The Orioles are taking beatings this month that no one in MLB could’ve predicted. Luke Jones and Nestor continue a chat about the exasperation and disappointment at the Birdland malaise and lack of fight – and starting pitching – on this beleaguered club as the Yankees crush the return of Kyle Gibson to Baltimore.
Luke Jones and Nestor Aparicio discuss the Baltimore Orioles’ disappointing start to the season, with the team in last place and having the worst run differential in the American League. They highlight Kyle Gibson’s disastrous debut, giving up five home runs, and the overall poor performance of the starting pitching. The offense is also criticized for its lack of consistency. They discuss the need for better roster building, questioning Mike Elias’s strategy and the lack of significant off-season acquisitions. The conversation ends on a pessimistic note, with both acknowledging the team’s struggles and the need for significant changes.
Nestor Aparicio 0:02
Welcome home. We are W, N, S, T AM, 1570 towns in Baltimore, where Baltimore positive, and I wish we had a more positive result. Memorial Park at Camden Yards. Luke Jones was on the scene for game two. You know, they win every like third or fourth game, Luke, and when they do, they win by one run, and we praise them. And then the next night happens, and eventually Kyle Gibson was going to come back and pitch. And I’m not stunned that it looked like this, are you?
Luke Jones 0:38
I mean, I’m stunned that he gave up four home runs in the first five batters. I mean, you never expect something like that. Am I stunned that it didn’t go well? I mean, this is where the Orioles find themselves. And I’ve I think you can tell as this season goes on, and we’re now more than a month into the season we’re getting ready to wrap up the month of April, and this team’s in last place. It has the worst run differential in the American League, if not for a historically, historically beyond belief, horrendous Colorado Rockies team and the White Sox also. But I mean, the Rockies lose every night, and they lose by a lot. You know, their run differential is already, like, minus 75 or something like that.
Nestor Aparicio 1:27
They’re just rebuilding. They’re rebuilding in Colorado. That’s
Luke Jones 1:32
they’re not doing anything in Colorado. I mean, I It’s funny, I listen to enough, you know, I watch enough MLB Network and MLB Network radio on Sirius, you know, on my way to the ballpark, just to see what’s going on around the league. And you know the times they bring up the Rockies, it’s like, well, I guess it could be that bad. But when you’re the Orioles, when you’re this fan base that you know more specifically, keep it to the mike Elias era and what this team sat through for the better part of five years, and you get good second half of 2223 was magical, winning 101 games the first half of last season, and the way it’s gone since then, and more specifically, how it started in the month of April, and we’ve talked about it. I know there are injuries, I know there are different things you can point to, but, man, it’s just, I’m running out of things to say, because this is not just, it’s not just being 11 and 18. It’s the way it looks in the process. It’s the way that it’s not, oh, you’re losing a bunch of one run games. You know, the brakes aren’t going your way, you know, you it’s awful. I mean, this looks every bit the part of a terrible baseball team right now, and at some point in time, it’s they keep telling you who they are, and you start to believe them. So, I mean, with Kyle Gibson, you give up four home runs in the first five batters of the game, you give up five home runs total, a career high. He gave up a home run on his cutter, he gave up a home run on his sinker, he gave up a home run on his change up. He gave up a home run on his on his four seamer, he gave up a home run on his curveball. I mean, sounds
8
Nestor Aparicio 3:13
like a Dr Seuss novel. It says, you know, yeah, yeah. So, I
Luke Jones 3:17
mean, I just, I’m at a loss at this point, Nestor I really am, and obviously the starting pitching is the overwhelming driving force for where they are right now. But it’s more than that. And we know that. I
Nestor Aparicio 3:30
mean, they lose eight to two or something like that, which they lost some garden variety bad games, but these really hideous blowouts, yeah, are indicative of quit, and all of the things that we talked about on Monday morning, which is, you know, where’s the fire burning in the whole organization, top down for the new owner, the new leadership, the television, the broadcasters, just the whole, the whole vibe, you know, for every fan that sat through it like we have for 30 years. Yeah.
