The Homer Hose, the Adley Hug and a perfect clubhouse mix: How the Orioles went from laughingstock to contender
-
Jeff Passan, ESPN
KANSAS CITY — Austin Hays debuted for the Baltimore Orioles as a late September call-up in 2017 at 21, a year after Baltimore made its last playoff appearance. The next season, spent by Hays at Double-A, they went 47-115. He returned to the big leagues to play for a 108-loss team in 2019, slogged through the pandemic season (25 wins) and weathered a 110-loss 2021 in hopes of something better. Hope and faith were elemental to everyone in the Orioles’ universe, players and fans alike, because without them, the sort of misery that enmeshed the franchise would be too much.
Hays is now 27, and in the afterglow of another victory Monday, he marveled at what surrounded him. The Orioles, now carrying the third-best record in Major League Baseball at 21-10, are not flukes. Yes, they’ve had an easy schedule, and, certainly tougher days are ahead, with the combined winning percentage of the teams they face in their next eight series .605 — a collective 98-win pace. But their formula — outhit the opponent and withstand middling starting pitching with a bullpen that has the best Fielding Independent Pitching number in all of baseball — is replicable. And the coalescing of the Baltimore clubhouse — a well-balanced mixture of homegrown players with whom he ascended through the minor leagues, survivors of the Orioles’ lowest moments and imports finding the best versions of themselves — heartens Hays.
“The three of those groups have just bonded together so well here,” he said. “And it’s created just a really good atmosphere and culture. The team is good. We have talent, but there’s a lot of teams that have talent in the locker room just doesn’t mesh. It’s just meshed so well. It’s created a really great culture here.”
Catcher Adley Rutschman is quick to point out that culture and winning, though often bedfellows, are not the same thing. Culture, he said, is more about “having a lot of guys on board with the same mindset and the same kind of collective goal. It takes a lot of responsibility off individuals and just makes it more of a teamwide thing, which I really love about our team.”
Even if the Orioles’ whole is greater than the sum of its parts, those parts matter. In addition to Hays (OPSing .848), the survivors include centerfielder Cedric Mullins (with a .375 on-base percentage in the leadoff hole), first baseman Ryan Mountcastle (a team-leading eight home runs), outfielder Anthony Santander (coming off a 33-homer season) and right-hander Dean Kremer (the best remaining player acquired in their 2018 trade-deadline purge). “Even though we stunk, I have a ton of fond memories for a lot of players that were here my first couple years,” manager Brandon Hyde said. “Because those guys played their heart out for me.”
Baltimore general manager Mike Elias didn’t just sit around waiting for the prospects to join the burgeoning core. In August 2021, Baltimore placed a waiver claim on shortstop Jorge Mateo, who blossomed last year, broke out this year and is currently eighth among position players in Wins Above Replacement. Standout reliever Bryan Baker came via waivers, too, three months later, and lefty reliever Cionel Perez two weeks after that. Right-hander Yennier Cano, author of 11 hitless, walk-free innings to start the season, arrived in a trade last July in which the Orioles, on the fringes of contention, dealt closer Jorge Lopez to Minnesota.
Though controversial at the time, the Lopez trade did little to affect the Orioles’ ascendancy. It seemed to come down to this: No longer were players coming to the stadium every day with the knowledge a cavernous talent gap existed between them and their opponent. Even if the Orioles’ payroll was embarrassingly low — 30th of 30 teams last season, 29th at an estimated $83 million this year — they were no longer outclassed before the first pitch.
“Being in a game every night where every at-bat the game’s on the line, you have a chance to put the team ahead, it makes the game so much more fun and it just makes it easy to bring energy,” Hays said. “And going through that has just made the game so much more enjoyable for us. There’s nothing to take for granted. We come in every day excited to try to win a game because we know where it can be and how far away we are from that now.”
THE THIRD GROUP inside the Orioles’ clubhouse — the kids — makes them truly interesting. Tanking teams thrive or crumble based on the success of their ability to draft and develop, and Baltimore already has firmly established itself in the former category — and that’s with a farm system that even after a slew of high-profile graduations remains among the best in the game.
