The Orioles are done in 2014, but 2015 is promising

The Orioles won the American League East in 1997, then waited until 2014 to claim their next division crown, but you shouldn’t expect the same kind of gap between successes this time around. You can never guarantee that the whole “Wait ‘til next year!” mantra will bring anything but disappointment, but the Orioles are in a good place going forward. Part of that is because of the composition of the team, and part of it has to do with an as-of-yet unsettled AL East.

The Orioles won the AL East in 2014 because no one tried to stop them. They had their problems with injuries, underwhelming performances, and suspensions, but so did everyone else in the division, and the Orioles handled it best. They posted a .618 winning percentage against AL East opponents -- a 100-win pace over 162 games -- doing the most damage against their closest competition, the Yankees. If the Yankees had gone 13-6 against the O’s instead of the other way around, it would have been the Yankees who won the AL East in spite of all of their shortcomings.

That’s not meant to take anything away from the Orioles’ performance. They’re the ones who won 47 games against AL East opponents, who danced over the game’s top division -- the AL West -- to the tune of a 21-12 record, who dominated right-handed pitchers all season long, and had the bullpen to help them end the majority of their extra-inning and one-run games with victories. The Orioles are the ones who did all that despite playing the season without most of their best players contributing much of anything.

Backstop Matt Wieters, looking to recover from a down 2013, started out hot and batted .308/.339/.500 in his first 26 games. Those were also his final 26 games of the year, as he underwent Tommy John surgery. Manny Machado was dealing with the growing pains of being 21 and in the majors, but he had come around to a line of .278/.324/.431 by the time his season ended thanks to the need for a second knee surgery. Chris Davis was mostly healthy, but he only hit .196/.300/.404 in his 127 games, and lost the end of his season -- and the playoffs -- to a 25-game suspension for amphetamines. Davis was still okay, a 98 OPS+ making him roughly a league-average hitter, but this is the same Davis who crushed 53 homers in 2013 and finished third in the AL MVP balloting. The Orioles not only didn’t get a full season of Davis, but didn’t even get a partial season of the real thing as they did with Wieters and Machado.

Davis will be back in 2015, and while he might not lead the league in homers, something like 2012’s .500-slugging campaign isn’t out of the question. Wieters will return, and while he has his ups and down at the plate, the ups are high and his defense is always a plus -- and in addition, his presence means less of Caleb Joseph, Nick Hundley, and the like. Machado will be a year older, with the additional consistency that maturation brings, and he was already pretty good as is. The Orioles will also have most of the quality 2014 crew back once more. Steven Pearce, who led the O’s with a 160 OPS+, is going to need a raise in his third year of arbitration, but they still have that year and that’s what matters. Shortstop J.J. Hardy has already been extended into the future. Adam Jones is locked in through 2018 and though it seems as if he’s been around forever, he’ll still be only 29 in 2015. Nelson Cruz will be a free agent, but the Orioles will submit him the qualifying offer and might even sign him long-term as their designated hitter.

On the pitching side, Chris Tillman and Miguel Gonzalez will only be in their first year of arbitration: Tillman produced a 116 ERA+ over his last three seasons, while Gonzalez managed a 117 mark over the same span. Yes, Ubaldo Jimenez is under contract for another three years, but the presence of Tillman and Gonzalez in addition with Wei-Yin Chen’s option year should help minimize that damage a bit. Plus, 23-year-old Kevin Gausman used his 2014 to show he’s ready to step in to the rotation, possibly even as its ace, right now. Jimenez is an expensive drag, but the O’s don’t have to use him with these four in the majors and arms like top prospect Dylan Bundy’s not all that far off.

The sheer volume of arbitration eligibles could be a problem for them, though, as 13 players are eligible in 2015. Of those 15, six are entering for the first time, while seven others are in their third and final season before free agency. While the Orioles only have $45 million on the books for 2015, a rough estimate of their arbitration payout for next season is could be somewhere between $35-$40 million. Throw in another $9 million when the options of Chen and Darren O’Day are picked up, and the Orioles are already at $94 million, not all that far off from last year’s record Opening Day payroll of $107 million.

The good news is that they don’t need to add much of anything that’s both new and expensive, and they can always designate a reliever for assignment or decline an option if they think they have enough depth but need a couple of million to work with. They won 96 games without a half-decent Chris Davis, with half-a-season of Machado, with a month of Matt Wieters, and with Ubaldo Jimenez making 22 starts. The 2015 Orioles need less Ubaldo and more of the other three, and things should work themselves out from there.

The rest of the AL East is in a similar state, to a degree. The Yankees need the hundreds of millions they spent on free agents a year ago to mean something, and they could also use a little more of the old Mark Teixeira and CC Sabathia in their lives. The Blue Jays need to fill holes both from within and externally, but that’s been the story with them for decades: they’re a real, honest-to-goodness divisional threat once they manage that feat, if they manage it. The Red Sox and Rays were both teams with loads of talent that produced losing seasons for a variety of reasons, but if the Sox fill their rotation holes and the Rays find some hitters, both will be worthwhile opponents for the Orioles. The Orioles have their own questions going forward, but Baltimore is the most complete of all the AL East teams at the moment in spite of that.