What the Baltimore Orioles can learn from this Blue Jays postseason run

What the Baltimore Orioles can learn from this Blue Jays postseason run

The Toronto Blue Jays are in the World Series and the Orioles for next year could learn a whole lot from this year’s Blue Jays team. I’ll tell you what exactly coming up on this episode of the Locked On Orioles podcast. You are Locked On or your daily Baltimore Orioles podcast, part of the Locked On podcast network. your team every day. Hey there Orioles fans. Today is Friday, October 24th, 2025 and welcome back in to the Locked on Orioles podcast, part of the Locked On podcast network, your team every day. As always, I’m your host Connor Nukem. And coming up on today’s episode, we’re going to take a look at how the Orioles could learn some things from this year’s Toronto’s Blue Jays team that just made it to the 2025 World Series. We’ll chat about how their offense got a lot better last off seasonason without bringing in big pieces. Now, the O’s could do the same thing after a down offensive year in 2025. We chat about the veteran rotation the Blue Jays have put together. And while the Orioles could mirror that and finally the thing we talk about every year, the Blue Jays, not to the Dodgers level, but the DJ Blue Jays do spend money, the Os are going to have to do that as well. But that’s all coming up on this episode of the Locked on Orioles podcast, which is brought to you by FanDuel. Right now, new customers can bet just $5 and if your bet wins, you’ll get $300 in bonus bets to use across the app. Download the FanDuel app today. So, who would have thought after a 74 and 88 season in 2024, after not looking amazing to begin this year either, but taking first place in the middle of the year and never letting it go, the Toronto Blue Jays beat the Seattle Mariners in seven games in the ALCS and are headed to the World Series to take on the vaunted Dodgers with game one being tonight in Toronto. And I mean, it’s not shocking. This team won the AL East this year, but the way this team was constructed after the terrible year they had last year, this would have been one of the last teams I thought would be representing the American League in the World Series this year. And yet, here we are. And I do a kind of a version of this episode every year when we find out what teams are in the World Series or whoever wins the World Series, talking about, hey, you know, what can the Orioles learn from this team that got here to give them a better chance to getting to this spot in the World Series next season. And there’s always something you can take away, but there’s not one specific formula for a team to win all. Teams do it in in fairly different ways every single season, unless you’re the Dodgers, in which they pubble you to death and might be doing it back-to-back years. But the Blue Jays, I think, provide a very specific example for the Orioles that not a lot of teams recently have because the Jays, this Jays team is built fairly similar to some Orioles teams we’ve seen the past couple of years. They come into this year in a similar spot. The Orioles will go into next year on after a very disappointing season and a team that was expected to get to the playoffs. I just think there are a lot of similarities and I think the Orioles can learn more from the 2025 Blue Jays than any other team who’s been in this position lately. So, I’m going to give you three things the Orioles could learn from this Toronto Blue Jays team. And the first thing they can learn is your own hitters can get better in an off season and turn things around because that is something the Orioles are going to need to do. The Toronto Blue Jays went 74 and 88 last season and of course missed the playoffs. That was after going to the postseason in three of the previous four years and the only year they didn’t make it in that stretch was 2021. They went 91 and 71 and missed the playoffs by one game. I would still call that a fairly successful regular season if you’re winning 91 games. They had four good years, very close to four straight playoff appearances. So, when they win 74 games, that’s seen as a big disappointment. Very similar to the Orioles winning 75 games this year after back-to-back playoff appearances. And the Blue Jays, it was because their vaunted offense fell apart. The Jays finished 23rd in baseball in runs scored in 2024. That was after they were 14th in 2023, fourth in 2022, third in 2021, and seventh in 2020 during their stretch run. It was clearly a good offense that kind of fell off a cliff last season. And you know, their core of players were still there with Vlatty and Bob Bashette and Alejandro Kirk and the likes. Those guys were there in 23. They were there in 24. So, what was the big difference? I mean, the biggest loss off the roster was Matt Chapman. He went to San Francisco, but Matt Chapman was only a little better than a league average hitter in 2023. It’s not like he was a gigantic