Questions for O's Fans," I want to discuss not so much the present day Orioles but the Orioles of the past. For some of you, feel free to go back to the beginning of the Baltimore Orioles and their first year of 1954 if you choose.

Let's start there. For those that have that much history with the team. 

1) Not so much of a question but seeking out any fans that remember the very first year of the Orioles. What do you remember about the team moving to Baltimore and that first season of 1954?

2) Rank the Orioles' three World Series championships from most to least special. While any WS win is special, do you have a favorite? Use any reason that one WS could be your favorite, whether it was one you attended, you felt it was their most impressive win or any other reasons that are important to you.

3) Was the acquisition of Frank Robinson the best trade in O's history? Was there one that was better or more impactful?

Back on the East Coast after a few days at the General Manager meetings in Arizona, Orioles executive vice president and general manager Mike Elias is ready to begin the work on making additions to his pitching staff, both in the rotation and bullpen.

During a phone interview Friday with MASNSports.com, Elias made it clear that a late-inning reliever is at or near the top of his wish list. Right-hander Felix Bautista, who posted a 1.48 ERA and 33 saves with a 16.2 K rate, is expected to miss the entire 2024 season after undergoing Tommy John surgery Oct. 9.

It leaves a big hole in the back end of the Baltimore bullpen.

“It is a top priority,” said Elias. “I’m characterizing it as a back-end reliever. I think if that guy has closer experience, that’s great. It would be nice. I am worried about Bautista’s absence and I don’t believe we felt that fully in September of 2023. We are going to try like hell to bring in some help from the outside for the back of our bullpen.”

And that help could come via free agency or a trade.

With just two Silver Slugger winners since the 2014 season, the Orioles doubled that total tonight as Adley Rutschman won the Silver Slugger Award for catchers in the American League and Gunnar Henderson was the winner in the utility player category.

It’s the most Silver Slugger wins for the Orioles since Adam Jones, Chris Davis and J.J. Hardy won in 2013. It's the sixth time in team history the club had two or more winners.

Anthony Santander was an outfield finalist, but the winners were Kyle Tucker of Houston, Seattle's Julio Rodriguez and Luis Robert Jr. of the Chicago White Sox.

Rutschman, 25, hit .277/.374/.435/.809 this season with 31 doubles, one triple, 20 homers and 80 RBIs. Among the AL leaders he finished tied for third in walks, fifth in OBP and eighth in batting average. He joins Mickey Tettleton in 1989 as the only O’s to win a Silver Slugger for catcher.

"It's pretty cool," Rutschman said on the MLB Network telecast. "It's more a testament to my teammates and coaches that this has come to fruition, and it's a lot of hard work to get here. It means a lot and I'm very thankful."

The Orioles are tied for the seventh-best betting favorite to win the 2024 World Series. That is a step up from last winter when they were tied for the 17^th in odds from betonline.ag.

7/1: Atlanta

8/1: Los Angeles Dodgers

9/1: Houston, Texas

12/1: New York Yankees, Philadelphia

Now that the World Series is over, the hot stove season has just about arrived. Soon we’ll be hearing and reading rumors of potential trades and free agent acquisitions. The hot stove season can garner about as much interest as the regular season.

If the Orioles look to dip into the free agent pool and don’t want to dive into the deep end but yet get a difference-maker, I can see one out there. And this is based off salary projections from an article this week in the New York Post.

Pitchers that could be out of the Orioles' reach and/or comfort level and be in line for at least $100 million or close, per that article, are Blake Snell, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Aaron Nola, Jordan Montgomery and Eduardo Rodriguez.

But the outlet listed free agent right-hander Sonny Gray at a price tag that could be in the wheelhouse for the Orioles and a lot of other teams. The paper quoted expert No. 1 and expert No. 2, who I assume are front office execs in the sport. One projected that Gray would get a three-year deal worth $65 million and another put it at three years and $66 million.

Gray is coming off a fantastic year with the Minnesota Twins during which he went 8-8 with a 2.79 ERA and 1.147 WHIP in 184 innings over 32 starts. He ranked second in the American League and third in the majors in ERA, and was fourth in the AL in average against (.226), third in OPS (.607 behind Kyle Bradish at .605) and fifth in groundball rate.

