The Baltimore Orioles play in a division that had New York as it’s class in 2019. The question is whether or not that will continue to be the case in 2020 and onward. I only say that because New York has lost some powerful players thus far this off season. They lost Didi Gregorius to Philadelphia earlier this off season. And the other day Edwin Encarnacion signed with the ChiSox earlier this week.
Make no mistake that both of these players were role players. The Judge’s and Stanton’s of the world are still on the roster. New York in theory should be good for some time. But will they be as good?
Again, I want to be up front. Unequivocally, New York is the favorite to win the AL East. However between Gregorius and Encarnacion, that’s almost 30 homers that they’re going to be missing. Now knowing New York, they’ll replace that with guys of whom we’ve never heard who’ll produce 40 home runs. That’s generally how things work for New York. But you get my point.
Is it not possible that they feel the burn just a bit in losing those two? Between the two of them, they produced just shy of 100 RBI as well. So there’s a semi-decent amount of runs that are being lost by way of them no longer being there.
This is not to say that a team such as the Orioles will contend for the division crown. I just don’t see that happening, unfortunate as it is for most readers of this column. But it could make the division more competitive, and perhaps a team such as Boston could make a run at it. Whether they’re in a position to contend remains to be see, however anything’s possible.
Birdland Crush 