Baltimore Orioles cost-cutting effort not a good sign for organization

Baltimore Orioles reportedly asked two young stars to take deferred money

Deferred money in player contracts isn’t a new thing, but the Baltimore Orioles reportedly tried to induce two of the team’s young, arbitration-eligible standouts to accept deferred money on one-year contracts.

That is a practice that was described as “odd” in a report from Dan Connolly of The Athletic and it doesn’t set a good tone for the stability of the club as it has transitioned from 91-year-old owner Peter Angelos to his eldest son this offseason.

Angelos is in poor health, according to an Oct. 30 report from Jeff Barker of the Baltimore Sun and there are at least three people with interest in forming investment groups to bid for the team should the family of the 91-year-old opt to unload the team.

While the family continues to show no interest in selling the club, there are tax laws on the books that could make a sale for Angelos’ heirs after his death.

According to the report in The Athletic, both Trey Mancini and Anthony Santander were reportedly asked to shift about a quarter of their 2021 salaries to 2022 and possibly even into 2023 as a way to control the team’s payroll.

The Orioles, like just about every other franchise in professional sports, are feeling the effects of the pandemic-shortened season that drastically cut television revenues and, in Baltimore’s case, wiped out gate receipts, because cardboard cutouts continue to not buy tickets to get into the stadium.

Mancini wound up settling for a one-year deal for $4.75 million as he returns from treatment for colon cancer that cost him the entire 2020 campaign. Santander has an arbitration hearing scheduled for next month.

If the players had gone for the offers, the Orioles could have pushed back a big chunk of the salaries for the two young players into next year and potentially the year after that, giving the club a chance to get revenue streams back to some semblance of normal.

It was a move no one seemed to think had been attempted before, but it wasn’t the first cost-cutting measure by Baltimore this offseason. Nearly 50 front office employees on the business side have been laid off, while shortstop Jose Iglesias and his $3.5 million salary for next season were traded to the Los Angeles Angels.

The team also non-tendered the starting right side of their 2020 infield, second baseman Hanser Alberto and first baseman Renato Nunez, both of whom had solid seasons for a club that finished fourth in the American League East at 25-35.

Not to put to fine a point on it, but the last time a Baltimore team attempted to cut this many budgetary corners, the short-lived Baltimore Claws of the now-defunct American Basketball Association folded before the ABA’s final season in 1975-76 could even begin, according to the Remember the ABA website.

It’s just not a good look for an ownership group that has just gone through a bit of a transition, with John Angelos, the eldest son of Peter Angelos, approved in November as the controlling officer for the franchise, according to a Baltimore Sun report.

The Orioles built a strong club in the middle of the last decade under manager Buck Showalter, winning the AL East in 2014 and earning wild-card berths in both 2012 and 2016, advancing to the 2014 ALCS, where they were swept by the Kansas City Royals.

The team started to be broken apart after 2016, with the 2017 club slipping to 75 wins. The fire sale began in earnest in 2018 as the team finished 47-115, the second-worst winning percentage (.290) in franchise history and the worst since the club moved to Baltimore from St. Louis in 1954.

The 54-108 record the Orioles compiled in 2019 was both a seven-game improvement from the previous season and the second-worst record since moving to Baltimore. So the cost-consciousness isn’t exactly a new situation at Oriole Park at Camden Yards.