Luke Jones 4:02
And Tuesday is a different example in terms of, I mean, you’ve heard me take the offense to task so many different times. When you’re down five nothing before you even send Cedric Mullins to the plate for your first batter the game. That’s a little bit of a different animal than some of these other games where, you know, it’s two to one in the fifth inning, one nothing in the fifth inning. And then it gets away from another thing
Nestor Aparicio 4:25
about it, though. This is, this is different, you know, but this is, you’re waiting on Gibson, right? Like things were bad. Sure he could give you six innings of three run ball and, you know, tip his cap and come off the field and be the veteran guy and like, Hey, I’m not here to save the day. I’m not Corbin burns, but I’m going to give us a chance to win. And we’ve been waiting, what, three, four weeks for this and for this to be this flat, this quickly. First inning Yankees in town, coming off a night where they won by the skin of their teeth. They’ve only really won three games in the last two weeks, all of them were by. The skin of their teeth, and it’s, it’s really a downer from uh, waiting on him. Now, what are we waiting? We’re waiting on effalin, right? I mean, I mean, and I said it, I don’t know what you’re waiting on. They’re playing 300 balls, right? I mean,
Luke Jones 5:16
right. I I said it on social media. Look, anyone who was being realistic about this knew that Kyle Gibson wasn’t going to come to be the Savior. But to your point, give you some innings all that, and he still may do that, right? I mean, he had a career worse kind of start, and maybe he’ll be, he’ll be better his next time out. But I think what Tuesday reiterated, what it illuminated is there’s no one coming to rescue this club right now, and even I get it, you know, Zach Eflin thrown bullpens. And I’m not saying he’s going to be too far away from coming back, but he’s one guy. Sagano is one guy, right? And you’re just seeing this. I mean, you know Charlie Morton, you know, I want to be very careful how I choose my words here, because I don’t want to make it sound like I’m making overly complimentary. But he pitched on two days rest on Tuesday night, and at least gave them some innings to preserve their bullpen. I mean, got to earn your 15 million somehow, I suppose. But this is just, you know, my tone that you’ve heard from me speaking about this, and, you know, covering the team, and obviously not viewing it strictly through a fan lens. But it’s pivoting. It’s shifting now from anger, dismay, bewilderment to I mean, that was just that was sad to watch on Tuesday night. And again, I think Kyle Gibson will be better as next time out, you hope. But at the same time, there was this assumption that, oh, he can’t be any worse than Charlie Morton. And, well, he was on Tuesday night, so, but, but again, no one’s coming to rescue the state of the Baltimore Orioles right now, right? I mean, Mike Elias could say, All right, I’ll trade COVID Mayo. I’ll trade Samuel bayo. I’ll trade Jackson holiday whisking up right now, that’s going to help turn this thing around for you right now. I mean, Padres aren’t, aren’t trading Dylan cease right now. I mean, except for a few teams around baseball, teams aren’t selling in late April and earlier, but
Nestor Aparicio 7:32
Dylan cease isn’t saving them. I mean, right, but that’s not one deal away. They’re not
8Luke Jones 7:39
an there’s no in season. No, they’re not, and so much of it has to do with how much they’re just underperforming, even from like I said in this where I’ll go back to the offense again, I’m not pegging Tuesday’s loss on the offense by any stretch of the imagination. Again, this is a different animal than when you know it’s two to nothing in the sixth inning, and you just haven’t swung the bats. I mean, game was kind of over before Gibson even got back to the dugout in the in the for the bottom of the first inning. But, I mean, you just look at this thing and it just, it just feels so broken right now. And, yeah, they won Monday night. I mean, they’re not going to lose it in 2018 when they lost 115 games, they still won 47 I mean, you mean, you still win some games here and there. Well,
Nestor Aparicio 8:24
you did get a feeling on Monday night, if they played three more innings, they would have lost.
