The National League and American League teams have surprised and disappointed Tim. There is a time and a place for it.
The Orioles took Ben McDonald with the top pick in the 1989 draft and it was just one part of a great season.
The Orioles were in first place in the American League East, despite being terrible the previous year, because they had the top pick. The same day the Orioles won their eighth game in a row, McDonald was drafted.
It sounds familiar?
The Orioles are being compared to the '89 team. Over the past few weeks, the Orioles have become one of the game's biggest surprises after entering the season with a difficult rebuild. Baltimore was briefly above.500 after a 10 game winning streak. The Orioles have almost the same number of victories as they did all of last year.
At this point, Baltimore is only 212 games behind the last wild card in the American League.
McDonald, who pitched nine seasons in the majors and is now part of Orioles TV broadcasts, said it has been enjoyable to watch the team. It's similar to a lot of the '89 team, where they got some confidence and then took off.
Baltimore fans love the 1989 team. The 1988 Orioles lost more games than any other team in the history of baseball. In the middle of July, Baltimore had a 712 game lead in the American League East.
In the final series of the season in Toronto, the division was decided. The Orioles lost the first two games of the series. McDonald earned his first career victory when Baltimore won the finale.
The current team rose from the depths of the previous team. The Orioles had the longest losing streak in American League history last year, going 19 games without a win. The Orioles looked more competitive before this July surge, thanks in part to an improved-but- still-anonymous relief corps.
Baltimore began its winning streak with a victory at Minnesota and went on to sweep the Rangers, Angels and Cubs. Orioles fans were expecting to spend a lot of the season watching the progress of minor league prospects and looking to the draft and trade deadline to add more of them.
"I think we're going to have a lot of good stuff for the next few years," general manager Mike Elias said. I'm very happy that it's reflected right now in the way that our fans see it.
The rest of the month could be complicated by the Orioles' run. The Orioles were expected to be sellers at the deadline, but in the midst of their first really successful stretch in a while, there could definitely be a move.
It's not uncommon for a team to pick the top pick in the draft and make the playoffs in the same season. The state of Minnesota did it last year.
There are tradeoffs to everything that I do or that we do. We do everything from a very global perspective about what is the right thing to do for the health of the Orioles franchise. All that is being considered for the draft and the trade deadline.
It was an outlier for all of 1989. In 1991, the Orioles lost 95 games. Glenn Davis was traded by Baltimore for three other players, including Pete Harnisch, who was part of the '89 team.
If the Orioles are going to build on their winning streak, they need to make smart roster moves.
There's a general feeling in the industry that the first player taken will be a position player, not a pitcher, and that's something Baltimore may want to consider.
The good news for Baltimore is that there may be more help on the way. The Orioles have two of the game's top five prospects in right-handed pitcher Grayson Rodriguez and in baseman Gunnar Henderson. Henderson has hit well while Rodriguez has been out with a lat injury.
The top pick in the draft, catcher Adley Rutschman, made his big league debut with the Orioles.
A lot of that is the players, and the way that they are playing up here at the major league level right now. A group of minor league prospects behind them.
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