loss. And they did lose Brandon Belt, who did have a really good season in 23, but he was aging and nobody really signed Brandon Belt after that. So, I think the writing was on the wall that his career was probably over. Now, in 2024, Vladimir Guerrero Jr. had one of the best seasons of his career. He was awesome. But the rest of the offense around him were not good. Kind of five core type players from this Blue Jays offense. Alejandro Kirk, George Springer, Dalton Vo, Addison Barger, and Bo Bashette were all pretty bad. All five of them were under league average. Some of them well below league average in the 2024 season. I mean, Bo Bashette out of nowhere, he’s one of their stars and just had a horrific 2024 season. Some of it due to injury, some of it due to poor performance. And that was the reason why this Blue Jay offense tanked. Similar to the Orioles, yes, Gunnar Henderson had a worse season, but Gunnar was still really good this year. Everybody else around him just kind of didn’t pick up their part of the slack. And those five players performed a whole lot better in 2025. Bo Bashette was back to his all-star level. Addison Barger had a breakout. Daltton Vo was hitting for power. George Springer found the fountain of youth and was incredible. and Alejandro Kirk got back to that just really annoying contact hitting catcher we know him to be. Those five hitters, those kind of next five after Vlad that I talked about, combined for an 804 OPS for the Blue Jays this season. That was after they had combined for a 666 OPS in 2024. Same five players. Now, there were some injury concerns for some of them in 24. They were healthier this year, which certainly helps, but you still up your OPS by, you know, almost 140 points. There were some changes made. That group doubled the amount of home runs they hit. They stayed healthier. I mean, Bo Bashette played only 81 games last year. He played 139 this year. When you’re healthier, you’re going to be better when you’re as talented as Bette is. And I think the Orioles trend looks very, very similar. Again, remember the Blue Jays were 23rd in runs scored last year. Orioles were 24th in runs scored this year after being seventh and fourth in the league in runs scored the past two years. They had proven themselves as a really good offense and that fell off the table this year. They lost Anthony Santandere. He was basically the one bat that came out of that lineup. But again, Santandere went to Toronto and really didn’t do anything for the Blue Jays this year. Otherwise, you know, they they bring in Tyler O’Neal and it was basically a very similar offense at least until they traded guys away at the deadline. But just like the Blue Jays, there were five core players who struggled for the Orioles this year. And you could argue it wasn’t even the next five cuz even with injuries, Jordan Westber was pretty good this year when he was on the field as I talked about last week in his season recap. But the five guys below him and Gunnar Henderson, Adley Rutman, Colton Cowser, Jackson Holiday, Tyler O’Neal, and Kobe Mayo, you could argue could all be five core players of this lineup going into next year. And all had their struggles. Those five players combined for a 679 OPS this season, which is a little bit better than the 666 from those five Toronto players in 2024. If all five of those guys, Adley Cowser, Jackson, O’Neal, and Mayo are better in 2026. This O’s lineup is going to be set up well. I mean, that is firing at all cylinders. A better lineup, I think, one through nine than the Toronto Blue Jays currently have. So, how did the Blue Jays do it? How did they turn it around? Well, they didn’t add much from the outside. They traded for Andre Jimenez. Really more of a defensive trade than an offensive trade than anything. I mean, he did homer what, three times in four games against the Orioles to begin the year, but then didn’t do much else. He had a 598 OPS this season. And then they signed Anthony Santandere to that big contract, but he missed five months of the year and he had just a 565 OPS when he was on the field. He was even worse than Jimenez and Jimenez was bad. So, their two offensive additions really gave them nothing this season. Now, you know, they got a little better production from Ernie Clement, but Clement’s just been good in the playoffs. He was below league average in the regular season. Great story on Driveline’s website from Travis Sawic this week or maybe last week. The Blue Jays added a new hitting coach. David Popkins came in and joined their staff in the offseason. Had some uh time with Driveline. They invested more money in new facilities at their spring training comp complex and they trained bat speed and a more aggressive approach at the plate this off season. They got buyin from their hitters and they got big results. And yes, even though Vlad Jr.’s been incredible in the playoffs, he actually had a fairly worse year this year than he did last year, but