It’s going to be strange to see Anthony Santander on the other side of the field on opening day.

From a practical standpoint, though, his signing with the Toronto Blue Jays is another high-profile addition for a division rival that the Orioles are trying to either keep ahead of or keep pace with. There have been a lot of them, too.

Santander adds some depth to a Toronto lineup that has been further bolstered by the addition of middle infielder Andrés Giménez in a trade from Cleveland. And the Blue Jays’ bullpen now features Orioles medical reject Jeff Hoffman and Yimi García. Those additions pale in comparison to the countless players the team sought and missed out on, but considering it didn’t really lose much and is consistently more talented than its record shows, Toronto is another contender to deal with.

Boston, too, was aggressive this winter in adding Garrett Crochet in a trade from Chicago and signing World Series winner Walker Buehler to the rotation with him. Lefty Patrick Sandoval is another solid addition on the mound. The Rays did a lot of Rays-like things, trading some expensive players for less expensive ones who will likely be good.

And then there are the Yankees, who filled the Juan Soto-sized hole in their lineup with Cody Bellinger, the third in a series of frantic post-Soto moves that included signing left-hander Max Fried to a massive deal and acquiring closer Devin Williams from the Brewers. We should also prepare for Paul Goldschmidt to be frustratingly good in pinstripes as well.

The Orioles’ volume of moves stacks up with any of them. They signed Tyler O’Neill and Gary Sánchez on the position player side, added Tomoyuki Sugano and Charlie Morton to the rotation mix, and brought in another late-inning arm in Andrew Kittredge.

It’s a bit of a chump move to say I’m waiting for some projection systems to let me know how to feel about the Orioles’ winter, but it feels relevant to me for a few reasons. I still believe the Orioles set their sights on some of the larger prizes available this winter and came short, and rather than chasing less-enticing-but-still-expensive prizes, they executed an offseason that reinforced the floor of the 2025 Orioles without doing anything to compromise the team’s ability to make future teams good as well.

As we noted in this space a few weeks ago, the deadline trades of 2024 happened and have an impact on making this year’s team better as well. It’s also worth noting that the Orioles used a lot of prospect resources on those deals and the Corbin Burnes trade before spring training last year, and you can only trade a prospect once. As a result, there are fewer to move as the front office tries to forecast who might be able to help in the coming years.

These are the concerns that teams like the Rays, Guardians and Brewers — all the types of teams the Orioles emulated in a world before David Rubenstein bought the team — keep front of mind: being good now and in the future. The Orioles clearly still have some of those tendencies but also have more resources available to them as well, as we can see by the near 50% increase in major league payroll.

The reality, though, is no matter the circumstances they’re operating in or the reasons why they’re doing things, they’re competing in the AL East for a division title, and whichever team doesn’t earn that is probably going to be scrapping for a wild-card spot with a division foe. Santander signing in Toronto means three teams now have made big splashes.

Free Agent of the Week

Ty France

The Orioles have already made some interesting minor league free agent signings, headlined by former first-round pick Nick Gordon. But given that Baltimore’s work on the major league side appears to be mostly done, I wonder if there’s a non-roster slugger to take a flyer on. That’s complicated by my expectation that Coby Mayo will play a lot of first base this year, likely at Triple-A Norfolk to start the season, and that Ryan Mountcastle and Ryan O’Hearn plus Mayo means there’s not a lot of first base reps in spring training. Someone like Ty France, who has the plate discipline the Orioles covet and has seen his power significantly fall off the last couple of years, might be a nice reclamation project. These players can prove valuable, and I know the Orioles don’t like to pitch players on opportunities that don’t exist, so it’s hard to say they’d even be in this market. The idea of cheap power is always enticing, though. Maybe they’ll kick the tires on him or someone similar.

Further reading

🎙️ Where does Andrew Kittredge fit in? Paul and I hit the record button on the podcast to talk Kittredge and the Orioles’ bullpen. We’ll be back this week to talk about … something!

🏆 Hall of Fame? With Adam Jones on the Hall of Fame ballot this year, this was a nice read on his career, via FanGraphs.