Luke Jones 8:30
Maybe, yeah, sure. I mean, and but, but we’re at a point with this club that I’m not even like go in as a win. I mean, you just, you need to find any way you can to scratch together wins. And we’re we’re going to be turning the calendar to May, and this team has won two in a row, once, once. They’ve won two straight, once in more than a month of baseball. Now they’ve won one series. And if they win, you know, on Wednesday night, if they find a way and capovich gives them one of his better outings, or they really swing the bats, they can win a series. And if they do, then that’ll be two series wins in the month of April. I mean, it’s just you can’t play baseball like this. And look, mathematically speaking, is the season over Of course, not however. And I heard someone on, I think it was MLB Network. I was watching it earlier in the day, Tuesday. I forget who it was. I think it was Alex Avila, and he made mention of, you know, go look at how the Astros started last year. I think on May the eighth, I think they were 12 games under 500 I mean, they got off to a very bad start. But the difference is that was a veteran team, guys that have won World Series, guys that have not just made it to the playoffs, but have won playoff games. They had a lot of working knowledge and working experience to draw from. This team doesn’t have that you can keep talking to. About two years ago, all you won. And yes, they won 101 games, and it was a heck of a lot of fun, but they got swept by the Rangers, and it was, it was over just like that. So for this team to be in a position where at 11 and 18, I mean, you’re not buried, but you’re already behind the eight ball, you’re already starting to do the math as far as what you need to do record wise, the rest of the year just to be an 85 win team, an 87 win team, which, you know, 89 wins, which would probably be like on the high end, as far as securing a wild card, and you’re already at a point where, man, you’ve already lost a lot of your margin for error, that any team’s going to go into a season understanding that you’re going to get hit some rough patches and you’re going to have some injuries that are going to leave you light at times, whether it’s offensively, whether it’s in the outfield, whether it’s a rotation, whether it’s two of your top three or four high leverage relievers. I mean, every team endures some of that over the course of 162 but when you get it off to this kind of start right off the bat, even if you try to paint the optimistic picture of, yeah, Colton kauser is going to come back, and Jordan Westberg is going to come back, and Tyler O’Neill will be back, and Zach Eflin is going to come back. Andrew Kittredge might be starting a rehab assignment by this time next week. I mean, he’s getting closer. But you look at all those things and you say, okay, even if you get those guys back, it’s not five months of a season left in terms of who else might get hurt. What else are you going to go through? We all know that you’re going to go through. You know, just the schedule you’re going to go through stretches of time where you don’t have a whole lot of off days, right? I mean, just the ebbs and flows of a season that great teams, good teams, mediocre and horrendous teams will all go through to varying degrees. And when you start in this manner, I mean, you’re already working from this point forward, needing some of the best case scenarios to break your way just to be in position to have a shot at making the playoffs. So again, it’s not over, but at some point in time, you need to start showing some signs of life, some signs of something you can hang your hat on, and it’s very Cedric Mullins has had a great year. Ryan o’hearns had a really good year rest of their position players, I mean, like, Okay, I’ll give you Ramona Reus Well,
Nestor Aparicio 12:26
I mean, this is where I would interject that, like righty lefty aside, and whether it’s cursed, that maybe not playing against left handers, or O’Hearn sitting, or whatever they are, what they are. And this speaks to the pitching too, where Kate povidge is going to take the ball, Charlie Morton’s going to take the ball because there is no one else, Kyle Gibson’s going to take the ball again in four more days, right? Because there is no one else. I would say the same thing for the offense, especially when West Berg’s sent off injured, right? And especially when cows are not coming back anytime too soon, that that there are going to be opportunities here for these players to sink or swim, right, whatever they are, in the same way that was that way for Austin Hayes and for Mount castle and for Mullins. And Mullins, you know, famously sent back to double A and he’s this reclamation project, but he did all that under the cloak of darkness, because the team was going to lose 100 games, whether he was at a ball, double a ball, triple A ball in the big leagues. And they’re now at a point with these players were like, all right, holidays, going to get his 542 at bats this year. Right? Play him. Let let’s see that he hits 280 in the second half and 230 in the first you know, we’re gonna have those kinds of splits. And hey, you’re 2122 2325 years old. Hey, dude, you know, rushman, you’re having a bad year. You’re gonna catch 115 games. And if you’re a 234, hitter, that’s what you are. You know, like we’re not, you’re no longer Johnny Bravo, and the one one in our prospect, and we’re all going to run out and see you now. It’s like, You’re a big league ball player and you got to do this every night. And it’s not easy. It’s not easy to do. And, you know, we talk about Cal