Breaking: Orioles owner looking to ‘speed up the effort’ in World Series chase

“I’m now 75 years old. It’s unlikely that I’ll be, you know, doing this for 20 more years,” Orioles majority owner David Rubenstein said in a recent interview with NPR (hat tip to Rich Dubroff of Baltimore Baseball). “So I’ve got to speed up the effort to get [to] a World Series a lot sooner than maybe some younger owners would.”

This might be one of the clearer indications yet that the Orioles are in for their busiest offseason in a long time, especially since the team is now coming off a pair of playoff appearances with nary a single win from five total postseason games. This is Rubenstein’s first winter since his ownership bought the team, and as GM Mike Elias implied during his end-of-season press conference, the O’s will have a lot more to spend than in recent years during the club’s rebuild, when the Angelos family was still in charge.

• Sticking with the Orioles, MASNsports.com’s Roch Kubatko writes that the O’s “had no interest” in right-hander Domingo German in the past, which runs contrary to a report from the New York Post’s Mark W. Sanchez from last January. German signed with the Pirates on a minors contract last winter and had only a 7.84 ERA in seven appearances and 20 2/3 innings on the big league roster in 2024. Pittsburgh outrighted German off its 40-man roster in September, and he elected free agency earlier this week. Given his poor recent results and his troubled off-the-field history, it remains to be seen if any MLB teams will take a flier on German for another minor league deal.
• The top Rays story remains the team’s likely need for a new temporary home to begin the 2025 season, as Tropicana Field sustained heavy damage due to Hurricane Milton. John Romano of the Tampa Bay Times shares some details about the insurance policies attached to the stadium and the possibility that the city of St. Petersburg (which is funding the repairs) might simply decide that repairing the Trop isn’t worth it since the Rays’ new ballpark is set to open in 2028. “We’re going to try to figure out every avenue, both through insurance and otherwise, to try to make sure the Rays have a place to play in St. Petersburg. But we’re going to make sure that it’s a financially responsible decision,” city council member Copley Gerdes said. Romano opines that Orlando might check off the most boxes as the Rays’ interim home, as the team could play at the 9500-seat stadium on the ESPN Wide World Of Sports complex at Walt Disney World.
• The Red Sox promoted Kyle Boddy to the role of director of baseball science on an interim basis, the Boston Globe’s Alex Speier reports (via X). The position appears to be a newly-created job within the Sox front office, as Brad Alberts is credited in the team’s directory as the “team lead” of baseball sciences, but there is no director position. Boddy founded the data-based Driveline Baseball training facility in 2012, and then moved into an official role with a big league club when he was the Reds’ pitching coordinator for the majority of the 2020-21 seasons. The Red Sox brought Boddy aboard last January as an advisor to chief baseball officer Craig Breslow.