When you’ve been winning and you want to try to keep winning, you have to pay a price. It might be money paid in arbitration raises or to free agents, it might be draft picks sacrificed to sign those free agents, or it might be trades made to bolster the present team at the expense of the future. The Orioles were good in 2014 and they tried to win. They made it to the ALCS. That was good. They paid for it later.
It is fortunate that the 2018 edition of the draft, now about a week away, will not see the Orioles with options as limited as they were four years ago.