In one sense it was a bit unexpected that an O’s pitching staff that performed so well in the second half of the 2023 season would perform poorly in the playoffs. But they gave up 21 runs as Texas swept the Orioles in three games. They gave up 18 in the last two games as starters Grayson Rodriguez and Dean Kremer combined to allow 11 runs in 3 1/3 innings.

Texas is a good hitting team, but Orioles pitchers seemed to be hitting their stride the longer the season went on. This time Texas got the better of them.

For the 2023 season, the O’s team ERA was 3.89 to rank fifth-best in the American League. Baltimore was just a few points behind third-place Tampa Bay's 3.86 and a bit further back of first-place Minnesota's 3.74.

In the first half of the season Orioles pitching went 54-35 (.607) with a 4.15 ERA. In the second half the staff went 47-26 (.644) with a 3.58 ERA of 3.58 that was first in the AL and third in the major leagues. The O's played at a 104-win pace after the All-Star game.

The O’s team ERA by month in 2023:

Major League Baseball moved to a 12-team playoff field, six from each league, for the 2022 season. We have just two years under the new format.

But after the Orioles pushed so hard and worked so hard for so long to hold off Tampa Bay and win the AL East, they would join three other teams that had five days off getting byes in the wild card round, by losing in the Division Series.

In two years under this format, teams that won 100 or more games have gone 1-5 in the Division Series. 

Last year the top seeds were Houston and the New York Yankees in the AL and Atlanta and the Los Angeles Dodgers in the NL. They went a combined 2-2 in the Division Series.

This year the top seeds were Baltimore, Houston, Atlanta and the Dodgers and they went 1-3 in the DS. 

The 2023 season got off to a good start for the Orioles' Ryan Mountcastle. But it didn’t stay that way. On April 11 at Camden Yards, he tied a team single-game record with nine RBIs versus the Athletics. He homered twice in the game and hit a grand slam. An Oriole with nine RBIs had happened before just twice since the team moved to Baltimore in 1954. Jim Gentile drove in nine runs May 9, 1961 at Minnesota. And Eddie Murray did the same on Aug. 26, 1985 at California.

“Two greats,” Mountcastle told reporters that night of the first nine-RBI game in the majors since 2020. “To tie them in, I guess, any category is super special, pretty cool.”

So that was a special game and Mounty looked prime to have a big year.

And then he struggled and struggled some more. In early June, we learned he was dealing with the effects of vertigo, and he didn’t play again until July 9. When he took the field that day, he was batting .227 for the year with an OPS of .686.

Fans were not only questioning his presence in the lineup daily but also his future on the team in the long term. His critics seemed vast and were loud. When the season ended, we heard the sounds of mostly silence.

Yes, it is the first time this offseason that we put some specific questions your way. Every day here is an open forum for topics on the Orioles. Today we get a bit more specific about it.

It was quite the season for Birdland in 2023. And while there is disappointment with the playoffs still going on without Baltimore, there is plenty of optimism for more winning in the future.

The O's went 101-61 to finish with the second-best record in the majors and best record in the American League for the first time since 1997. The 101 wins tied the 1971 Orioles for fourth-most in club history. The O's posted back-to-back winning seasons for the first time since 2013-2014. The Orioles won their 10th AL East title.

“It was a really successful season," said manager Brandon Hyde at his season-ending press conference. "You know, overcoming so many odds and obstacles that were against us and so many people thinking that we weren’t going to be a playoff team. Then all of a sudden we win 101 games and the American League East. That says a lot about a lot of people in the organization and the guys in our clubhouse. So, really proud of that.

“We had so many awesome moments. Huge wins. And close wins. And the amount of close games we played was ridiculous. And how we won some games during the season, it was just a total team effort, and that was how we played all year. The postseason, we just didn’t play our best and ran into a little bit of a buzz saw, but I’m going to have great memories of this team.”

One thing that has been true about fans throughout Birdland for a long time: They love it when national media reporters and outlets say nice things about their team, and some get really hacked when they do not. Or say something perceived as a slight.

