While the baseball winter meetings spotlight shined on the New York Yankees as they introduced reigning National League Most Valuable Player Giancarlo Stanton’s new pinstriped look Monday afternoon at the Swan and Dolphin Resort, the Orioles brass assembled in a suite several floors above the swirling hotel lobby trying to find lesser-profile ways of staying competitive in the American League East.
Coming off a last-place division finish — the worst under the Dan Duquette-Buck Showalter regime — the Orioles face many obstacles to return to contention, and now added to those hurdles is facing a Yankees batting order that already gave the Orioles fits last season before the acquisition of Stanton, who will join reigning AL Rookie of the Year Aaron Judge to make the game’s most formidable power duo.