everybody else around him got better and he was still very good. Just not like peak Vlad Jr. levels, at least in the regular season. Now, yes, you’re going to say, Connor, what they did is they made more contact. That is true. They were the best contact team in baseball this year. The Blue Jays had the lowest team strikeout rate among hitters of any team in Major League Baseball this year. That’s always going to help. Is it the most important thing? No. But it’s always going to help if you’re making more contact than anyone else and you’re striking out less. But the Blue Jays were sixth in, you know, lowest strikeout rate in 2024. That’s something they already did well even when the offense was bad last year. They already had that skill. Did they make it a little bit better? Yeah. But not a ton better. That wasn’t the big change. What they did was add the power and the quality contact to add to the fact that they were already making a ton of contact as is. They went from 23rd last year to 12th this year in hard hit rate. They added a lot of bat speed as a team. They still didn’t get into like a top five bat speed team, but a lot of guys gained big bat speed, including George Springer, which is harder to do late in his career. Faster your bat is, the harder you’re going to hit the ball, the more damage you’re going to do. And that is what the Blue Jays focused on. You can learn from that article from Travis Sic. So, what do the Orioles take away from that? Because they’re not going to do the exact same things, right? The Orioles already are really good as a team in those underlying metrics. They were already seventh in team bat speed. That’s even better than the Blue Jays after their changes. They’re already sixth in team hard hit rate. They’re already 11th in team barrel percentage. Yeah, the barrel rate could go up a little bit, but those are still really good metrically things that you don’t necessarily have to change a whole lot to be a good offense. So maybe they’re looking at more of a reverse Blue Jay approach. Like part of it is the true Blue Jays approach. We’re looking to add more contact, but maybe a lot more because the Orioles had the third highest strikeout rate in baseball while the Blue Jays had the lowest this year. That is a whole different approach at home plate and it’s something that we’ve seen this core of hitters do. You know, these guys like Cowser and Adley, some of these guys, Kobe Mayo and Tyler O’Neal, you know, they weren’t around with this team two years ago or even last year, but this general Orioles team, they were 14th and 13th in strikeout percentage the last couple of years and then went all the way to, you know, 28th. So, because of that, you know that this general core, they can cut the strikeouts a little bit. It is in their DMA. They just were swinging and missing too much, especially against fast balls. The whiff rate was really high. The slugging percentage was really low against four seamers this year. If you sort teams and sort offenses by how well they do against four seam fast balls, you’ll see teams like the Dodgers and the Yankees at the top of that list, those are pretty good offenses who generally do good things when the bat is in their hands. And I mean what really stands out for me and Andy Kusca wrote about this a little bit in a good story in uh the Baltimore Banner maybe last month or so is that the Orioles really struggled in three ball counts. Now no matter what the count is if you have three balls the count is in your favor. You are ahead in the count pretty much no matter what 301 3-2 does not matter. Now 3-2 you could argue a little bit but generally a three ball count is a good spot to be in as a hitter more than likely because if the pitcher throws another ball he’s going to put you on base. you’re going to see a strike. If you can feel good about seeing a strike in a three ball count, you can feel good about being aggressive, and that generally leads to good offenses having more success. The top three offenses in three ball counts this year were the Brewers, the Yankees, and the Blue Jays in that order. Those three teams, two of them were in the championship series, all three were in the playoffs, and all three were really good offenses in different ways this season. Brewers just did the contact. Yankees just did the power. Blue Jays did both, but they were all really good in three ball counts. The Orioles as a team 27th in WOBA, 26th in slugging, 25th in batting average, 29th in barrel rate, and last in swing and miss percentage in three ball counts this season. You cannot be that bad when you are ahead in the count. Then it just makes you worse when you’re behind in the count. like you felt like the Orioles were either as a team and again this is general it’s going to be different if you you know look in playerto player but generally felt like the Orioles were either hoping for a walk and you know maybe on a 3-1 pitch they took a good pitch to hit