My opinion is that MLB Network was on the O’s bandwagon pretty much throughout the 2023 season. The coverage was extensive and they were bullish on the Orioles just about from the start to the end of the season.

That continues even after the Orioles got swept three in a row by Texas in the American League Division Series.

A theme about the Orioles is that the team is just beginning its window to chase championships for the next few Octobers and maybe longer.

But on the network on Friday, former major league general manager Dan O’Dowd had a few suggestions for the Orioles to consider this winter. It will not come as a surprise that one of them is that the club should add to its major league roster by making deals from their fertile and No. 1-ranked farm system.

For Orioles right-hander Kyle Bradish, who pitched like an ace during the 2023 season, a key start along the way to doing that came on the West Coast in early June. He faced the San Francisco Giants. He would last just four innings and allow seven hits and three runs.

It was not a terrible start, but a short one, and it left Bradish with a 4.13 ERA after his first 10 starts of the season. Not a bad ERA at all, but it would get a lot better for him after that outing against the Giants.

“I'd say kind of the turning point was my outing in San Francisco," Bradish said before his start in Game 1 of the American League Division Series. "I had a rough inning and then got taken out in the fourth, and kind of there had a mindset shift. Just knowing that I can't keep doing that. It's hurting the bullpen, hurting the team. Just going out there, working for a quality start every time was kind of the mindset after that.”

The results that followed that start were stunning.

Over his last 20 games, he went 10-5 with a 2.31 ERA, a .191 batting average against, a .548 OPS allowed and 0.92 WHIP.

When the Orioles went to a six-man rotation late in the season this year it proved to be pretty important. How much so? At his season-ending press conference yesterday manager Brandon Hyde didn't pull punches on it.

Said Hyde: “For me, when we decided to go to a six-man rotation, that possibly was a season-saver. Because I feel like all those guys, that was kind of crunch time a little bit. And, it allowed all those guys to get an extra day. And they showed what they could be like when they were rested, and I think it was the right thing to do for every one of them because they were flying over their innings (totals from the previous year) because they were pitching so well and we needed them. So, for me, that was a huge part of our season, when we made that decision at that point.

“I’m excited about our rotation going forward. I’m not sure what’s going to happen from a roster standpoint, but I know that we have some guys in there that had great experience this year and had really good seasons. And are still really young in their career. Just go back at what Tyler Wells did in the first half. And what he did the last week of the season. Unbelievable. Arguably, our best starting pitcher of the first half, and showed the stuff he had out of the bullpen a couple of years ago.

“Our starting pitching is up and coming. And I think they are only going to get better.”

The extra innings some pitchers threw this year and pitching into October should benefit this group next season, even if they gave up 13 runs in eight combined October innings in three playoff games.

Since Jordan Westburg struck out at Globe Life Field on Tuesday night and the Rangers' sweep of the Orioles in the American League Division Series became final, there have been a few opinions expressed as to why they lost, how they lost and what went wrong.

OK, not a few, but an avalanche of opinions. Just when you think you can’t possibly hear or read another take, there will be one. No shortage of opinions, ranging - in my own opinion - from very possible and pertinent to flat out crazy. Whackadoo territory.

But the thing about a sports opinion is that no one is 100 percent right or wrong or can be proven that. They are opinions and in a social-media, sports-talk, hot-take world, it seems everyone has one. Some express them in interesting ways too.

Theories of why the Orioles lost include:

* Not enough playoff experience.

When it went south for the Orioles, it went fast. A 1-0 deficit turned into a 6-0 hole within a span of five pitches in the last of the second inning. The Texas Rangers were on their way to a three-game sweep of the Orioles in the American League Division Series.

After 101 wins and an AL East championship, a team that fought so hard and so well to win the division was out of the playoffs in a span of three games and over a span of four days.

It was a strong year during the regular season for AL East teams. But in the postseason the division is now a combined 0-7 and with no teams left.

Texas beat the Orioles 7-1 for its fifth straight postseason win. It was Baltimore's eighth straight postseason loss.

They may have let the AL West division title get away to end the regular season, but the Rangers have not lost in the postseason and have taken out the O’s and Rays.