There were 41 players taken ahead of the Orioles’ Gunnar Henderson in the 2019 MLB Draft. If they could re-do that draft today, that number would be very, very different.

At No. 42 the Orioles got a steal.

A driven young talent that rose to become the No. 1 prospect in the sport. He made the majors at age 21 and turned 22 last June 29. Later in the 2023 season he would be named the Most Valuable Oriole and in November he was the unanimous pick – getting all 30 first-place votes – to become the Orioles’ seventh American League Rookie of the Year.

When you think of what is still to come for this kid and how good he could become, you might ponder future MVP Awards and him leading the team to the top of the MLB world in some October down the road.

On the stat sheet we could ponder how much better the numbers could get for him.

When the Orioles took the field last October for Game 1 of the American League Division Series against Texas, they looked like a pretty complete team. One that produced 101 wins and a division championship, had an emerging young talent base and a few different ways to beat their opponent.

There was at least one element missing however – they had little playoff experience.

A few veteran players had played in the postseason before, such as Aaron Hicks, Adam Frazier and James McCann and a few pitchers had a few postseason innings like Kyle Gibson, Jacob Webb and Jack Flaherty, but the core of the roster did not. Their young talent which led the club all year, did not.

Was that the reason Texas swept the Orioles three in a row? Well, not the only reason but more likely one of many. The five-day layoff between the regular season and the first playoff game seemed challenging for several teams that won 100 games to include the Orioles. That was another factor. So was the fact that within the playoffs, teams generate their own momentum, and it can come fast. Texas swept two straight from Tampa Bay and was a team starting to roll when they arrived in Baltimore.

They let the AL West get away from them late in the year. But as a No. 5 seed, they rolled to the World Series title. The playoffs are a crapshoot and unpredictable and that has as much to do with the loss as anything most likely.

On his way to recording 417 saves – the eighth-most in MLB history – with a chance this year to move to fourth on the list, new O’s closer Craig Kimbrel has featured a most unusual set-up out of the stretch position.

Bent over at the waist, his right arm dangles out to the right and there is a bit of a stare-down before each pitch. When Kimbrel talked to O’s reporters early last month, he discussed how he got to that pre-pitch routine, also hinting it could change at times next season.

“It’s pretty simple,” Kimbrel said on an O’s video call with media. “There was never really much behind it. I’ve always leaned over, but my arm for a long time was behind my back. In growing up and going from being a young kid playing the game to an older man playing the game, my arm just wasn’t going behind my back anymore. So, I started to let it hang and it kind of transformed into something that I would use to lock in. To say, ‘OK, It’s time to go.’ The fun, the happy, the joking, the loving Craig we get for most of the day, it’s time for him to get serious and to focus. It was a tool I was able to use over the years to really lock in pitch-to-pitch.

“You know I have a couple of ideas this year to try to work with that with the new rules of the game – the pitch clock and windup and things. The game is changing, so I need to change a little bit. Kind of excited this spring to try and make that work. The game is forever changing and if we don’t keep up with that, we’ll be left behind. It’s something I’ve done for a long, long time and something I will continue to do, but I think this year we might see something a little quicker and a little better.”

It will be interesting to see how that plays out. The biggest concern for the team will be, of course, not how he looks in throwing the ball but what happens after he lets it go.

There was a time, and Orioles fans don’t have to go far back to remember it, when the Boston Red Sox response to 78 wins and a last-place finish, would have been to spend money. And then spend more.

Throw dollars at their problems. And sometimes that worked.

But recent moves by that team make this look like very different times in Beantown. Rather than sign a top free-agent pitcher like Blake Snell or Jordan Montgomery (and they still could of course), the Sox recently agreed to a two-year deal with right-hander Lucas Giolito for $38.5 million. A nearly $20 million dollar salary for a pitcher who had a terrible ending to his 2023 season and allowed 41 homers over the season.

That was followed a day or two later by a trade of lefty Chris Sale for young infielder Vaughn Grissom. A deal where Boston sends $17 million to Atlanta to complete the trade.

Now Sale is no longer anywhere near the pitcher he once was. He’s dealt with numerous injuries for a while now. But while Giolito ended the ’23 season pitching terribly, Sale posted an ERA of 3.92 his last nine starts of the season with 54 strikeouts over 43 2/3. In addition, he gave up just a .203 batting average against and .667 OPS against in that time. It had to give Atlanta hope he still has something left in the tank for next season.

As the calendar year 2023 comes to an end today, we can reflect on what a special year it was for the Baltimore Orioles and their fans. It was a year they returned to the playoffs, they returned to the top of the AL East and they returned to a club that won 100-plus games.

