The top choice in this week’s survey was that four or more Orioles will be traded away.
Welcome to SB Nation Reacts, a survey of fans across the MLB. Throughout the year we ask questions of the most plugged-in Baltimore Orioles fans and fans across the country. Sign up here to participate in the weekly emailed surveys.
Earlier this week, I asked Orioles fans to think about what will end up happening between now and the trade deadline. That the team will have to sell off players seems inevitable, since they are currently 28-40, 7.5 games back of a wild card spot with seven teams to pass. The games back doesn’t seem completely insurmountable if they were able to rip off a month of substantially good baseball, but it’s a lot of teams to pass.
The question of who exactly might get traded away depends on a variety of things that will play out between now and the end of July trade deadline. It seems safe to say that anyone who is set to become a free agent after this season ends will have the front office exploring deals.
A player who we’re now assuming will be dealt could end up getting hurt. Performance could slip such that Mike Elias no longer feels like he is getting a return to make it worth dealing somebody. Or, the other way around, someone like Cedric Mullins or Zach Eflin could be performing so well that the value of getting a draft pick for extending a qualifying offer is greater than what teams are offering.
Here’s how the survey results came in:
That’s a plurality expecting four or more players to be dealt away, with 78% thinking at least three will be traded. It’s grim to dwell on it for long. That’s going to be Orioles who we’ve gotten to know and like for multiple seasons, traded away in the midst of a season that we had high hopes at the beginning and it’s turned out like this. Cedric Mullins, in particular, deserves better than to have ended up in this situation, but the team’s situation is what it is anyway.
If Elias gets wild, he might even decide to trade somebody with 2026 team control as well, depending on what prospects he expects to make it up out of the farm system, or if he thinks he might be selling high on a player who he does not expect to be doing as well next season. That’s what happened when Elias did a little trading away from what felt like a surging Orioles team in 2022. Dealing Jorge López and Trey Mancini felt bad at the time, but both fell off hard after the trade.
I’m in the four or more crowd. Mullins and Ryan O’Hearn among the position players, probably Zach Eflin, then maybe also a reliever. That’s who I think will get dealt as things stand right now. There could turn out to be cases for another starter like Tomoyuki Sugano, or someone who had been signed as a bench player like Ramón Laureano.
There are 40 games left between now and the trade deadline. The picture could change one way or another for each of these individual players. Unless the Orioles rip off a 10+ game winning streak to close the gap in one two-week burst, the team’s outlook for 2025 probably will not change, which is what makes the sell-off almost certain. How big of a sell-off is what we’ll discover next month.
This week’s survey brought to you by FanDuel.