The arrival last year of Rutschman, the No. 1 overall pick in the 2019 draft, signaled the beginning of a new era. Since his May 21 debut, the Orioles are 87-64, better than all but five teams, each of which carry championship aspirations: Houston, Toronto, Atlanta, the Los Angeles Dodgers and the New York Mets.
In less than a year, Rutschman has established himself as an archetypal franchise player: wildly talented, willing leader and giver of his now-signature Adley Hug — most of which are delivered to far larger men. No mite at 6-foot-2, 230 pounds, Rutschman often finds himself swallowed up by Felix Bautista (6-8, 285) and Cano (6-4, 245).
“It’s definitely a good hug when a guy of his caliber comes out after pitching a tough ninth, which usually comes with a lot of pressure,” Cano said through Brandon Quinones, the team’s translator and baseball communications assistant. “Getting that hug from him is a really nice feeling. I’ve been able to work with several different catchers, but when I get to work with Adley, it’s like he already knows what pitch I want to throw, and he calls them immediately. So it’s great to work with him and I’d be super happy if I got to work with him the rest of my career.”
That sentiment is quickly gaining traction around the major leagues. If he’s not there already, Rutschman is not far off the title of best catcher in all of MLB — and yet still humble enough to express a whit of self-doubt as to the quality of his hugs.
“You can’t say, oh, I’m a good hugger,” Rutschman said. “It’s like someone saying, oh, I’m a really nice guy. Well, no, other people get to decide that for you. You don’t get to decide that. But also Bautista and Cano haven’t given me any feedback, so I don’t know if they’re just being nice.”
They are not. Truth is, everyone around Baltimore’s clubhouse adores Rutschman. Certainly his on-field brilliance — a switch hitter, he is slashing .315/.429/.472 with four home runs and more walks than strikeouts — helps matters. But it’s more than that.
“He lives up to every expectation,” said veteran right-hander Kyle Gibson, who signed as a free agent with Baltimore over the winter. “He takes pride in his catching. He offensively obviously is switching, so it’s twice the work as most guys. And I haven’t gotten into the weeds with him on it, but my guess is he enjoys the work because if you’re a catcher, you have to really enjoy the work, and he has really high expectations for himself. You can tell.”
And Rutschman represented just the start of the emergence of Baltimore’s young core. Next came third baseman Gunnar Henderson, who had taken over as the top prospect following Rutschman’s promotion. Then outfielder Kyle Stowers, followed by their top pitching prospect, Grayson Rodriguez, and one of their plethora of middle infielders, Joey Ortiz. Still to come, likelier sooner than later: outfielder Colton Cowser and infielder Jordan Westburg, who are raking at Triple-A, and Heston Kjerstad, doing the same at Double-A. Not far behind: Jackson Holliday, the No. 1 overall pick in last year’s draft who’s already in High-A and will play the entire season at 19 years old.
When Gibson signed with Baltimore on a one-year, $10 million deal, he knew of the talent the Orioles’ young players possessed but not the people they were. Throughout the spring, he learned, they’re an almost universally grown-up group, kids in age only, and that whatever the Orioles were doing to develop them, it was working.
“I never would’ve guessed that all these guys had a good head on their shoulders,” Gibson said. “In spring training, there wasn’t any stupid stuff going on. They all took care of it like pros. You just don’t normally have a team of young guys that professional. … They’re never late. Just the mental mistakes that you normally see with young guys aren’t there on or off the field. So it’s got to be internal. It’s just too much of a coincidence not to be.”
TUNE INTO AN Orioles game and you’re likely to be treated to a show. When a Baltimore player hits a single, he looks toward his teammates and twists his wrist — turning on the offensive faucet. A double prompts the runner to do the Sprinkler dance — and the dugout obliges, with those on the top step spewing streams of water. For home runs, the Orioles break out a funnel — known officially as the Homer Hose and colloquially as the Dong Bong — and chug water.
The liquid theme came from Rutschman — “Adley is usually our ideas guy,” Stowers said, “he’s our creative”– who earlier this spring debuted it at the team’s annual talent show for rookies. Rutschman wasn’t sure if he technically qualified — for finishing second in the American League Rookie of the Year voting last year, he was awarded a full year of service time — but once he knew his teammates expected participation, he rounded up Henderson, Stowers, Cowser and utilityman Terrin Vavra and prepared for a performance as “Fountain Financial.” It was such a hit, the encore went teamwide.
