Jon Meoli: With a lockout looming, the Orioles need to be early movers in their offseason work

The quiet was nice, don’t get me wrong. But it’s nice to have things getting back to normal with the Orioles, too.

Mike Elias is back declaring which players coming off injuries will be “normal citizens” come spring training (in this case, Jordan Westburg) and which players they aren’t sure they can count on. (Last year comments like this preceded the trade of Grayson Rodriguez, which makes it particularly interesting that they were about Félix Bautista and Ryan Helsley this time.)

But once the Orioles’ president of baseball operations starts illuminating where things stand with his players and rosters around this time each year, as he did this week at the league’s general manager meetings, it’s usually followed quickly by action.

That better be the case now. With just a few weeks left before a likely work stoppage, the Orioles need to do what they can to retain whatever early-mover advantage they’ve sought in the last few offseasons and ensure their business is taken care of before the sport shuts down.

This isn’t because of the optics, though they matter; however many weeks of hand-wringing we’d get because their rotation is light or their outfield problems weren’t solved would be pointless. And it’s not because of the perceived pressure on Elias’ job after two years without playoff baseball, though that’s the subtext of pretty much everything orange and black these days.

They need to do it because it will show they have a plan to get the 2027 edition of this club back to the playoffs. They need to be convicted in it, and they need to be proactive about it.

By this time last year, the Orioles’ offseason business had already begun with the early signing of switch-hitting outfielder Leody Taveras to a one-year deal. He tailed off toward the end but was an important part of the team staying afloat early in the season. His signing mirrored the previous offseason’s late-winter addition of Ramón Laureano, who added inexpensive outfield depth and gave the Orioles a bit of value compared to the bigger deals signed elsewhere.

There were big early deals in each offseason as well. Before the 2024 winter meetings, they’d jumped the market to sign outfielder Tyler O’Neill and catcher Gary Sánchez. No one is celebrating those contracts now — and O’Neill’s presence in the third and final year of that deal is a roster headache for a team seeking reliability and consistency — but they represented a clear approach to the offseason and a willingness to put their plans in motion.

They knew they were too left-handed as a lineup, they knew they needed a right fielder with Anthony Santander a free agent, and they knew they needed an offensive catcher to complement Adley Rutschman. And, rather than letting the market come to them, they jumped it and achieved their goals.

Similarly, last winter’s wish list included a closer to cover for another extended absence for Bautista. Helsley’s two-year deal was agreed to before December even hit, and that arguably wasn’t even the biggest thing they did in November. I’d give that distinction to the Rodriguez trade, which netted Taylor Ward.

By virtue of Ward being a pending free agent and Rodriguez having four years of club control left, the move was the clearest public signal possible that the Orioles were responding to their disastrous 2025 season with urgency to improve the major league roster.

That was the impression I’d been getting all last fall in talking to people in the organization, and everything from those November moves to the massive Pete Alonso signing and the Shane Baz trade validated that expectation.

I don’t think I’m mischaracterizing anything in saying that’s not the impression I’m getting this time. On one hand, it’s not as if that kind of urgency would feel remarkable enough for anyone to even point out this fall, considering the precedent for Elias to trade prospects and spend big in the winter in an effort to improve the major league club is set.

The Orioles may not sign an Alonso-type contract, and Elias is trying to walk the tightrope about the potential to do so in public, but there are other ways to make an Alonso-like impact (via trade, for instance) that may yield the same outcome.

On the other hand, I think there’s genuine intrigue both inside the organization and from other clubs as to what the Orioles’ plan is. They are always relatively active this time of year, have all kinds of prospect talent to trade from and have money to spend.

They also have a new general manager working with Elias in Jared Banner, and they have perhaps the most pressure of any club to meaningfully improve their team before the lockout. And, in a lot of cases, they need to make hard decisions about players they’ve come to love and thought they could count on as they’re weighing where they can upgrade this winter.

All anyone really expects is that the Orioles are open for business and, when they get going in the offseason, they don’t tiptoe in. If they want to dictate the market, which in some ways they’ve tried to do the last few years, that will mean acting quickly. Very quickly.

And that will mean both acting on their priorities and pivoting if they don’t work out. We saw that last year when, less than a day after being spurned by Kyle Schwarber, they locked up Alonso.

They know how to prepare for an offseason and execute. Considering we’re not far from a likely work stoppage, they better do it again.