for a strike and knew that hey it’s still three and two I still have a chance but missed on their best opportunity to be aggressive and do damage or they were too aggressive in three ball counts maybe they were swinging at the wrong pitch they were saying oh it’s three and one I’m going to get a cookie fast ball and they sell out and it’s just a cutter that’s up and away, a good pitch to hit, but they’re they’re not prepared for it and they foul it off or they pop it up and they’re out. We saw some of that this year as well. The good teams find a middle ground on that specifically like 3-1 count approach on what to do and the Orioles just couldn’t find that middle ground. So maybe it’s a change in approach, right, to have more contact and you hope if you add more contact, you’re not going to sacrifice the fact that the Orioles already hit the ball hard and have good bat speed, which is a good place to start. you shouldn’t be able to subtract too much of it and make you a good offense like you were the past couple of years because the past couple of years the Orioles had better contact and those good hard hit rates and the good bat speed. That’s why they were top seven in offense the past two years in runs scored. Maybe it takes some more buyin from the hitters. Like that’s part of this too. You can get the best hitting coaches and the best facilities and technologies and the best plan and approach. If all your important hitters, your starters aren’t buying in, it’s not going to work. It’s going to take some of that from the player side as well. And maybe some of that is, you know, whoever the manager is that comes in can bring a different voice, a different viewpoint and get that buy in. Maybe you add another hitting voice to that room. You change up one of the hitting coaches, get another name in like the Blue Jays brought in David Hopkins. But it can change. Like the Orioles, again, this isn’t a long-term thing. The Orioles were the fifth best offense in three ball counts last year. The Blue Jays were 19th last year. This year, the Orioles were 27th and the Blue Jays were third. If you can change approaches and mindsets, you can get better in those big situations without making the big outside moves. Again, they went and paid for Anthony Santandere. He basically did nothing for the Blue Jays this year. You could argue he hurt them when he was on the field and their offense still got a ton better because of improvement from the guys who were already there. And at the end of the day, even if the Orioles do sign a big bat, even if they do go get Pete Alonzo, and he does hit well and help the offense, it’s certainly going to make them better. But the core of this offense figuring it out is going to be up to the Adley’s and the Cowsers of the world. Figuring it out themselves because they are going to be the core. You You’re not bringing in four new hitters to play every day. The core is the core. You can add other guys to make them better, but it’s going to depend on those core guys getting better. The Blue Jays just showed that with some work and some buyin, your core can come off a bad year and turn it back in the right direction. If the Orioles can do that, they are going to be set up well next year. But the hitting isn’t the only issue. There’s questions about the pitching, about the pitching rotation. What can the Orioles learn from the Blue Jays veteran rotation? That’s coming up next. 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So for the Orioles, the second thing I think they could learn from this Toronto Blue Jays run and this team getting to the World Series is that a proven starting rotation can take you far. The Blue Jays and the Dodgers. We’ve talked a lot about bullpens the past decade or so in Major League Baseball because bullpens sometimes get gigantic outs in the postseason and giant fireb breathing bullpens and relievers can can take you a far way. But in the regular season, the Blue Jays were 16th and the Dodgers were 21st in bullpen erra. And honestly, neither bullpen’s been amazing even so far in the postseason. And yet, both teams are in the World Series because of offense and because of starting pitching. And the Orioles bullpen looks like the weakest link on the team right now just because they traded away so many relievers. They’re going to have to kind of reset it this off season. that makes you feel even better because a the bullpen is the easiest part of a team to build from scratch and b if you have the other things shirred up, you can get to the World Series with an iffy bullpen because that’s what the Blue Jays and the Dodgers have both done. Now, the Dodgers aren’t a great example because the Orioles are just not going to spend or be able to spend and sign Blake Snell, Yoshino Alamoto, Show Otani, and Tyler Glassnell into their rotation. It’s just it’s not going to happen for them. But the rotation of Kevin Gosman, Shane Bieber, Chris Basset, Max Scherzer, and Jose