Rutschman’s ubiquity in the clubhouse is no accident. He takes leadership seriously, understanding his position as the franchise’s fulcrum and giving everyone what they need, whether it’s a celebratory postgame hug or a good-luck pregame embrace. Stowers is typically the recipient of that. After Rutschman goes through his customary hand slaps, he and Stowers raise their right arms, lower their left arms and move in for some love.
“It’s comforting,” Stowers said. “We kind of look at each other before a game. Here we go, got each other’s backs. It’s like, no matter what happens, we’re here for each other.
“I’ve only been in the organization since 2019, but each year you meet the first-round pick of the draft and you go, man, that’s a really good guy, a team-oriented guy who wants to win and help the team win,” Stowers continued. “And we’ve talked about this. I know you say not to talk too much about it, but it starts with the first overall pick. Being someone who’s humble. Works hard and does things the right way. Because if that guy’s humble, then everyone else is going to follow suit.”
Rutschman doesn’t want the Orioles to get too far ahead of themselves. As good as life is now, as promising as the future may be even in a pitiless AL East, baseball is an unrelenting challenge, and the moment Baltimore starts to buy the hype, it’s liable to return to that place no one wants to go.
So he preaches the same things that got the Orioles where they are. In the minor leagues, Rutschman said, he was struck by how the team’s prospects prioritized winning — even at levels where winning doesn’t much matter — over climbing to the major leagues. The balance between individual and team that is so difficult to strike in the minor leagues, he said, is Three Little Bears-level just right.
“Somehow our guys were still focused on that team aspect of caring about the guy next to him and asking guys how they’re doing, what they’re going through,” Rutschman said. “And to me that’s a huge part of the team aspect, and I think you can lose that in the minor leagues and then when you get to big leagues turn that back on. But I don’t think guys are having to turn it back on.”
And so this franchise, a laughingstock for nearly half a decade, witness to far more ughs than hugs, finds itself reckoning with a phenomenon long ago abandoned in Baltimore: relevancy. Losing, Mullins said, helped teach the Orioles to savor winning, and now they’re ever hungrier for it.
“I think we come in with a purpose every single day: winning games,” Mullins said. “And it’s not just feeling like we want to. It’s knowing that we can.”
-
Jesse Rogers
MILWAUKEE — In the midst of a heavyweight battle for first place in the National League Central, the Chicago Cubs are still scouring the landscape for help before Thursday’s MLB trade deadline. On their wish list: two starters, a reliever, a potential upgrade at third base and perhaps a backup center fielder.
The man to get it done? President of baseball operations Jed Hoyer, who received a multiyear contract extension Monday as ownership believes he’s the right person to lead the organization during this trade deadline and beyond.
With such a lengthy to-do list, why hasn’t Hoyer made a move yet with just days left to deal? What teams want for those players has been sky high at the top and middle of the market, according to sources familiar with the Cubs’ situation.
Sometimes, a deadline is all it takes to make things happen.
“No one’s untouchable,” Hoyer said recently. “But at the same time, we have a lot of really good prospects and you have to feel like you’re getting commensurate value.”
While the Cubs attempt to find the right fits for their deadline needs, here is where things stand at each area they hope to address.
Starting pitching
Of all their needs, the Cubs view finding help on the mound to be their biggest priority, according to sources familiar with their thinking.
They rank 14th in the majors in starting pitching ERA, and their need for help is amplified by their lack of depth after Matthew Boyd and Shota Imanaga at the top of the rotation.
“They’ve known that was a need since Justin Steele went down,” a rival executive said.
The Cubs have “kicked the tires in a lot of places” in their search for pitching, one American League source said.
That includes starting pitchers at the top of this year’s deadline like Washington Nationals star MacKenzie Gore, those in the middle like Chicago White Sox righty Adrian Houser and even a player returning from injury in Cleveland Guardians starter Shane Bieber. Bieber could be this year’s deadline version of Boyd, who helped Cleveland down the stretch last year before signing with the Cubs in the offseason.
