BALTIMORE — Friday marked exactly three years since the Orioles used the first overall pick of the 2019 draft on Adley Rutschman, the new face of an excruciating rebuild that had begun unintentionally the previous year.
If someone had told you at the time that Rutschman would enter Friday still be searching for his first major league RBI and top pitching prospects DL Hall and Grayson Rodriguez still wouldn’t be in the majors because of injuries, the disappointment would have been immense. Even last June, the three were thriving together at Double-A Bowie, the surest sign yet that the future was bright and rapidly approaching.
Along the way, no one could have possibly foreseen the 2020 minor league season being canceled because of the COVID-19 pandemic, which disrupted the development timeline for prospects across baseball. And if last year’s elbow injury to Hall or this spring’s triceps strain for Rutschman weren’t enough, the lat muscle strain suffered by Rodriguez at Triple-A Norfolk on Wednesday only reiterates that old saying about the best-laid plans.
Something is bound to go wrong, especially when it comes to young pitchers.
In an alternate timeline void of a pandemic and injuries to top prospects, Rutschman might already be an All-Star catcher and Rodriguez and Hall could be establishing themselves as high-impact starters with Baltimore flirting with wild-card contention and still getting better. Perhaps 2020 first-round pick Heston Kjerstad would even be knocking on the door to be promoted to the majors rather than playing in extended spring training games in Sarasota after a lengthy bout of myocarditis and then a significant hamstring injury.
Of course, that’s neither reality nor a guarantee to have happened anyway.
Having described “blue skies ahead” for the organization the morning after Rutschman’s debut two weeks ago, Mike Elias was asked Thursday how close Rodriguez — regarded by many as the top pitching prospect in baseball — had been to joining the Orioles after a dominant start to his 2022 season at Triple-A. The general manager started his answer by lamenting, “The timing of this stinks.”
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It certainly does.
None of this is meant to be a criticism of the organization or a forecast of doom and gloom for the big picture. While the lat strain hurts Rodriguez’s chances of pitching for the Orioles in 2022 and is more concerning than pulling a hamstring covering first base, Elias expressed relief that tests revealed no issues with Rodriguez’s shoulder, meaning there’s no reason to think the 22-year-old won’t be able to return to action as good as new after some time to heal. And while we’re noting any fallout from injuries, Hall’s so-so start at Norfolk this year is nothing over which to panic and Rutschman is only a big game or two away from his slow start in the majors being forgotten.
What should be painfully obvious by now, however, is that a perfect set of circumstances isn’t going to fall into place to signal to Elias and the Orioles when it will be time to flip the proverbial switch and try to be competitive at the major league level. Some injuries are inevitable, and prospects — even some regarded as “can’t miss” — won’t pan out over time.
Look no further than 2009 when Matt Wieters made his major league debut, which was even accompanied by a rainbow over the Warehouse to signal better days ahead. Thanks in large part to the “Cavalry” of young pitchers that mostly flopped, the Orioles wouldn’t contend for a few more years. And though they ultimately had a good run under Dan Duquette and Buck Showalter that included three postseason appearances, it certainly didn’t play out the way previous general manager Andy MacPhail had envisioned years earlier.
What’s unsettling is knowing just how important Rodriguez and Hall — the last two first-round picks made by Duquette — are to the Orioles’ pitching future. With the organization showing an overwhelming preference for drafting college hitters who are more predictive in development, Elias has selected just two pitchers over the first five rounds of his first three drafts and one of them — 2020 fifth-round pick Carter Baumler — pitched in his first professional game only a couple weeks ago after undergoing Tommy John surgery in the fall of 2020. Though there are other interesting arms in the system beyond Rodriguez and Hall and different ways to augment the major league staff moving forward, a simple look at the Orioles’ current top 30 prospects list makes it clear there’s no overstating the importance of their top two pitching prospects to the medium-term equation.
Even if Rodriguez is fine in the long run, it’s a bummer knowing how close he was to joining Rutschman in Baltimore, especially at a time when the Orioles are beginning to play more interesting baseball. The latest iteration of the best-laid plans was to see Rodriguez and Hall get acclimated to the majors later this summer with intentions to really step on the gas in 2023.
Perhaps that still happens, but if the last few years have taught us anything, the remaining elements of this rebuild are unlikely to fall into place the way the Orioles and their fans want — even if it all works out in the long run.