Ripken. You know, Cal Ripken had bad, bad years. Go look at the back of his baseball card. He had some 250s and 240s and two. You know, he wasn’t that player. He wasn’t consistent in that way, because it’s hard. He’s a Hall of Fame player. He did it every day. He never took a day off, never took an inning off. But you know, he wasn’t a consistent 292, 95 hitter in that hall of fame way. He and I don’t know what these other guys, with these guys, these young guys, are going to be, but it’s time to get the back of their baseball card full, and they’re going to get there at bats. What you know, nobody’s getting sent back out or any of that, but people are going to lose their jobs. That’s going to happen because, like, this is, this is below the bar. And I don’t, I don’t know how Rubenstein sees it. I, you know, I, I’ve offered to shake his hand. You can go read about I don’t think he has any expertise in any of this in regard to baseball or baseball ops, or even the business of Katie Griggs business and selling sky boxes and enthusiasm being nice to media people who are trying to sell them tickets and and stir up enthusiasm for them. But the enthusiasm does come from the players, and these players are going to have to play. And if Gunder Henderson is only going to hit 258 this year and hit 27 home runs and drive in 84 runs, because he’s not going to be as good as he was, that they got five months to play that out. Because I’ll tell you what, you and I are going to get together every day and do this. We’re going to talk about last night’s game and tonight’s game and starters and all that, but this young core, as long as they’re healthy, they’re going to play, and we’re going to find out what they are over the long haul, not over 30 games,
Luke Jones 15:53
sure, sure. And you know, Gibson talked about this a little bit in the post game, and fully acknowledging it, we all know Kyle Gibson was awful on Tuesday night. He’d be the first to tell you that, but, you know, he kind of talked about that, and it was what I was just kind of laying out there. You know, when you’re 11 and 18, you can’t play your way into being five games over 500 just like that, right? You can’t view it through the lens of, oh, we’ve got to go on a 12 game winning streak right now. That’d be great if they did, but you can’t think in those terms, and that’s where. And it was something that you and I talked about once upon a time with the Bucha alter era, and when the Orioles turned a corner in 12 and they started playing the way they did for a five year period, where wasn’t perfect over the five years, but they had three playoff seasons, and, you know, they won, what, 96 games in 2014 and they made the playoffs again in 2016 that team which had more of a mix, but at the same time in 2012 I mean, Adam Jones wasn’t viewed perceived at that point in time, in the way that we perceived him, What we perceive him now, looking back at his career, they had younger guys. Maybe they weren’t rookies, they weren’t 21 years old, like Jackson holiday other than Machado coming up at age 20, I would call that. They were guys that they were unproven. Yeah, you know, they had taken their lumps, right? And, you know, I talked about this point a lot last year. I didn’t think it would lead to what we’re seeing right now. I was hoping it would be much more of a, you know, a swift return in terms of some of their struggles. Last year, I said to you at the time that I thought they were going to be better for it in the long run, and they still might. But boy, you’re really fighting yourself as much as anything right now. And I mean, Tuesday was a good example. Well, you give up four home the first five matters of the game, and you’re down five nothing going into the bottom of the first against Carlos rodone, who, you know, pitched a heck of a game. You know, the Orioles didn’t even have a base runner through the first five innings. And doubt the wnst text alert. You know, if Carlos rodone had a perfect game seven innings or eight innings. It didn’t point. But you saw it. You know, the focus wasn’t there. They made three errors. You know that the at bats, you know, there were some decent at bats later in the game, but, and that’s just, you know that that specific game, you know those specific instances where you make some errors. You know that that’s that study for what is under the hood. You know, to your point, what you’re kind of laying out there. And that’s where I as much as the starting rotation, is the lead for this they have created for themselves here coming out of the gate in the month of April, you still have to work through you have to fight through that. There are plenty of really good players that are on bad baseball teams around baseball, and they still perform. And that’s where I’m not giving the young core a total pass here. I’m just not going to do it because if, if they need everything around them to be perfect, then these aren’t the special guys that you drafted again with, right? I don’t think it’s unfair in saying that doesn’t mean that they’re going to be peak to your point and through some struggles. I mean, Adley rutschman went through that the second half of last year, whether he was hurt, whether he was, you know, picked up some bad habits. You know, with the swing whatever we saw it. You have to dig yourself out of it. And you have to, you know, you mentioned Cedric Mullins is a great example of that in 2019 I mean, he was one of the few young guys that they had at that point in time, in the rebuild that was perceived to be ready to play in the Major Leagues, and then had a major setback in terms of his