The Orioles finished 101-61 to hold off the Tampa Bay Rays by two games to win their 10^th AL East championship. Their 101 wins were the most in the American League and second in the majors, behind Atlanta, which won 104.

The season ended with a three-game sweep by the Texas Rangers in the AL Division Series. But what a ride it was until the season came crashing down with a 7-1 loss Oct. 10 in Arlington, Tex.

It was a year where:

* The Orioles recorded their sixth all-time season with 100 or more wins and came up with their most since 1980.

If you look at the Orioles' possible Opening Day roster as 2024 approaches, we can see that it’s crowded between Triple-A and the majors. Once again this year, it is not easy to find playing time for all that might be good enough to make that roster.

It’s been said many times, but having too much talent doesn’t seem to be a problem except for getting all those players on the field.

The Orioles have rebuilt their major league roster while building an elite talent pipeline and the No. 1 farm system in baseball. They are good, deep and talented, and it’s getting harder for some kids to break in.

Just a few years ago, the rebuilding Orioles were giving playing time to players whose resumes now would maybe not stand much of a chance of gaining playing time. These are different times in Birdland.

If the Orioles carried two catchers and just four outfielders to begin the year (yes, five seems more likely) they could carry seven infielders. They currently have seven infielders on their 40-man roster with Gunnar Henderson, Jorge Mateo, Ryan Mountcastle, Ryan O’Hearn, Joey Ortiz, Ramón Urías and Jordan Westburg.

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.

Just a short entry today to wish all the readers at Steve’s blog and all of Birdland a wonderful Christmas and Holiday Season. Enjoy your time with family and friends and I hope it’s your best Christmas yet.

A few quick thoughts on things in the news the last few days ...

Yamamoto signs: The Dodgers signed pitcher Yoshinobu Yamamoto to a 12-year deal for $325 million. It will also cost them the nearly $51 million posting fee that goes to the Orix Buffaloes of Nippon Professional Baseball.

The rich get richer (in talent) here as Los Angeles wins the bidding war over several other big-market teams, even though the finalists reportedly made impressive bids. He pitched to an ERA of 1.21 (yep, not a misprint) over 168 innings and gave up just two home runs all season in 2023. His ERAs the previous two years were 1.39 and 1.68.

Kodai Senga came from Japan and pitched for the Mets. After posting an ERA of 1.89 in 2022 in Japan, he pitched to a 2.98 ERA for the Mets. That ranked fifth-best in all of MLB, one spot behind Kyle Bradish of the Orioles.

Time today for a few more facts and opinions about the 2023 Orioles and the Birds who will take the field in 2024.

Fact: The Orioles’ team ERA for last season was 3.89 which ranked fifth-best in the American League and seventh-best in the majors. In the second half, their team ERA of 3.58 ranked first in the AL and third in the majors.

Opinion: Is the O’s pitching really that good? Well it was last season and they were rolling in the second half. Several pitchers made improvements as the year went on. The back-end of the bullpen will be interesting to watch as Craig Kimbrel tries to replace Felix Bautista.

O’s executive vice president and general manager Mike Elias said this in early November, before the Kimbrel signing: “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.”

Well they got some help and now we see how that works out and if the bullpen, which appears a strength with some depth on paper, plays out that way once the games begin.

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 question to Mike Elias at the Winter Meetings was not about rookie outfielder Colton Cowser specifically. Although it could have applied to him. Elias was basically asked about the impact of a player’s performance in a small sample size. If a top prospect gets a call-up and struggles, what does that mean?

Does the organization get down on the player or does it need more time to evaluate?

Well, it should not surprise us to hear that Elias essentially said they need more time. The small sample size, in many instances, just doesn’t tell us much. While some fans and/or media might surmise a player is not ready or needs more seasoning, sometimes the small sample size just really tells us we don’t have enough at-bats to know yet.

“There comes a point in time where, even if you have been a very successful minor league player, your major league failures start to make people go uh-oh," said Elias. "But it’s a lot longer than a pretty small sample. I don’t know what your definition of that is, but if it’s measured in months rather than a year or more, I would say it’s still pretty small. We have ways of objectively looking at that through our statistical analysis and other things that we do.

“But look, the big leagues are different than Triple-A and in my opinion it’s the biggest jump in the sport. Shohei Ohtani can’t get promoted out of the majors to another league, so it’s the one league where the best players stick around forever. There is a much larger jump from Triple-A to the big leagues and some guys’ success in the minors does not convert.

