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.

During the Hot Stove radio show this week on WBAL Radio in Baltimore, Orioles assistant general manager Eve Rosenbaum discussed the club’s trade for ace pitcher Corbin Burnes.

While some media stories were focused on a possible addition of Dylan Cease this offseason, the Orioles were working for months behind the scenes to try and add Burnes, the 2021 National League Cy Young Award winner.

Rosenbaum said during her radio interview that Mike Elias and the O’s front office staff had to show some real patience during this process. Continuing to work on the deal and to keep the discussions ongoing even when there were times when it looked like such a trade would not happen.

“For something like a trade, so often what happens is you talk to teams for months,” Rosenbaum said on WBAL. “You send them a message, they text you back. You get with your group, you huddle up and craft a response and send a text message back. They get back to you two days later and it goes on and on like this.

“You try so many different ideas and so many different angles. At various points the past couple of months we thought, ‘the deal is alive, the deal is dead, the deal is alive, the deal is dead’ and finally we were able to get it across the finish line. You have to be in for the long haul when you are working on trades.”

Even when you are the No. 1 overall MLB Draft pick and rise to become the No. 1 prospect in baseball, the process to improve is still important, even with a driven player with massive talent.

And so, this is true for the Orioles’ Jackson Holliday, who begins a bid next week to make the club’s Opening Day roster.

On July 17, 2022, the Orioles made Holliday the draft’s No. 1 overall pick. Then the kid from Oklahoma went out and put up a .911 OPS in his first 20 pro games between the Florida Complex League and Single-A Delmarva. He walked twice as many times as he struck out. But for a young man still growing into his body and growing into what his future power will produce, he hit one homer in 64 at-bats.

So, in that quest to make even the best better, the Orioles sent coaches Cody Asche and Anthony Villa to his home that winter for some work on improving exit velocity and launch angles that would later in his career turn some deep fly balls into hits and doubles into balls that could go over the fence.

Last season, this impressive young man that turned 20 on Dec. 4, played at four levels, hit 12 homers over 477 at-bats and rose to become the top prospect in the sport.

With spring training starting next week and the club’s first pitchers and catchers workout set for a week from today in Sarasota, the Orioles added another infielder to fill their 40-man roster.

Venezuelan-born Livan Soto, recently designated for assignment by the Angels, was claimed on waivers today by the Orioles to fill their 40-man.

Soto, 23, has hit better in the majors in limited time than he has during a six-year career in the minors. He also has two options remaining.

The lefty batter went just 2-for-9 (.222) with the Angels last year but hit .400 (22-for-55) during the 2022 season over 18 games. He got a call-up in mid-September 2022 to make his major league debut. 

So over 22 major league games in parts of the last two seasons, he has hit .375/.414/.531/.946. On the farm last season between Double-A and Triple-A, he hit .237/.342/.358/.700 in 110 games.

Now that they have added the 2021 National League Cy Young award winner, right-hander Corbin Burnes, just how good is the Orioles rotation? Does it stack up among the top groups in the American League?

A discussion of this on MLB Network this week led the analysts to ponder that question and believe the answer is likely yes.

They listed a graphic of “notable 2024 projected rotations" in the American League, listing in no particular order, Seattle, Baltimore, New York, Houston and Toronto.

Here are the pitchers projected to be in all five:

Seattle: Luis Castillo, George Kirby, Logan Gilbert, Bryce Miller and Bryan Woo

The Orioles today announced their minor league coaching and player development staff assignments for the 2024 season. Three full-season managers return, but two move to different affiliates.

Buck Britton will return for his third season as manager of the Triple-A Norfolk Tides. In 2023, he led the Tides to a record of 90-59 as they won the International League championship and the Triple-A National Championship Game. Last year, he was the winner of the Orioles’ Cal Ripken Sr. Player Development Award.

Roberto Mercado moves up to Double-A Bowie to serve as manager after leading High-A Aberdeen the last two seasons. In 2022, he took Aberdeen to the playoffs and won the Ripken Sr. Award.

Felipe Rojas Alou Jr. will move up to manage Aberdeen. He has been with the O’s organization for 16 years and managed Single-A Delmarva the last two seasons.

Collin Woody will be a first-time manager, taking over at Delmarva. He served as a fundamentals coach the last two seasons in the Rookie-level Florida Complex League.

As yet another top 100 prospects list was published recently by a major outlet and then yet another - by ESPN.com first and then The Athletic – once again Jackson Holliday of the Orioles was ranked as the No. 1 prospect in the sport.

This is long since no surprise as he ended last season atop prospects lists and will begin this year No. 1 via Baseball America, MLBPipeline.com and the two listed above.

Just yesterday, Holliday was among the list of 20 non-roster invitees heading to spring training, which begins in Sarasota, Fla. next week.  

While the Orioles list of players via Baseball America, MLBPipeline.com, ESPN and The Athletic is significant, what is most impressive is that most of their top 100 players are really top 50.

Of the six Orioles that were rated top 100 by Baseball America, three were in the top 25 and five were in the top 41. They are down to five now with DL Hall at No. 93 now a Brewer. Of the six rated top 100 by MLBPipeline, five were top 32. They are down to five there with Joey Ortiz at No. 63 now a Brewer. Of the seven ranked by ESPN (six minus Ortiz), five are top 50. The Athletic lists three among the top 27.