BALTIMORE—Mike Elias said he slept soundly on Tuesday night. After completing four deals, three in the hour before the 6 p.m. trade deadline, the Orioles’ executive vice president/general manager was content with the additions to the club.
One of them, left-handed reliever Gregory Soto, was available for Wednesday’s game. So was baseball’s top prospect, Jackson Holliday, who was recalled for the afternoon game against Toronto.
Left-handed starter Trevor Rogers, whom the Orioles obtained from Miami, will meet the team in Cleveland. He isn’t listed as a starter for the series, but the Thursday night starter against the Guardians hasn’t been decided.
Outfielders Eloy Jiménez and Austin Slater weren’t with the club on Wednesday, either.
After Friday’s trades of outfielder Austin Hays to Philadelphia for right-handed reliever Seranthony Dominguez and outfielder Cristian Pache and three prospects to Tampa Bay for right-hander Zach Eflin, whose second start will be Saturday night, Elias thought the Orioles did well.
“The trade deadline is always tough,” Elias said on Wednesday morning. “It’s always bittersweet, trading players for other players. It’s not a one-way street. You’re losing talent, but you’re getting different talent. It’s a different fit and more of a short-term concentration for the needs of the team.
“Ultimately, we added two starting pitchers [Eflin and Rogers] who are going right into our rotation. We added two really hard throwers [Soto and Dominguez] with success in the major leagues, one from the left side and one from the right side, and we added a couple of right-handed bats [Jiménez and Slater], which were especially necessary in the outfield with Austin Hays being gone.
“I think that the roster is very fortified. We have an excellent team with as good a shot as anybody. We have a lot more pitching than we did a week ago. I’m happy with the process, with the work that we did, our front office. A lot of people in the front office worked really, really hard. I had everything I needed to be prepared. The decisions are mine. The work is there, and the support and flexibility from the ownership group was imperative, too. We’ll see how the chips fall, but I feel like we did what we needed to to give this team the support that it deserves.”
The Orioles begin play Wednesday ½ game ahead of the New York Yankees in the American League East, but winning the division won’t be easy, especially after the Orioles lost three starting pitchers — Kyle Bradish, John Means and Tyler Wells to season-ending elbow surgeries.
Even though the team is still in first place, July has been a challenging month, following a June that included series against five probable playoff teams in succession: Atlanta, Philadelphia, the Yankees, Houston and Cleveland. That necessitated the moves.
“Part of it is the injury situation,” Elias said. “Everybody has injuries, but I think we’ve had it a little bit than average luck in that regard so far. We’ve had pitchers that have gone down, so we had to backfill that.
“It was unusual. There were very few sellers. The sellers that I think were there did a great job and will improve their organizations, and even some teams that had below-average records bought. It was kind of a challenging deadline.”
The Orioles were linked with some top-shelf starters — Chicago’s Garrett Crochet, Detroit’s Tarik Skubal and San Francisco’s Blake Snell. None was moved.
“Some of the real crazy big names that people were throwing around didn’t get traded at all,” Elias said. “I think all things considered we got two of the better starting pitchers available at this deadline, also they were controllable beyond this season, so I’m really happy about that.”
Now, the Orioles have Burnes, who’ll start Sunday; Grayson Rodriguez, Wednesday’s starter; Eflin; Dean Kremer, Friday’s starter; and Rogers in the rotation.
“We’ve got five really good starters,” Elias said. “We’ve got depth in Triple-A and we’ve got Albert Suárez, who’s going to move into a long relief role in all probability. He’s shown that he can step in and step out in all probability as needed. I’ll take it, for sure.”
The trade deadline didn’t go as planned because that never happens.
“I didn’t know what to expect,” Elias said. “There were a couple of teams that I wasn’t quite sure what they were going to do until the last 48 hours. They decided not to sell, but if they sold, it would have drastically reshaped the supply side of the market. It didn’t happen.
“This was the kind of scenario we were prepared for, a couple of teams that could have tipped the balance, not selling. That said, to get two hard-throwing relievers with team control, two starting pitchers that go into our top five pretty handily, some right-handed outfielders to kind of throw into the mix as we navigate over the next couple of months and take a look at what our position player roster is going to look like going into the postseason. I’m pretty happy with it. We’ll see how these guys perform, and we’ll see how these moves age.”