In late October, coming off a 101-win season and an AL East championship and after the departure of Brad Ciolek, the club’s director of draft operations. for a job with the Nationals, the Orioles announced several promotions in their front office.

It was a bit of tweaking of and promotions within their scouting and player development operation. Two key staffers that have helped the club rise to No. 1 in farm rankings, once again have big roles in 2024 with promotions and slightly different titles.

Matt Blood was promoted from director of player development to vice president of player development and domestic scouting. Joining Blood to help head up player development now will be Anthony Villa, 29, who has been with the Orioles since the 2020 season. He is Blood's replacement as director of player development. Villa was first an O's minor league hitting coach, then a minor league hitting coordinator for the lower levels of the farm and last year he was hitting coordinator for the entire farm system.

“The titles are new, the working relationship (with Matt and the O's staff) is more or less the same,” Villa told me at the Winter Meetings. Blood may spend more time now heading up Baltimore's scouting operation and a bit less time in the day-to-day work of player development.

Villa (pronounced Vill-ah) was a 19th-round draft pick of the Chicago White Sox in 2016 and played in the minors for three seasons. He's been a fast riser in the O's organization and now he'll have an even larger role in player development.

At a time when the Orioles organization has gotten a lot of props for their farm system, a lot of those props came due to position players/hitters that have already arrived like Adley Rutschman and Gunnar Henderson, plus a few on the way like Jackson Holliday, Samuel Basallo and Coby Mayo.

On the O’s farm, the hitters are higher ranked than the pitchers. On MLBPipeline.com's O’s top 30 right now, there are just two pitchers ranked in the top 11: Chayce McDermott at No. 10 and Cade Povich at No. 11.

But despite that, there are also some reasons to be encouraged about the O’s pitching development program.

It recently got some props and scored quite well in Baseball America’s Farm System Statcast Pitching Rankings, co-authored by Geoff Pontes and Dylan White. It was a deep dive into minor league pitchers, aggregating full-season pitching data, metrics and stats for hurlers between ages 17 and 26.

The goal was “to more accurately understand which organizations have the highest quality of overall pitching talent.” And they were attempting to “view the developing pitching talent in each organization, not the team’s ability to stock quality MiLB free agents into Triple-A bullpens.”

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.

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.

Now that he has moved from the American League to the National League, if Shohei Ohtani of the Los Angeles Dodgers wins an MVP award while wearing Dodger blue, he will join the one and only one player in baseball history to have won MVP awards in both leagues.

That player is former Oriole Frank Robinson, who won the NL MVP with Cincinnati in 1961 and the AL award in his first year with the Orioles in 1966 when he both hit for the Triple Crown and led the Orioles to their first World Series championship.

But oddsmakers say Ohtani is not the favorite for the 2024 NL MVP. Atlanta outfielder Ronald Acuna Jr., the 2023 winner, is. SportsBetting.ag released early MVP odds on Wednesday and listed Acuna at 3-1 and Ohtani at 6-1 to win in the NL. Ohtani and his two new teammates are the second, third and fourth betting favorites. Mookie Betts is at 7-1 with the Dodgers Freddie Freeman at 9-1.

In 2023, Acuna produced the first 40-70 season in MLB history. He hit .337/.416/.596/1.012 with 41 homers, 73 steals, 149 runs and 106 RBIs.

Ohtani won the AL MVP honor this year while with the Angels and it was the first time both winners were unanimously selected. Each got all 30 first-place votes. Acuna is the first player born in Venezuela to win the NL award. Two other Venezuelan-born players were winners in the AL, Miguel Cabrera (2012-13) and Jose Altuve (2017).

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.

He is not the forgotten man in the Orioles starting rotation but maybe he is at times slightly overlooked.

With Birdland excited about Kyle Bradish and Grayson Rodriguez at the top of that rotation and the return of lefty John Means late last year in addition to the potential to add another starter, we can look past the 2023 contributions of right-hander Dean Kremer.

And we certainly should not, although on the stat sheet, his ’23 was not as strong in some respects as his ’22. But last season Kremer made 32 starts and the Orioles went 24-8 (.750). That stat alone should grab your attention. For comparison, they went 19-11 (.633) in Bradish’s starts and 14-9 (.609) when Rodriguez took the mound.

That doesn’t make Kremer a better pitcher since so much goes into that record like the defense behind you, run support and the ability for the late relievers to close out your game. But Kremer puts his team in position to win such a high percentage of his starts.

His season was marred by a slow start. In fact, his ERA was 6.67 in April. But then it was 3.59 his last 26 starts, as the Orioles went 21-5. Had he posted a 3.59 ERA for the full year he would have finished ninth in the AL in that stat.