performance. Got sent to triple A struggle to triple A they sent him all the way back to Bowie, and, you know, a couple years later, he was in the All Star game because he was a 3030, player. So it’s a reminder that this too shall pass. It doesn’t mean everything’s going to be okay, but it doesn’t mean everything’s going to be bad forever, and that this thing is totally due. Long term, and that they’re about to enter another rebuilding phase. You know, I’m not ready to make that kind of proclamation, but, boy, you have to reassess some things. And that, really, that begins with Mike Elias. I mean, you have to start reassessing. I think the organization has to stop kidding themselves in terms of what their approach, from a pitching standpoint, has been. I think it’s very clear that hasn’t worked. Because, yeah, you have this young core, but, and you can say all you want about the injuries, but they knew by last June that Kyle Bradish wasn’t going to be a factor for them until maybe August of this year. Same with Tyler wells, right? So you have to be able. You can’t one thing that I’ve kind of thought about this a lot. I haven’t necessarily written it. I haven’t even necessarily said it to you over the air a ton, although I’m sure I’ve brought it up in passing. But it kind of feels like their roster building approach from the time they transitioned to being okay midway through 22 it felt at that point like, hey, the rebuilds kind of over. You know, Rutgers here, Gunner Henderson’s on the cusp of being promoted at that point. You know, Austin Hayes and Mullins and Santander and mount castle and, you know, go through the list. Bradish, what was up by that point in time, and it was real, you kind of, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, by that, you didn’t know he was going to be an all star closer, but he was a back end bullpen guy, along with Jorge Lopez and, you know, so there were enough pieces, and they were starting to play better, you know, from that that July, where they went on that winning streak and they got themselves to 500 I
Nestor Aparicio 21:39
always say that brand like moved from being the transition manager sure to being like, hey, he’s going to be here when
Luke Jones 21:46
we win. Sure, sure. But I think from that point on, and this is where I’ve just been so underwhelmed by what they’ve done in their off seasons, with the with the exception of acquiring Corbin burns, but everything else, whether we’re talking about trade deadlines or whether we’re talking about off season activity, when you have that young group of players you know that you’ve drafted and developed, and they’re whether they’re one one Richmond holiday types, or whether they’re guys that you’ve developed, like gunner Henderson or Jordan westburg, You know, guys that weren’t first overall pick or top five pick, you should be really excited about that. You should be thinking in terms of, okay, this is what we wanted. Now it’s time to pounce. And when I say that, it doesn’t mean your payroll has to go up to $200 million overnight, but at that point, it’s time to start getting serious about how you’re going to augment your roster. And instead, what we’ve seen is it feels like just these moves around the margins where the thought has been okay, if everything breaks perfectly or close to perfectly, there we go. We’re in business, awesome. And I you know that that feels like a wasteful way of going about doing this, and that’s why, you know, when you and I were sitting there with Dave shining at Pizza John’s five weeks ago, talking about where the Orioles were and assessing their off season and assessing where their pitching was after, you know, knowing that Grayson Rodriguez wasn’t going to be ready for opening day and that Kittredge was out and and again, it feels like they’ve, like, deliberately operated from a smaller margin for error than they needed to, given the fact that you have these assets of these young players who are cheap, controllable guys that are going to be around, that you’re not going to have to spend a lot of money on in the interim, you know, over the next few years, go
8Nestor Aparicio 23:40
sleep until they get out with these kids, right? Yeah,
Luke Jones 23:43
go, you know, go, go augment things. Go make this great in the way that the Astros, you know, they went and got Justin Verlander, you know, they, they acquired Garrett Cole, right? I mean, they, you know, Carlos Beltran, even though he was at the very end of his career, that was someone that had a high degree of credibility as someone who had been a great player and had played on great teams and had played in October, and, you know, instead, we’ve seen, we’ve seen Mike Elias make these incremental missions now fully acknowledge the ownership transition from the end of, you know, John Angelos and where they were, and understanding, as in dispute was still hanging over their heads. I understand that, and that’s why I said I wasn’t expecting them to take their payroll to $200 million overnight and just start spending like you’re the Mets or the Dodgers. But there was a middle ground here, and that’s why I I can vividly remember two years ago talking to you like, why didn’t the Orioles go out and get Nathan of Aldi like the Rangers did, he helped them. He helped pitch them to a world. Now, they hit that was their driving force, but he was their ace. Now, he wasn’t an ace in the way that you think of Corbin burns, or, you know, the guys that are winning Cy Young awards, but he was their ace. And that wasn’t a contract. That was the kind that’s going to come. Triple you are The kind that you