Fans of other teams are practically lining up to see how they can get a surplus Orioles outfielder.
How many outfielders is too many outfielders to possibly squeeze into the major league roster picture at once? The Orioles, with this week’s signing of Ramón Laureano, have got a lot of people thinking that one possible resolution of what is now an apparent jam is that somebody is going to get traded. The O’s still seem to need a top-of-the-rotation starting pitcher and there could maybe stand to be some more certainty in the bullpen too.
This is not just a thought process playing out solely among Orioles fans. Elsewhere on the SB Nation MLB network, our friends at the Padres site Gaslamp Ball and the Guardians site Covering the Corner both took notice of the O’s outfield surplus yesterday and offered trade thoughts with differing levels of specificity.
CTC’s Quincy Wheeler is not picky about which Orioles outfielder might come over to Cleveland, offering different trade scenarios involving three guys in the O’s OF picture while dealing out of what he sees as a surplus from what was, in 2024, an excellent Guardians bullpen, or possibly out of their glut of young but mostly untested starting pitchers.
Cedric Mullins
Mike Elias has not shown himself to be a sentimental guy when it comes to Orioles roster construction. We saw this last July as longtime Oriole Austin Hays was traded after he was supplanted by Colton Cowser, and we saw it again after the season with the way that the team almost instantly turned the page on and seemingly never tried to re-sign their own free agent, Anthony Santander.
These are different in degree than the idea of a preseason trade involving Mullins, now one of the two longest-tenured players in the organization along with fellow 2015 draftee Ryan Mountcastle. That would be cold as ice, and maybe not even a positive for the 2025 Orioles outfield, because if Cowser is in center rather than left, there might not be a good defender for the smaller-but-still-large left field area, or if Laureano ends up in center field regularly, well, he can’t hit righties.
Mullins has never been as good as his 2021 30 homer/30 stolen base season, but he’s been a consistently average (or slightly better) hitter for the past three seasons. His defensive metrics slipped in 2024. This is his final year before becoming a free agent and unless he returns to that 2021 form, he’s probably not going to be a qualifying offer candidate. One can see the case for a trade in there.
Wheeler proposes that the Guardians would surrender “either Hunter Gaddis, Franco Aleman, or Andrew Walters, and potentially an additional 40-45 FV prospect.” Very roughly, 40-45 FV is what Jackson Baumeister was heading into the 2024 season.
Gaddis and Walters are relievers with MLB experience. We already know the Orioles like Walters because they drafted him in the late rounds in 2022, though he didn’t sign. Aleman was a 2021 draft pick who converted to relief in 2023 and had a pretty good 2024 at Triple-A, though with only about a half-season worth of appearances.
The idea of trading Mullins hurts me as a fan, and I’m not convinced that the Orioles could just do without him. Gaddis was extremely good in 2024 (1.57 ERA, 0.763 WHIP) with peripherals that suggest he should still be pretty good if not that good in the future, and he won’t be a free agent until after 2029.
Cold logic offers something for this proposal, trading one year of an outfielder for several years of a pretty good reliever. That is, if the O’s think that they can get by in the outfield without Mullins, and if they think the pretty good reliever will avoid typical reliever year-to-year volatility.
Heston Kjerstad
The feeling that Kjerstad may be viewed as expendable by the Orioles has been there since the team signed Tyler O’Neill to a contract that doesn’t make him look like he’s intended to be the platoon player that his performance makes him look like. Further additions of Laureano and Dylan Carlson have added to this feeling for many, though since Kjerstad is not going to be a center fielder, I don’t think he’s displaced by any fourth outfield-type player.
Kjerstad turns 26 years old next week. His professional career has been continually delayed by injuries that aren’t of the usual “this guy always has nagging injuries” sort. That happened even last year when the Yankees hit him in the head and the Orioles brought him back from the concussion injured list before his concussion symptoms had apparently cleared. Still, it’s time for Kjerstad to play or his value may plummet towards zero. If the O’s don’t see a future for him here, it’s time to cash in.
Wheeler’s proposal for Kjerstad is for “Joey Cantillo and Trevor Stephan or Gaddis or Walters.”
Cantillo debuted in 2024 as a starting pitcher, with an undistinguished 4.89 ERA in nine games and strikeout/walk rates that suggest perhaps a low-4 ERA was more in line with his talent. Stephan, a former Rule 5 pick, is on a modest contract extension that could keep him under team control through 2028 for $20 million. He was great in relief in 2022, mediocre in 2023, and did not pitch in 2024.
