I’ve struggled with this for the better part of four months.
As I wrote about in December, we knew the Orioles were very aggressive in their pursuit of retaining free-agent starting pitcher Corbin Burnes. Thanks to reports from MASN’s Roch Kubatko and The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal, we now know specifically that the Orioles offered the highest average-annual-value contract in the history of pitching in hopes of landing Burnes.
As a number of fans and analysts alike pointed out last week, that has to matter! Has to! How do you fault the Orioles for making such an unprecedented offer?
The problem is that the specific news of the Orioles’ offer to Burnes doesn’t change anything else about the reality that faces the club. In fact, it really only makes it more confusing.
Before we get further, one particular note was interesting to me amid the Burnes hubbub last week. In my own conversation with the former Orioles ace, I asked if he thought that the team’s aggressive pursuit of retaining him should be considered encouraging because it shows the club’s overall commitment to acquiring or retaining top talent. He offered a qualifier I didn’t expect.
“There was definitely conversations,” Burnes said. “I never received anything in writing, but there was a lot of numbers thrown back and forth between Baltimore and [agent Scott Boras]. They did have sincere interest in bringing me back.”
I didn’t react appropriately to that qualifier when Burnes said it. It wasn’t until the next day that it became more fascinating to me. Was Burnes suggesting that the team made offers without ever actually intending for him to sign them?
For context, in 2008 the Orioles were reported to have made a seven-year, $140 million offer to Mount Saint Joseph alum Mark Teixeira. The Severna Park native had bigger offers on the table, but fans hoped he might choose the Orioles’ offer to perhaps show loyalty to his hometown team in hopes he might be able to turn the downtrodden franchise around. There was (quite unfairly) great angst from the fan base when Teixeira chose the Yankees’ higher offer of eight years and $180 million.
But making matters worse, I was told directly by an MLB source with knowledge of the situation that even the Orioles’ lesser offer should have been taken with a grain of salt because the team was never actually going to put that contract offer in front of Teixeira. They wouldn’t do that because if they did, there would be at least a small chance he might take it! And as that source explained to me, the Orioles were never going to pay Teixeira even that lesser amount. They just didn’t want to worsen their relationship with their fan base by not showing interest in Teixeira.
Is that what happened with Burnes? I don’t think so. I think the Orioles would have been willing to sign Burnes to that four-year offer, even at the unprecedented $45 million annual value. And a couple of league sources believe that as well. Did they know that Burnes would never accept the offer? That’s unclear. And the questions seem fair given the wholly perplexing way the rest of the offseason played out.
As the Orioles struggle to start the 2025 season, it’s not remotely unfair to be confused by what the big picture plan for the organization might be. What exactly is going on here? They wanted to sign Corbin Burnes to an unprecedented contract … but they were never appeared to be deeply involved with any other top free agents.
Vladimir Guerrero Jr.’s 14-year, $500 million contract perhaps provides context for what it might take in order to try to talk Boras into an extension with Gunnar Henderson. As Burnes stated in our conversation, the reputation that Boras’ clients work for Boras instead of the other way around isn’t completely accurate. If a scenario is desirable for the client and the money makes sense, a deal could be done.
A number of somewhat team-friendly extensions have gotten done in recent weeks, including what another Severna Park native — Jackson Merrill — just did with the Padres. The Orioles won’t be able to get that done with Henderson at this point. But if they’re willing to consider a deal that pays him what he’d be slated to get in free agency (acknowledging he’s not as close to free agency as Guerrero was), that could get Boras to play ball.
But there have been no clear signs of … any direction at all. While injuries to both Grayson Rodriguez and Zach Eflin perhaps couldn’t have been expected, there was never logic behind the next phase of the plan being “throw a ton of No. 5 starters together and hope a few of them are better than that.”
The plan appears to have been “A.) Corbin Burnes takes our offer or B.) … vibes, man.”
No one is under contract past this season other than Tyler O’Neill, who can opt out at the end of the year. Obviously there are plenty of players who will still be under club control, but Adley Rutschman for example will hit his final year of arbitration in 2027.
The more you let it register, the more confused you get about what exactly is happening here.
I want it to matter that the Orioles offered such a significant contract to Corbin Burnes. But until we see any evidence about what the next step might be in the pursuit of winning a World Series, I’m just not sure how significant it is.
Photo Credit: Kenya Allen/PressBox