Current Orioles wanting to follow in 1970 team's footsteps

The Orioles managed again last night to reach back to their past while focusing on the present, their latest game against the Rays that ended with a 2-1 loss, and the promising future with the influx of prospects on the roster.

None of them should be ignored or neglected.

Fifty years have melted away since the Orioles won the second World Series title in franchise history. They couldn't remove the pain from the upset loss to the Mets in '69, but they plowed through the regular season and defeated the Reds in five games for Hall of Famer Earl Weaver's lone championship.

The team won 108 games and finished 15 ahead of the Yankees in the American League East. It was a beast loaded with stars and important role players. It was legendary.

Jim Palmer, Dave McNally, Tom Phoebus, Brooks Robinson, Mark Belanger, Davey Johnson, Boog Powell, Merv Rettenmund, Andy Etchebarren and Eddie Watt signed as amateur free agents. Paul Blair selected from the Mets in the old version of the first-year draft. Frank Robinson, Don Buford, Mike Cuellar and Dick Hall acquired in trades. Elrod Hendricks selected from the Angels in the Rule 5 draft. Bobby Grich chosen in the first round of the 1967 draft and forced to wait his turn.

The methods for building a roster have changed with the implementation in 1965 of the First-Year Player Draft as we know it today. The Orioles selected pitcher/first baseman Scott McDonald out of Marquette High School in Washington with the 15th overall pick. (Glen Burnie's Jim Spencer went 11th to the Angels.)

McDonald never made it past Double-A Dallas-Fort Worth.

They can't all be successes.

The 2020 Orioles have been constructed by the amateur and Rule 5 drafts, trades, free agency and waiver wire. You name it, they've tried it.

Nothing beats a good draft-and-development strategy, especially for a franchise that doesn't dress with deep pockets. Or a trade-and-development plan, with veterans dealt in exchange for prospects.

Get them into the organization and introduce them to the advanced methods of instruction.

"I think that's a great approach," Buford said yesterday in a Zoom conference call with the media. "Players can adapt to a system that you have. It's very difficult to try to adapt to player by player. If you have a system, the players adapts to it and that's the system that all the players will be adapting to, so it makes it a little bit easier to be successful as a team."

The current rotation includes Alex Cobb (free agent), John Means and Keegan Akin (draft), Dean Kremer and Bruce Zimmermann (trades) and Jorge López (waiver claim). It used to include Wade LeBlanc and Tommy Milone (minor league free agents) and Asher Wojciechowski (cash transaction).

Future starters should include first-rounders Grayson Rodriguez and DL Hall. High draft picks Michael Baumann and Zac Lowther are on the horizon. International free agent Alexander Wells and former first-rounder Cody Sedlock could be in Triple-A Norfolk's rotation.

The Mets parted with left-hander Kevin Smith at the deadline for reliever Miguel Castro. He was their 12th-rated prospect, per MLBPipeline.com.

He'd fall into the trade category.

The Kremer and Zimmermann trades, stripping a rebuilding club of infielder Manny Machado, starter Kevin Gausman and reliever Darren O'Day, doesn't mirror the acquisition of Cuellar - which has to rank among the sweetest heists in franchise history.

Cuellar wasn't a kid planted in the minors with an organization waiting for him to blossom. He was acquired from the Astros in December 1968, two years after the first championship, with 161 games in the majors with three teams. The Orioles surrendered outfielder Curt Blefary, the former American League Rookie of the Year who spent one season in Houston.

Cuellar spent eight seasons with the Orioles, was 143-88 with a 3.18 ERA and three American League pennants and shared the 1969 Cy Young Award with Denny McLain.

"There were quite a few guys that we got via trade," Powell said. "The Kiddie Corp thing back in the early '60s had pretty much died out. It was a combination, kind of like this team."

The Orioles will take the comparison and hope to one day live up to it.