I’m not excited about the idea of trading Kjerstad for a back-end guy who’s not even immediately in the 2025 rotation plus a reliever. But maybe I like Kjerstad – or the idea of what Kjerstad could be – a lot more than what the Orioles think Kjerstad actually is. Getting Gaddis for Kjerstad could turn out to be a savvy thought, with Cantillo into the back-end rotation mix for the future as a bonus.
Dylan Beavers
My reaction to seeing this name was “Somebody wants Dylan Beavers to be the one guy involved in a trade?” Wheeler describes Beavers as such:
Beavers is an interesting player with a lot of power upside that has been mitigated by his swing-and-miss but who has speed and outfield defensive prowess that make him seem like a good bet to be an average major league centerfielder someday.
His proposed trade for Beavers is: Beavers for Cantillo and Nic Enright. The 28-year-old Enright is a reliever who has pretty much never been any good until last year, when he posted a 1.06 ERA in 17 innings at the Triple-A level. Which, as sample sizes go for relievers, is pretty much nothing. He has no MLB experience.
Cantillo and Enright are both on the Guardians 40-man roster already. Beavers is not on the Orioles 40-man. So this deal would involve the Orioles having to dump two other players either before the deal or as it is made. The Kjerstad trade also brings two 40-man guys in, though at least that ships out one 40-man player on its own. There’s less dead weight on the roster than there used to be. Bryan Baker and Daz Cameron, two out-of-options guys who don’t have a clear path to the Opening Day roster, would be my picks if a deal like this was made.
If the Orioles were going to trade Beavers, I’d rather him be part of a bigger trade that netted the Orioles someone with more projected immediate high-impact than this deal. Cantillo doesn’t even come with that great of a minor league track record beyond his strikeout numbers. Maybe I’m just instinctually overrating any O’s prospect to say this.
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Trade thoughts continue to swirl around the Padres center around Dylan Cease. He’s about to begin a second spring training where “everyone” assumes he will inevitably be dealt. This year’s rumors follow after he was pretty dang good in 2024, finishing in fourth in the Cy Young voting for a 33-start campaign where he had a 3.47 ERA (118 ERA+) that included throwing a no-hitter. He will become a free agent after this season and is set to be paid $13.75 million.
The Orioles did a “trade for one year of a hoped-for ace” move almost exactly one year ago when they got Corbin Burnes from the Brewers. At that point, the team had a surplus in the infield, rather than the outfield, and they chose to deal the “extra” prospect Joey Ortiz – older than the typical prospect at 25 – as well as another older no-longer-prospect in DL Hall.
This was a pretty good win for both sides trade. Burnes was the ace the Orioles needed, and given all the rotation injury chaos, maybe the difference between making the playoffs and not. Ortiz was blocked by other young infielders in Baltimore and had a nice first season with the Brewers. He’ll still be there in Milwaukee while Burnes is getting the big free agent bucks from his home-state Diamondbacks.
You can easily sketch out a similar swap for the Padres for Cease. That is, if the Padres would like having the “obvious” surplus outfielder Kjerstad as well as a pitcher who would become expendable with the addition of Cease. To me, that feels like Dean Kremer. Adding one more pitcher at the top of the rotation right now seems to push Kremer out of the bottom. He is a pitcher who is fine but is not “the guy” to make a difference on your roster.
Cease could be the difference-maker the Orioles seem to need, if he pitches like he did in 2022 and 2024. Or, if he pitches like he did in 2023, then he won’t be, and the deal could end up being one of those that O’s fans bitterly regret.
One other thing about trading for Cease is that would set up the Orioles presumed Opening Day rotation with four of the five guys being free agents at the end of the 2025 season. Zach Eflin is on the last year of the three-year deal he originally signed with the Rays. Cease becomes a free agent based on service time after this year. Charlie Morton and Tomoyuki Sugano are on one-year deals.
That’s a lot of turnover to weather. Kremer might feel expendable after the addition of a hopeful-ace in 2025 but he won’t be expendable for 2026 and 2027 unless things turn out very well for the group that includes Chayce McDermott, Cade Povich, and Brandon Young. I don’t know that shipping out Kremer in a deal of this sort would be the best for the medium-term success of the franchise.
The Orioles chose not to take the risk of spending money on a higher-end free agent pitcher. Will they now risk trading for one, or instead risk waiting until July to see where they stand? I think Elias is waiting until July, but then, he’s surprised me before and will surely surprise me again.