This article is not about to make an attempt at convincing you that the 2020 Baltimore Orioles are, in fact, a “good” baseball team. That conversation involves drawing a whole bunch of conclusions from what is an incredibly small sample size in the weirdest MLB season in recent memory. Things could get messy. What might be more interesting is to consider how the Orioles front office is thinking about this moment.
Saying that the Orioles entered 2020 with “tanking” in mind doesn’t seem entirely fair. But they certainly focused their offseason efforts beyond the campaign on the horizon, choosing to trade away veterans like Dylan Bundy and Jonathan Villar in favor of question marks up and down the roster.