say, Wow, that’s really, really risky. You know, it was a, think it was a two year deal with an option, maybe, off the top of my head point is, you know, they didn’t make even moves like that. And you know, just out when you have had things go wrong and you have had some injuries, and you have had some misfortune in certain ways. But man, I mean, this was, this is your plan A, or, you know, maybe Plan B. I mean, it’s not much. Doesn’t say much for your ability to take this organization to the next level. Mike Elias, in this in this front office, did stellar work getting them to the point where they were midway through 2022 and going into 2023 what we’ve seen since then, with the exception of the of the burns deal, which ultimately proved to be a rental, has been substandard, if it if we’re now allowed to really look at evaluate this thing in terms of where They were then and what you thought the possibilities could be. It’s been, it hasn’t been good enough. And that’s where I’m really starting to question if is Mike Elias, a general manager who’s really good at building but then when you get to a certain point and it’s time to make the moves you need to make to get over the hump and help out your young guys and not, not be in a position where you need everything to go perfectly well in order to be they what they were two years ago, perfectly well
Nestor Aparicio 26:31
when you you’ve been here seven years and you don’t have a picture that’s been to the big
Luke Jones 26:35
leagues, no question. I mean, Brandon Young was the first guy, you know, the first they didn’t draft him. They signed him that that was a COVID year and, and I’d work under the assumption that if that had not been a COVID year, they would have drafted him at some point, it would have been sixth round, seventh round, you know, whatever, right? I mean, we know that there are so many rounds in the baseball draft, but, but yeah. I mean, you have nothing to show from a pitching standpoint, other than, you know, Kyle Bradish, they did develop, right? I mean, they traded both the angels and Bradish had been drafted the year before, so they, they did most of the developing of Kyle Bradish. So it’s not as though they haven’t done anything, it’s not as though they don’t have any success stories, whatever, but when you’ve had this deliberate philosophy that you’re not drafting pitchers early, you’re you’re staying with primarily college bats, but bats, you know, obviously Jackson holiday gunner Henderson were high school kids. But when, when that’s your strategy, and then you’re in a position where you have the number one farm system in baseball, and yet, some of the trades that you’ve made, okay, the burns, burns deal worked out like I said, I would have done that 100 times out of 100 even, even with him being a rental. But I mean, Trevor Rogers, he, you know, he pitched in Norfolk on Tuesday night, he got knocked around. And you know, he’s ramping 100
Nestor Aparicio 27:58
times out of 100 as you watched him for a year, and he gave him a chance to win. And sure, other than Jim Palmer and Mike boddica and Mike Messina and Jimmy key, we haven’t had a whole lot of that around here in 30 years. Really, we haven’t, no
Luke Jones 28:12
but I would also say, I mean,
Nestor Aparicio 28:16
that’s the point. You know, my point is the cost of doing that is giving up a young kid to rent them for a year. And if you want to rent to own, the cost is you call Uncle Dave, and Uncle Dave’s got to write a two $50 million check. I mean, that’s and and fans have to come out and pay for it. And we’ll get to that another day. Luke Jones is here. He’s Baltimore, Luke, they’re going to play another game on Wednesday night. We’re going to continue to talk football and baseball and all that stuff. I let you, you know, wrap it up, because I’m just I keep looking at this and saying it’s supposed to be a new day for their revenue, for the streaming last week, for people coming to the ballpark and experiencing all this and paying full price to do this, and selling sponsorships and asses in seats to look at all the new ads that they have out there and all of that. And when the Yankees come in and it’s nice out, and people don’t want to come down there and and for whatever reason, I don’t care. Why? City, black, white, east, west, school night, whatever price, whatever it is, it’s painful to see the Yankees in town and then not selling tickets during a a a period of prosperity for them. The, you know, the Yankees are a draw first place, all the good weather, all of that, I that’s also sort of stuck in the mud in some way. You know, the whole that part of it will be stuck in the mud if the field is no good. And we talked at length about that on Monday as well, which is sort of like Katie Griggs took this gig thinking, I’ve got a good team to build around here my front office, and I can employ my brilliant ideas to do Hispanic night lock Nestor out in September, but, but, you know, they’re doing these promotions and bobble heads and all of that, but I’m seeing the Yankees at the New York Yankees are in town. They’re. In Baltimore, it’s nice out. The team was supposed to be good. They’re not, and people aren’t coming to the ballpark, and that continue. That’s a 30 year tradition now, of people not coming to the ballpark, and I want to see the trajectory of that move as well. And it can’t with the team plan like it can’t. It can’t. Yeah,
8Luke Jones 30:18
