30 Teams in 30 Days 2018 15 Baltimore Orioles

Here we are at the halfway point in this 30 Teams in 30 Days feature! In honor of this milestone, I thought it would be appropriate to highlight a team that is seemingly always stuck in the middle between contending and rebuilding, the Baltimore Orioles. Although you have to give them credit for not giving up and selling off all their best assets, even while staring down two powerhouses in their division. Let's see what they're working with:

All-Acquired Factor

Orioles management went into the offseason saying they wanted to acquire three starting pitchers to supplement their rotation, and by gum, they accomplished that task. First they bought high on Andrew Cashner, whose solid 2017 stats were a bit deceptive, given the lack of strikeouts and reliance on Texas's great defense. Then they re-bought low on a former staff ace Chris Tillman, after a 2017 that could only be described as disastrous. And finally they surprisingly paid market value for Alex Cobb, despite the fact that he languished on the free agent market until just over a week before Opening Day. This was obviously too late for him to appear in the pages of the Sports Illustrated baseball preview issue, and his ranking dropped to 232 after his signing, just because he didn't have enough time to get ready and had to start the season in the minors. He just started his first game for the big league squad yesterday, and got rocked for 7 earned runs in just 3.2 innings.

Even with so many quality free agents still on the market (even to this day), Baltimore GM Dan Duquette made the curious decision to bring in Colby Rasmus to play right field, a guy who willingly walked away from his contract with the Rays midway through last year to spend more time with his family. He was apparently ready to come back to the game, but he only managed eight games with his new team before going down with a hip flexor strain. His spot has been filled by last year's Rule 5 pickup Anthony Santander, while the team also picked up former Oriole Danny Valencia (512), who played a little right field last year, as a right-handed bench bat.

Bullpen

One reason the O's front office was so confident in their team's ability to contend this year was its stellar bullpen. Even with closer Zach Britton (410) out until June with a ruptured Achilles tendon, Brad Brach has filled in quite nicely in the ninth inning, Mychal Givens (250) was a Divisional All-Star reliever last year, and sidearming "Dastardly" Darren O'Day (411) has a long track record of excellence. (O'Day is the first player who I've seen with a significant moustache who doesn't have an "M" name (Mikolas, Mengden, Manaea), so I came up with this alliterative nickname based on the late-1960's Hanna-Barbera character Dick Dastardly from Wacky Races. You're welcome.)

The top half of the bullpen is so good that management thought this would be a good place to stash not one, but TWO Rule 5 picks, Pedro Araujo and Nestor Cortes Jr. This is a strategy frequently employed by this team, assuming that they can get by with only 22 or 23 established major league players on their active roster, leaving multiple spots for unproven minor league waiver claims who must be kept on the big league roster all season, or risk having to return them to their original teams. This has already happened to Cortes, who went back to the Yankees, while the Cubs are still waiting for the inevitable roster crunch that will send Araujo back into their ranks.

Fantasy Astrology Relevance

My personal misgivings about Manny Machado moving from third base back to his natural position of shortstop, and what that move means for the Cancer fantasy astrology team, are well-documented, but suffice it to say, he's a big part of the "Decapods" wherever he plays. The fact that Adam Jones is a center fielder creates a lot of depth for the Libra outfield, but Jones is a good enough hitter that he should occupy a corner spot for the "Lions" alongside Mike Trout and J.D. Martinez. Jonathan Schoop is currently on the DL, but when healthy, he has effectively supplanted Robinson Cano (82) as Libra's starting second baseman. (Alex Cobb also plays for the "Scales," but he'll have to earn his way back into the starting five.) Chris Davis and Trey Mancini are both a part of the Pisces 1B/DH mix, but Mancini's outfield eligibility gives him an extra layer of usefulness for the "Fish."

Song

Good Morning Baltimore, from Hairspray, the Broadway musical

John Waters is one of the filmmakers most closely associated with the city of Baltimore, and his 1988 movie Hairspray is no different. The song Good Morning Baltimore, however, did not appear in that original film - it was written by Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman for the 2002 stage musical adaptation, and then later appeared in the 2007 film adaptation of the stage musical (talk about Ouroboros...). However, if you want a more modern hip-hop take on Baltimore that also references the city in the lyrics, there's always "Jail Flick" by Diablo, off the soundtrack album for David Simon's The Wire.

Colossus

There's something about the image of Colossus #8 climbing up the walls of its home temple that evokes the Orioles trying scale the massive intra-division juggernauts that are the Yankees and Red Sox. The corresponding strategy of Wander shooting out Kuromori's legs with the bow, causing it to fall crashing to the ground, could represent any number of Baltimore's organizational drawbacks: their unwillingness to participate in the international market, their strategy of giving up too many roster spots to Rule 5 picks, or their overly stringent physical examination that has caused many of their free agent deals with pitchers to blow up before they were completed. Either way, it seems more likely that the Orioles will end up (metaphorically) on their backs, getting stabbed repeatedly with the ancient blade, than killing the protagonist with a blast of poisonous breath.