The early stages of free agency typically feature moves that go into two buckets. There are the head-scratchers (everything the Angels do) and the understanding nods (the Dodgers blowing out the market to sign Blake Snell).

When the Mets signed right-hander Frankie Montas to a two-year, $34 million deal earlier this week, that went into the second category. Two of the top arms on the market in Sean Manaea and Luis Severino restored their value and improved in New York last year. And now Montas, another talented pitcher who is a few years removed from his best days, is going to Queens to do the same.

We’re still learning about how the Orioles are going to operate in this new, cash-flush existence of theirs. They clearly want to add a top starting pitcher in free agency. They’re going to have the opportunity to do it, probably soon, once the run on pitchers begins.

Their forays into the middle tier of the pitching market have, in the past, been based more on floor than ceiling. It’s not as if they signed Jordan Lyles and Kyle Gibson with no intention to improve them, but they signed them for their durability and stable performances rather than their upside.

There’s value in that. There’s also value in what the Orioles did last year, which was pay full price for Corbin Burnes and also get 133 2/3 innings and 1.4 wins above replacement, according to FanGraphs, from minor league free agent Albert Suárez.

Montas’ signing made me wonder why the Orioles don’t make those kinds of mid-tier upside plays more often. As I’ve already explored, they’ve opted for more cost certainty in the past, and that goes for the top of the market (Burnes), the middle (Lyles and Gibson) and the low-end.

There’s absolutely room for these kinds of upside signings in the Orioles’ plan, even though they have been lower on their priority list before now.

When there wasn’t money to spend frivolously, they often looked at the low-cost options that could have upside but wouldn’t necessarily hurt them if they didn’t work out. That goes for their first major league signing back in 2019, Nate Karns, and on through the pandemic (Wade LeBlanc and Tommy Milone), then that strange 2021 spree of signing Félix Hernández and Matt Harvey.

When Lyles and then Gibson were signed as pricier veterans, the desire for cheaper depth and upside didn’t die, as we saw with Suárez. The Orioles also derived a lot of value from the cheap pitching options they added to their bullpen in recent years.

It really comes down to how you want to quantify it, and what you’re getting in return. The Orioles will look at Suárez making the league minimum (around $800,000) and delivering 1.4 fWAR and think that’s a better deal than Manaea’s 2.8 fWAR for around $14 million, and they’ll be right to do that. Somewhere in the middle of that is Burnes’ 3.7 fWAR for $15.7 million.

The Orioles’ pitching program has the capacity to help anyone get better. They’ve shown that countless times. Perhaps it’s not the worst thing that they focus on projects that can deliver Suárez-like returns and benefit the Orioles for potentially multiple years rather than those who can deliver decent value to the Orioles but mostly benefit the player with a better free agent payday the next time around.

It’s also not a bad thing to be known as the place where you can go to turn your career around and get paid more on the next contract. The Mets, a moneyed team run by a former Astros exec in David Stearns, are that. The Orioles may grow into that. There’s nothing wrong with being known as the team that gets the most out of total cast-offs on the mound, though — as long as there’s a horse or two at the top of the rotation to balance that out.

Ballpark Chatter

“If the analytics game is going to inform their decisions on money they spend, they’re probably going to be in trouble, because at some point to get the guys who are dudes, you just gotta f---ing outbid people. You gotta go outside your comfort zone to get the top-end free agent.” — Anonymous MLB agent

This was a great quote Andy got on so many levels. On a basic level, find me the agent who doesn’t believe a team should pay a player more than they think he’s worth. But it’s true that this is the ballpark the Orioles are trying to play in now. We kind of saw them leave their comfort zone at the trade deadline and the results were very mixed. What will it look like if they do it in free agency?

Free Agent of the Week

When Mike Elias announced the wall changes last month, I asked about the potential of signing a free agent infielder despite not really needing one. He said the focus was more on the outfield, which makes sense, but the reason I asked was because I wondered if there was an appetite for signing Alex Bregman.

Bregman is the kind of right-handed hitter (who until last year got on base at a good clip) that would improve this lineup, and while he wouldn’t make the outfield more right-handed, he’d allow a Jorge Mateo and/or Jackson Holliday to move to the outfield and improve the Orioles tremendously. Bregman is awesome. Elias and all the former Astros staffers in his employ know what Bregman brings to the table. It would certainly be a splash worth making, but I understand why he downplayed the possibility.

📫 Have a question? Write to me here.

📰 Further reading

⚾ Trevor Rogers hopes to regain old form: I’ve had a few Trevor Rogers-related conversations this fall that span the full range from hope to hopeless, and Andy’s piece here gave me some optimism that there’s something in there for the Orioles to unlock.

🤔 Will David Rubenstein spend? I missed this from Danielle last month, but it’s an interesting parallel to remember Peter Angelos’ first offseason and all that spending in the context of this offseason. What will David Rubenstein’s first impression be?