well, and this, you know, this aligns itself, though, with what I’ve talked about with the off season, right? The best way you could describe it was underwhelming, and I was trying to give the benefit of the doubt, and I acknowledge that, you know, I could see the line of thinking with each move in isolation, but then when you look at the body of work, you know, the the collective, as far as the moves you’ve made, it’s, you know, it’s just it came across as very blah on the on the heels of a black second half and a really disappointing, abrupt postseason run that that was over in a matter of 30 hours, or 27 hours, whatever it was, you did nothing over the off season to to sell hope, other than what you already had in place with Gunner Anderson and Adley rutman, but and everyone else, but you didn’t extend any of them. And look, I’m not even saying that right right now in terms of like that. That’s something you do tomorrow, because now you’re starting to question some of these guys, right? I mean, at this point, would you even want to extend Adley rutschman, based on what we’ve seen for going on 10 months, the last 10 months,
Nestor Aparicio 31:30
dude, I’ve already said, If it were up to me, we still got paying Jonathan scope, because I would have made that mistake. You know what? I mean. Little
Luke Jones 31:38
short, yeah, and, and, to be clear, I mean, for as much as everyone loves pointing to the examples of young players that are extended, that that end up being great moves, there are also teams that look at it and say, Oh, that’s, that’s not quite what we had in mind anyway. You know, kind of getting off track. I haven’t
Nestor Aparicio 31:53
had a whole lotus and Adam Jones. Those guys worked out when they did get paid. You haven’t had a whole lot of deadbeat, you know, giving money. I mean, Charlie side, right? We haven’t had a whole lot of that. I
Luke Jones 32:04
mean, a Baldo Jimenez, oh, there you go. Thank you. Yeah, but, but in terms of young extending young players, I mean Marques, in hindsight, near the last couple years of that deal, I think where Nick Marquez was his first couple years, there was a thought that he was going to be a dynamic, legit, all star player. And he never really became that, and I know what. He ended up making an all star team with Atlanta, but Nick marques was more merely, he was a good player, but, and also,
Nestor Aparicio 32:36
if Colton cows are turns into Nick Marques, you’d say, but
Luke Jones 32:39
that’s okay, like you’ll take that, sure, you’ll take that. You’ll take that, but, but again, in terms of everything you mentioned with Katie Griggs and new ownership and wanting to see attendance spike and all that, there was nothing in the off season to hang up their hats on in that route. I mean Tyler O’Neal, you know Charlie Morton, I mean Gary Sanchez, no one’s buying tickets based off of that. And let me be clear, I want to stress here, there are very few individual players that sell tickets, very few. And research bears that out as much as teams you know, like, for example, the Blue Jays. They just gave Vlad Guerrero. What half a billion dollars do I really think he’s going to move the needle dramatically for selling tickets if the Blue Jays are a mediocre team? No, I don’t think he will. I think there are Shohei Ohtani judge, but judge plays for the Yankees, and the Yankees are good every single year. The Yankees are good, the great every single year. And they’re also playing in the biggest city in the country. You know what I mean, like, but like Otani feels to me like the one player around baseball that, you know, when the Dodgers come in to Baltimore, or the Dodgers come into St Louis, or the Dodgers are in, you know, even Tampa, they get a boost, because Shohei Otani is that much of a marvel. But that said, when your off season collect, you know the body of work for your off season, the collective haul of your off season, is what the Orioles did on the heels of a disappointing second half and the heels of being swept in October, I mean yuck. And when I say Yuck, meaning just in terms of sparking added interest and added optimism. No, they didn’t do very well in that front and the scary part about this is when you start 11 and 17 or 11 and 18 man, unless you’re adding more bobble heads and more giveaways and things of that nature. It’s only going to get worse on that front if the if this team indeed does not turn it around and does not play better baseball, and they’re 15 games out in mid June, right? Uh, you know where it’s like, oh, this, this isn’t happening. There’s no one coming to the ballpark at that point in time. I mean, why would they? Would you especially when, when they were sold on a multi year rebuild being so necessary to build something that was going to be sustainable, and you win for two years, and now you’re back into this mess. And again, like I said, it doesn’t mean I think, doesn’t mean I think that this is over, over, but 2025 could end up being over. And then you’re trying to figure out, okay, how do we revamp this? What do we need to do to reload? What do we need to do to adjust? How do we need to reimagine our philosophy from a pitching standpoint? Do we need to make changes at manager and the coaching staff? Do we need to revamp our player development? Is there something that we’re missing? We’ve had a lot of injuries? Do we need to reexamine our strength and conditioning program in the way that the Ravens did a couple years ago? Right? I mean, a different sport, but you have to be introspective when things aren’t going well, and you need to be critical, and you need to say, maybe we’re not as smart as we thought, and maybe we don’t have this figured out to the degree that we
8Nestor Aparicio 36:08
did. So maybe it wasn’t as easy as we made it look two summers ago. Yeah, right.
