Assuming the Orioles do a sell-off, how many guys do you think they will unload?
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You can still believe in the Orioles pulling off a substantial turnaround if you want. The only thing it will cost you is disappointment later when they don’t go 28-16 over their next 44 games to reach .500 by the time the trade deadline rolls around. It’s not that they can’t do it. If everything goes right, they could. It’s just that everything won’t go right, and if it doesn’t, they’ve got to think about trading away guys.
We know from recent history that Mike Elias is not shy about trading away players if he doesn’t think that the current team has the juice to keep pushing for the playoffs. In 2022, he dealt away Trey Mancini and Jorge López ahead of that year’s trade deadline even though the Orioles were only 2.5 games out of a wild card spot with three teams to pass. The 2025 Orioles are, right now, 8.5 games out of a wild card and seven teams ahead of them.
I’ll be glad to be wrong about it, but for now I think some kind of sell-off is inevitable. The Orioles have a lot of players who will be free agents after this season. In this week’s survey, I want to know what you’re thinking about how many guys will be traded away – or, if you still want to believe in the longshot, whether they’ll be trading away at all.
It is a big crop of players hitting free agency following this season. In descending order by 2025 salary: Zach Eflin, Charlie Morton, Tomoyuki Sugano, Cedric Mullins, Gary Sánchez, Seranthony Domínguez, Ryan O’Hearn, Gregory Soto, and Ramón Laureano.
Obviously, some of these guys are going to have more value to the league’s contenders than others. Morton and Sánchez are probably the only ones with no value whatsoever. They will also need to stay healthy to have any possible trade value. Mullins, one of the presumed more valuable potential trade pieces, is one of the guys on the injured list for now.
Once the calendar gets into July, assuming the Orioles haven’t ripped off another massive winning streak that really changes their math in the standings, Elias will then have some assessing to do as to whether teams are offering more in prospect terms than he thinks he could collect if a player just stays out the season and receives a qualifying offer at year’s end.
What do you think? You can sound off in the comments below if you like. The community’s results will be shared at the end of the week.