The Cubs have talked at various times to the Miami Marlins and Tampa Bay Rays about their potentially available starters and to the Pittsburgh Pirates about Mitch Keller, as well as a handful of other teams, according to sources. The Cubs are also candidates to land one of Arizona’s available pitchers — though, after another so-so performance by Zac Gallen over the weekend, righty Merrill Kelly, 37, is the more reliable of the two Diamondbacks pitchers. And they also have shown interest in Baltimore’s Zach Eflin.
“The Cubs are ready to pounce if the prices come down,” another source said.
The return needed to land Gore would be astronomical and is prohibitive to a deal for the strikeout artist. ESPN’s Kiley McDaniel has said that the key player the Nationals are rumored to want for Gore is third baseman Matt Shaw, who isn’t on the table.
The White Sox are looking for a prospect ranked in the teens for Houser and even Gore’s teammate, Michael Soroka, would take a higher-than-expected return despite a 4.87 ERA.
The Cubs are determined to enter August with a deeper rotation, so a move is likely. But which team lowers its demands is still the big question.
Relief pitching
Similar to the starters, the Cubs’ bullpen also ranks in the middle of the pack in ERA this season, with clear opportunities for improvement if Chicago can find the right deadline match and multiple relievers needed for the high stakes of the months ahead. The Cubs’ core group of Daniel Palencia, Caleb Thielbar, Ryan Brasier, Drew Pomeranz and Brad Keller has been solid, but those latter few have shown some cracks recently. This is also Palencia’s first chance at being a closer, so the Cubs wouldn’t mind pairing someone with some experience, considering Ryan Pressly has been shaky at best.
The Cubs are among the teams that would love to acquire either Griffin Jax or Danny Coulombe or closer Jhoan Duran from the Minnesota Twins. But just as they do for the available starting pitchers, the Cubs have their ‘irons in the fire’ for the relievers as well, according to the AL source.
There is one closer who could be on the move but can be ruled out for the Cubs — Ryan Helsley, who plays for the rival Cardinals. But Nationals reliever Kyle Finnegan, Pirates closer David Bednar, Braves righty Raisel Iglesias and Rays ninth-inning man Pete Fairbanks are all possibilities if Duran isn’t attainable.
Third base
The first trade deadline domino at third base fell last week when the New York Yankees acquired Ryan McMahon from the Colorado Rockies. But the Cubs weren’t really in on McMahon, according to league sources, which provides a window into how they are approaching the hot corner this month.
Shaw has been much better recently, including posting a ..387/.406/.839 slash line since the All-Star break while playing stellar defense.
“Matt is getting a great opportunity,” Cubs manager Craig Counsell said. “He’s doing the best to take advantage of it. … You should have to earn your spots on teams like this. That’s completely fair. It doesn’t get easier. You have to earn that. Matt is doing a great job of that.”
Shaw’s improvement has given Chicago confidence that he can handle the position the rest of this season. It also allows the Cubs to see if a big deal develops instead of forcing one to fill a lineup spot.
Chicago is in constant contact with the Arizona Diamondbacks about possibly acquiring third baseman Eugenio Suarez and Kelly in what likely would be the biggest blockbuster of this deadline. It’s probably a long shot because Chicago’s biggest need is on the mound, but it’s not impossible.
What the Cubs have to offer
Though expectations on trade return are bound to come down somewhat in the coming days, the reality of this deadline is that there are more teams looking to add than subtract, so it will take big offers to land the best players available.
The Cubs are willing to part with their top prospect, OF Owen Caissie, but not for a player they’ll have for one season. The slugging outfielder is one of the three players drawing the most interest from opposing teams, along with Shaw and Double-A pitcher Jaxon Wiggins. Chicago has made 22-year-old outfielder Kevin Alcantara available, but so far, he hasn’t drawn the interest the other players have.
“I mean that’s one of the fun parts of this job is you kind of have to alter your playbook,” Hoyer said about being nimble and switching directions.
One thing the Cubs won’t do this year is blow up their farm system to increase their playoff odds — which sit at 94.7%, according to FanGraphs.