Luke Jones 36:12
And, you know, two years ago, maybe we were ahead of schedule. You know, maybe, maybe in some ways, winning 101 games was actually something that wasn’t great for us to happen in a big picture sense, because not so much that it created expectations, but we start smelling ourselves a little bit more than we should at that point in time. Again, I’m spitballing here because I’ve said to you, I am at a loss for it being like this. I’m not at a loss at the starting rotation would have struggled or been bottom 10 in baseball, or even bottom five in baseball, but to be this bad, this bad, and then on top of it, your offense, that’s supposed to be your strength, that was the foundation for what the rebuild was built. You know that you built on, and that’s been below average. So, I mean, you just look at this and, you know, I’m trying to look for positive signs, and I just, I don’t see them right now, other than just the reputation that this young core has carried with it, that at some point in time you can’t just keep saying you’re young. Ali ruchmans 27 years old. Heston kersad is 26 years old. You know, holiday is 21 I’ll give that to him. But at some point it’s like, hey, like, you’re one one, if you’re truly as special as everyone thought you were. Like, it’s go time. You got to start showing more consistency. Well, you got to
Nestor Aparicio 37:31
show you belong. You gotta, you gotta show it’s all of that. But what I’m saying to you is all these young guys, whether they earn their bats or not, they’re gonna bat. And I think that that’s where they
Luke Jones 37:41
I mean, you’re not, you know, for one you can’t send everyone back to the miners, right? I mean, someone’s got to play. And, you know, these guys are going to have to figure it out. And it might be that they have a listless summer in the way that Cedric Mullins, Austin Hayes, Ryan mount Castle, Anthony Santander, in the way that they had to do it. They took their lumps. They lost a lot of games in the process, because they had no one around. They showed that they were big league ball players. But yeah, and that’s going to be the goal here. And look, and Rio Ruiz didn’t, right, you know, the rest, right? I mean, and guys like him were placeholders, right? We knew Rio Ruiz was never going to be anything. But you want
Nestor Aparicio 38:16
to get a Dan Straley, you want to go ahead and throw you’ve
Luke Jones 38:19
got to, you’ve gotta, you’ve gotta fight through it. And it might be that you’re, you’re doing it from an individual standpoint, not that you’re selfish, but in terms of, hey, maybe we’re not going to be a contender this year. Maybe this isn’t going to get better. But boy, these guys gotta
Nestor Aparicio 38:33
make every at back account, I mean, and that’s for loriano Sanchez, all the way down the roster. Luca be at the ballpark on Wednesday night, pitching Povich, obviously the setup for the weekend with Kansas City coming in, good team coming in with the Royals. This is, this is a problematic week for them. It
8Luke Jones 38:50
is, it is someone asked me. One of my buddies texted me, and I’ll leave you with this. He asked me for my expertise on the state of the Orioles. And I’m somewhat flippant saying this, but Well, the Raven schedule comes out in two weeks may 14.
Nestor Aparicio 39:05
Write it down. There we go. Getting ready for proof. I hope things
Luke Jones 39:09
are a little better in two weeks. But, man, I said that two weeks ago, and they’ve only gotten worse.
Nestor Aparicio 39:14
And please no emails to me about why I’m making Luke go and suffer at the ballpark. It’s his job. I still, I
Luke Jones 39:20
still love my job, I just don’t love it quite as much when it’s back to feeling like the rebuild again.
Nestor Aparicio 39:25
I love your job, except on nights like Tuesday night. He is Luke. I am Nestor. We’re going to be at Cocos on Wednesday. We’re going to be at red brick station next Wednesday, the seventh, doing the Maryland crab cake to represented by the Maryland lottery. We are W, N, S, D, am 1570 tasks in Baltimore, and we never stop talking Baltimore positive. I.
