Entering this offseason, there was a sizeable contingent of Orioles fans who thought that the way the team lost in the Wild Card game at Toronto, and got to the postseason in the first place, was so flawed that anything short of a full reshuffling on the fly would constitute a lack of progress in the offseason.
There was the matter of the team’s lack of speed and outfield defense issues, to say nothing of the thin farm system that could be injected with talent if they took advantage of a possible trade market for stars Zach Britton and Manny Machado.