By NOAH TRISTER, AP Baseball Writer
When Baltimore took Ben McDonald with the first pick in the 1989 draft, it was just a small part of an exciting season for the Orioles.
They had the No. 1 pick because the previous year had been terrible, but by the time they made the selection, the Orioles were in first place in the AL East, on their way to becoming one of the classic stories. baseball underdog. In fact, McDonald was drafted on June 5, 1989 — the same day Baltimore won a season-high eighth straight game.
This year’s Orioles are suddenly drawing comparisons to that 1989 team. After entering the season amid a tough rebuild — Baltimore will pick first in the draft on Sunday for the second time in four years — the Orioles have become one of the game’s biggest surprises in recent weeks. A 10-game winning streak put Baltimore above .500. Heading into All-Star Break, the Orioles have almost as many wins (46) as they won all of last year (52).
political cartoons
A playoff berth still seems unlikely, but at this point Baltimore is only 2½ games behind the American League’s last wildcard.
“It was fun watching this team, man,” said McDonald, a right-hander who kicked off nine seasons in the majors and is now on Orioles TV shows. “It reminds me a lot of that 89 side in some ways, where they got some confidence and then took off.”
The 1989 team holds a special place in the hearts of Baltimore fans. The 1988 Orioles lost 107 games, and that didn’t do justice to how laughing stock they were after an 0-21 start. There wasn’t much reason to expect a quick turnaround in 89, but surprisingly Baltimore led the AL East by 7½ games in mid-July.
The split ultimately ended in the final series of the season in Toronto. The Orioles lost the first two games, allowing the Blue Jays to clinch the title. Baltimore won the final, with McDonald – who was already in the majors the same year he was drafted – earning his first career victory.
The current Orioles have gone from similar depths to that 1989 team. Baltimore lost 110 games last year, including a 19-game skid that nearly tied the 1988 team’s mark for the longest streak of defeats in American League history. Even before that July push, the Orioles looked more competitive, thanks in part to an improved but still fairly anonymous bullpen.
Then Baltimore started its winning streak with a victory at Minnesota before sweeping the series against the Rangers, Angels and Cubs. It came as a pleasant surprise to Orioles fans, who expected to spend much of the season monitoring the progress of minor league prospects and viewing the draft and trade deadline as opportunities to add more. others.
“I think we have a lot of good things in store here for the next few years,” general manager Mike Elias said. “I am very happy that this is reflected at the moment during this period of play so clearly for our supporters.
This Orioles run could actually complicate the rest of the month for Elias. Baltimore thought it was a deadline-day seller — Trey Mancini, 30, might have some value, and Rougned Odor and Jordan Lyles have one-year contracts — but amid the team’s first truly successful stretch in a moment, there could obviously be a temptation to get out of it and chase the playoffs.
With the playoffs expanded, it’s not uncommon for a team to pick the No. 1 in the draft and then qualify for the playoffs in the same year. Minnesota did it in 2017.
“Everything I do, or what we do, has tradeoffs,” Elias said. “All I can say is that we’re doing everything from a very holistic, very thoughtful perspective, about what’s the right thing to do for the health of the Orioles Franchise. And that’s all taken into consideration. for the repechage, but also for the trade deadline.
For all the excitement of 1989, it was essentially an outlier. The Orioles fell back below .500 the following year and lost 95 games in 1991. Baltimore traded Pete Harnisch, Steve Finley and Curt Schilling – all of whom were on the 1989 team – for slugger Glenn Davis in a move that backfired badly.
The lesson is that while Baltimore’s long winning streak has been a fun story for fans, the Orioles still need to make some smart roster moves if they’re going to build on it.
Elias didn’t say much about tipping Baltimore’s hand ahead of the draft, but he said there’s a general feeling in the industry that the first player picked will be a position player, not a pitcher. .
Whatever happens over the next few weeks, the good news for Baltimore is that there seems to be more help on the way. In right-hander Grayson Rodriguez and infielder Gunnar Henderson, the Orioles have two of the game’s top five prospects, according to MLB Pipeline. Rodriguez was sidelined with a lath injury, but Henderson hit Triple-A well.
Wide receiver Adley Rutschman, the first pick in the 2019 draft, made his league debut with Baltimore earlier this year.
“I think this organization is in a very healthy place, and a lot of that has to do with the players and the way they’re playing here at the major league level right now,” Elias said. “So obviously having a great group of minor league prospects behind them.
Follow Noah Trister at www.Twitter.com/noahtrister
More AP MLB: https://apnews.com/hub/mlb and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports
Copyright 2022 The Associated press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.