The Cubs are in a different place this July than they were in 2016, when they moved their No.1 prospect — Gleyber Torres — for closer Aroldis Chapman despite having about a 99% chance of making the postseason. But the move helped them win the World Series.
If that deadline is what all-in looks like on the North Side, the vibe heading into Thursday could be best described as “mostly-in.”
The Cubs are highly motivated to return to the postseason after a prolonged absence, and an aggressive approach is still expected as Chicago prepares for a division race that could be a battle to the end. But the Cubs’ level of aggressiveness remains to be seen.
-
Jorge Castillo
The Yankees traded for outfielder Austin Slater from the White Sox on Wednesday, as New York continues to bolster a roster currently without superstar outfielder Aaron Judge ahead of Thursday’s trade deadline.
The White Sox acquired minor league pitcher Gage Ziehl in return.
Slater is batting .236 with five home runs and a .721 OPS in 51 games this season, but like recent Yankees acquisition Amed Rosario, he has been very productive against left-handed pitchers with a .261 batting average, .859 OPS and all five of his home runs coming in 77 plate appearances against them.
“Really enjoyed my time here and met some incredible people,” Slater said of the White Sox. “Super fun clubhouse to be in. But then also really excited to go play for the Yankees. One of those teams as a kid you always dream about playing for. And they are right in a race for the playoffs. Excited to go there and try to help them out.”
The 32-year-old right-handed hitter missed over a month between April and May with a torn meniscus in his right knee. He signed a one-year, $1.75 million deal with Chicago in November, making him a rental for the Yankees before reaching free agency again this offseason.
Slater has started 15 games in right field, nine in left field and one as designated hitter this season. He provides the Yankees further insurance should Judge, who is on the 10-day injured list with a flexor strain, not return to the outfield for the remainder of the year.
As of now, the Yankees hope Judge will return in early August after the 10-day minimum absence to serve as their designated hitter and begin a throwing program with the goal of returning to right field this season. Giancarlo Stanton, the club’s everyday designated hitter, began working out in right field this week to prepare for the possibility of playing the field for the first time since 2023.
Slater also offers Yankees manager Aaron Boone more lineup and in-game flexibility to counter left-handed pitchers with an outfield group that leans heavily left-handed. With Judge on the injured list, the Yankees don’t have a right-handed-hitting primary outfielder on the active roster; Trent Grisham and Cody Bellinger are left-handed, and Jasson Dominguez, a switch-hitter, has a .585 OPS in 98 plate appearances batting from the right side this season. Slater figures to start games over Dominguez against left-handed pitchers.
Slater spent the first seven-plus seasons of his career with the San Francisco Giants before being traded to the Cincinnati Reds last summer. New York will be Slater’s fifth team in just over a year.
“At this point, we’re a little more prepared than we were last year,” Slater said. “It was something, there was always writing on the wall that it could happen. That maybe helped us mentally prepare a little bit more this year.”
Rosario, a utility man acquired from the Washington Nationals on Saturday, gives Boone another right-handed-hitting corner outfield option, but he is also slated to play second and third base.
Ziehl, 22, was a fourth-round pick by the Yankees last year. The right-hander has posted a 4.15 ERA in 16 appearances (15 starts) between three levels this season, topping out with one start in Double-A.
In addition to Slater and Rosario, the Yankees have traded for veteran third baseman Ryan McMahon in the past week. The Yankees remain in the market for pitching, both starters and relievers before Thursday’s 6 p.m. ET deadline, sources said.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
-
Sports3 years ago‘Storybook stuff’: Inside the night Bryce Harper sent the Phillies to the World Series
-
Sports1 year agoStory injured on diving stop, exits Red Sox game
-
Sports2 years agoGame 1 of WS least-watched in recorded history
-
Sports2 years agoMLB Rank 2023: Ranking baseball’s top 100 players
-
Sports4 years ago
Team Europe easily wins 4th straight Laver Cup
-
Sports2 years agoButton battles heat exhaustion in NASCAR debut
-
Environment2 years agoJapan and South Korea have a lot at stake in a free and open South China Sea
-
Environment2 years agoGame-changing Lectric XPedition launched as affordable electric cargo bike