Let's preview the Baltimore Orioles for 2026 up next on Fantasy Baseball Today.

Welcome to On the Beat, our little mini team preview series.

We're doing here at the Fantasy Baseball Today podcast.

I'm Chris Towers, joined by Jake Rill, who covers the Baltimore Orioles for MLB.com.

Make sure to give him a follow on X at at Jake D.Rill, R-I-L. We're talking about the Orioles. It's been a big offseason so far. They've kind of been one of the most active members of the offseason. And they've added P. Alonzo, that was a big one. You might have heard about it. Taylor Ward, Shane Baws, Ryan Helsley, Liottaveris. They've lost

Grayson Rodriguez, Tomi Yuki Sagano, Gary Sanchez, a couple other guys. Not much from the MLB team.

This has been pretty clearly a net ad for the Orioles. And according to some reports,

they're not done. They're still looking at some pitching. Have the Orioles done enough after a hugely disappointing 2025 season?

I think the answer to that is almost.

I think they're almost there.

I put out a poll and X a while back just I think it was between the boss trade and

Eflin resigning of just asking fans of how they would grade this offseason. I think the general consensus was high B, low A right now with the potential to get to A plus. If they go out there and get one of these top starting pitchers, if they reinforce the back into this bullpen a little bit, I think they still could use another high leverage arm or two. If they go out and do that, I mean, I think this is A plus off season. This is kind of a dream off season, almost for Orioles fans who have, you know, wanted to see the team spend money for so

long that they make that big Alonzo splash. They've kind of filled the other holes that they had

on their roster. So I think the potential's there for this to be almost a near perfect offseason

for Mike Elias. But he still has to go out there and finish the job now in these next few weeks and get another starting pitcher and reinforce the back end of that bullpen. Yeah, I mean, I remember back to the off season when they traded for Corbyn Burns. And that was another one where it felt like it was like almost an amazing offseason. And they were just like they could have used another pitcher. I think they still could. but it's been a great offseason. They've really reinforced what they already had. Now they

need that core to come together like it looked like they were a couple of years ago. And that

brings us to our biggest fantasy questions for the Orioles heading into 2026, which is what's gone

wrong for Adley Rutchman over the last year and a half?

And how do they fix it?

How do they get him back on track for 2026?

Yeah, there was a brief period last year where it seemed like they were getting him back on track.

He started June with a small sample size, but a 13 game stretch where he was sitting 340, had a few homers. It seemed like things were clicking a little bit. I know he'd been working with the mechanics, dealing, trying, you know, toe tap, no toe tap, uppercut, like just kind of tinkering with things, trying to get back to where he was in 23 in the first half of 24. And it seemed like things were starting to click. Then he injures his hamstring, taking BP in Yankee Stadium, misses some time, comes back, show some flashes of good stuff, but also just couldn't really put it all together. And then injures his other hamstring. And then it's kind of a loss year at that point just because of how much time he missed because of those two hamstring injuries. So I think the

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