The first productive day of MLB projects at the Orioles shows that the club has created its greatest need: talent



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When they speak honestly, Mike Elias employees, who head the Major League Baseball newsrooms, will notify the editorial team of the need, as Monday, for the Executive Vice President and General Manager of the Orioles.

The only exception is the one that applies Monday night to the circumstances of the Orioles: they needed talent, and that's exactly what they wrote.

In the first overall pick Adley Rutschman, No. 42 Gunnar Henderson and center defender Kyle Stowers, the Orioles made selections that did not require qualifications or explanations and did not raise eyebrows.

These are just really talented players, especially Rutschman, with Henderson and Stowers showing the potential to be the same.

"I think it ended up being a bit of a diverse group – No. 1, Rutschman being the polite college receiver, then following that with the 17-year-old high school shortstop with a benefit in Gunnar Henderson, and a very complete player with Kyle Stowers, "said Elias." It's a good mix, and that's just the beginning of our project – it's obviously a very important evening. "

This is not to say that the first day of the project has not been productive for the Orioles in recent years. DJ Stewart and Ryan Mountcastle are two of the most advanced hitters in the system. A comeback by right-hander Cody Sedlock and the imminent arrival of southpaw Keegan Akin in the major leagues makes the first day of 2016 an interesting one. The left-hander DL Hall appears to be a stallion at the top of the draft 2017 class, and two different wickets have been impressed by the progress of goaltender Adam Hall and southpaw Zac Lowther. And last year's first-round pick, right-handed Grayson Rodriguez, has been dominating this season. Cadyn Grenier, former Rutschman teammate in the Oregon State, selected to the competition round Last year, is also progressing.

But think back to those days of drafting and the questions persisted. Where will Mountcastle play? Did the Orioles really take three pitchers from the Upper Midwest to Sedlock, Akin and Matthias Dietz? Why did DL Hall miss them when he was considered the best potential left-winger in the repechage? Was Rodriguez real? Will Grenier hit one day?

Part of the reason for these questions was asked because decades of shooting misses and the developmental difficulties of the players required them. There are no such questions with these choices.

Rutschman was the first undisputed choice, and the only real question is how quickly the Orioles can pass it to the majors. Henderson is extremely sporty with left-handed power potential, and the glove must at least stick to the infield. Stowers is a complete college player with a bit of pop and comes from a program in which the batters tend to unlock even more once they've become professional.

The choices speak of the situation inherited from Elias with the agricultural system of the Orioles, good and bad, as well as the reality of this project and the way its former organization, the Houston Astros, was with the pitchers. On the last two, Elias said that it was a heavy water pull, but since their pitching operations were based on the data, they also knew what was going on. They wanted on this front and might not be forced to adopt a quantity-based approach considering the track record. what works and what does not work.

From an internal point of view, no organization can have enough pitching, but there are a lot of things in the latest versions of heavy rounds of pitching that's really pointless to not force the problem to to be like the Orioles in the past.

"The guiding principle is that we're just trying to get the best players in. I think the scouts did a good job with that, but this year they were asked to organize their scouting information a little differently." , Elias said. "We had different reports, we spent more time on certain types of players, less on other types of players, in terms of the time spent by scouts watching them in person or types of players." that we feel that we are better able to write or want to write.

"For the new incoming front office, this screening staff has done a great job of getting in touch quickly – we're not looking – we're not going to the draft for some types of players, but we want to have The best possible process, and I think we managed to get a good player in this year and that resulted in what I consider to be a very good first day. "

Such assessments are not foreign to any of the 30 front offices and have certainly been piled on the Orioles in recent years. The difference, of course, is who makes the selections and how that influences their assessment.

If there are dissidents among the mediators of the organization, they will not be noisy. If there are busts among them, there will be no internal history on which to return and that explains why another choice would have been safer.

And if it ends up being the kind of writing class that transforms the farm system in the short term and the organization in the long run, it will only be the first benchmark established by a senior executive who has claimed the overall level of talent of the organization. must develop in a major way.

These three players are a start.

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