Good morning Birdland,
The ALCS is expected to continue tonight in Cleveland after a rainout on Friday. MLB doesn’t do doubleheaders in the postseason, so this reschedule has condensed the calendar a bit. No longer is there an off-day set for Sunday, which could mean that these two teams would play on three straight days from Saturday through Monday, if a Game 6 is needed. That change could force the two managers to play their bullpen cards a bit different than if they had the day off for relievers
to recover.
Of course, the Orioles are just spectators to all of this while their manager’s former club is on the brink of a World Series appearance. They have a few things to figure out before they can get back to the point where playoff bullpen management is their top priority.
One of those things might be whether or not their owner actually understands what his role is here.
David Rubenstein just finished his third season as the club’s “control person.” The honeymoon period between him and the Orioles fan base is entirely over as the team has disappointed for 2.5 of the three years that he has been in the mix. But that didn’t stop him from recently writing a book about the experience, which people have started to thumb through during this quiet period before the offseason really gets going. And it has led him to talk a lot more about the experience publicly.
Baltimore Baseball’s Rich Dubroff compiled a few noteworthy quotes from an event on Thursday that featured Rubenstein alongside fellow sports team owners. One in particular spurred a follow-up column from Yahoo! Sports.
“A lot of my friends were buying teams, and I realized they’re making money. They’re making more money than I’m making in private equity,” he said. “I thought I should look at it as a financial thing, but ultimately I bought the Orioles for a philanthropic purpose.
Comments like this are not ideal from MLB’s perspective right now. The league and MLBPA are in the midst of a labor dispute in which many of the owners are crying poor, saying the smaller market teams cannot afford to compete with the clubs in New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago. To hear Rubenstein tell it, these teams are actually doing just fine.
I’m shocked, I tell you, shocked!
This upcoming World Series matchup won’t do much to help either. Milwaukee is arguably the smallest market in MLB, dwarfed by nearby Chicago, but they have been the best team in the sport all year and just took down the mighty Dodgers. Cleveland and Tampa are also in the bottom half of the league. One of them is going to he the AL champs. The Rays took down the Yankees to get here while the Guardians beat out the White Sox, who may not carry the same cachet as the Cubs in that city, but they are still able to draw from one of the country’s major metropolises.
That all is secondary to me. If you didn’t already know these billionaires weren’t just in this for the love of the game, then you aren’t paying attention. Instead, what I found interesting are the many other quotes that make Rubenstein look like both an out-of-touch rich guy, and maybe even an alien from another planet. For example:
“I couldn’t figure out why it is that people who are fans are so obsessed with the success of their local team,” he said. “They’re not going to make any more money. They’re not going to go to the Super Bowl and get a trophy out of it.
“I guess it’s because people take pride in being successful, and if something that’s connected to their local community is successful, they feel better about themselves. That’s why people love to watch sports, I guess.”
Dave, dude, did you just find out what sports are the week before buying the team? You didn’t understand why people were obsessed with their local team? Well, of course, it is so that predatory wealthy people like you can worm your way into something you don’t understand, and make everything more expensive and complicated. All so you can make even more money that “isn’t going to make a difference in [the owner’s] lifestyle”
Or maybe just keep some thoughts inside your head, and share them with your rich pals somewhere that’s not, I don’t know, a broadly broadcast forum that everyone can hear.
Again, most people understand that these billionaire owners are not doing this for entirely benevolent reasons. They want to make (more) money, and sports is an increasingly popular way to do that. But it would be nice to have an owner that at least gets what they are signing up for at a base level, and maybe even shares some level of passion that the fans have. It doesn’t seem like the Orioles have that.
Links
Holliday looking to build off positives from 2026 during ’27 season | Orioles.com
Jackson Holliday is not turning into the franchise cornerstone that many hoped/expected him to be. That doesn’t mean he is without value, but it also shouldn’t mean the Orioles just keep pinning their hopes on him being a viable everyday second baseman. They should be open-minded to other solutions if they are serious about winning in 2027.
This, that and the other | Roch Kubatko
Roch discusses some of the contract decisions coming for the Orioles. Ryan Helsley gets to decide his own fate, which likely puts him back in Baltimore next year. Zach Eflin doesn’t. He will hit free agency rather than having his $25 million option picked up. Ryan Mountcastle ($7.5 million) and Luis Robert Jr. ($20 million) are tougher calls, but the smart money is probably on their options being declined too. Dietrich Enns probablys hits the market too after a tough season spend mostly in Triple-A.
Orioles owner David Rubenstein says quiet part out loud before lockout: His MLB peers are making a ton of money | Yahoo! Sports
In case you skipped the opening. Here is what Yahoo! had to say on Rubenstein’s comments earlier this week.
Orioles birthdays
Is it your birthday? Happy birthday!
- Hanser Alberto turns 34 today. The contact-oriented infielder emerged out of nowhere to have an impressive 3.4-bWAR season in 2019 with the Orioles, was a bit less productive in 2020, his final season in Baltimore.
- Ken Dixon is 60 years old. All four seasons he spent in MLB came in Baltimore from 1984-87. Over 482.1 total innings he had a 4.66 ERA and was worth 2.4 bWAR.
- Jim Hutto is 79 today. He played in four games for the 1975 Orioles.
- The late Kelly Paris (b. 1957, d. 2019) was born on this day. He appeared in 10 games with the Orioles as a reserve infielder between 1985 and ‘86.
This day in O’s history
1971 – The Pirates prevail 2-1 over the Orioles in Game 7 of the World Series. Robert Clemente hits a home run off Mike Cuellar as the crowning achievement of his Series MVP performance.
1979 – Willie Stargell hits a two-run homer to lift the Pirates to a 4-1 win in Game 7 of the World Series over our O’s.