Bereios, all veterans, all on free agent contracts, but that’s much more their speed. Kevin Gosman, Chris Basset, and Jose Burios were all added to this team well before 2025. So, you know, it took a little longer than just one off seasonason to build it. But that doesn’t mean the Orioles can’t build toward a group like that this offseason. You’ve already got Trevor Rogers and Kyle Bradshett and probably Dean Kramer as well in place in that rotation. Here’s the contracts these guys are on right now. Jose Brio 7 years 131 million. Kevin Gosman 5 years 110 million. Chris Basset three years 60 million. Shane Bieber came in at a trade of the deadline but he does have a $16 million player option for 2026. So they’re basically ready to pay that. And then Max Sherzer is here on a one-year $15.5 million deal. On a per year basis, you know, you’re looking at rough math, 20 40 60 just under $100 million for your starting pitching staff. And that is a good amount of money not having guys who are on rookie deals. But there’s really only two true long-term commitments in there. That’s Brios with the seven years and Gossman with the five years. I mean, Bieber, you get one and a half years. Sher one year and Basset’s three-year contract is not much at all in the land of of good starting pitchers. And again, the value is higher now for starting pitchers than it was when these guys signed those deals. You know, except for Sherzer, Bieber, who did it recently, you know, Basset, Gossman, especially Burio signed them a while ago. And you can get pitchers for more of the $20 million per year than getting good pitchers at the $30 million per year range. But if the Orioles feel like they’re feeling good with Rogers, Bradish Kramer already in that rotation. If they want to add just two good veteran pitchers on multi-year deals, you’re only adding 40 to50 million per year to the payroll for those two starters. And the Orioles easily have the payroll room on this roster right now because there’s still so many young and cheap players to make those kind of moves happen. You know, if you sign a Dylan CE long-term for 25 mil per year, and then someone like a Zack Gallon maybe on a shorter prove it deal, you’ve got two guys who have looked like aces recently in their career. You add those two to Bradish Rogers and Kramer and you’ve got a really good and honestly veteran rotation. Like, you know, Kramer and Rogers been in the big league since 2020. Bradish been up since 2022. Next year will be 2026. You could consider them all at least semi veteran pitchers if you add those two guys in free agency. and it looks a lot closer to the five guys the Blue Jays are sending out there. Now, I know that I haven’t mentioned at all Treya Savage, who was awesome in that start against the Yankees, was really good in game six to keep the Blue Jays season alive against the Mariners and the ALCS. He’s a rookie who made just three big league starts in the regular season before being put on the playoff roster. He’s certainly a wild card and you can’t count on the Orioles having a Treya Savage that they can call up at the end of the season and fill into this rotation as well because even though the pitching is getting better and better in the system, the hitting prospects have been ahead of the pitching prospects basically the entire time like Elias has been here. Treya Savage was a first round draft pick by the Blue Jays. Elias has yet to take a pitcher in the first round. So that is different. However, they are developing pitchers really well and this should put Treya Savage into perspective. In the midseason Fan Graph’s prospect rankings that were done, I believe after the trade deadline, Treya Savage was the number 61 overall prospect in baseball over at Fan Graphs. At this moment, Trey Gibson, who made his way to Triple A, had an amazing season in the Orio system this year, undrafted free agent signing, is the current number 53 overall ranked prospect at Fangraph. That’s right, eight spots higher ranked than Y Savage was. And if even if Trey Gibson isn’t ready and that doesn’t work out and you don’t get a bump from a Kate Povich or a Brandon Young type player, Grayson Rodriguez is the guy you could consider that wild card, right? The Blue Jays only got three regular season starts from Treya Savage. Unless Grayson needs Tommy John, which the indicators are at this point that he doesn’t. I think we can at least mildly expect more than three regular season starts for Grayson Rodriguez next year. I don’t think that’s asking for too too much to get four starts from him. And if they come at the right time in September and he’s healthy and ready to go, you’ve got a guy with the stuff and potential of Yavage with a lot more big league experience which is only going to help him and who’s already made one playoff start in his career. So whether it’s Gibson, whether it’s Rodriguez, you’ve got that Treya Savage type guy in your back pocket. The Orioles could really, if they’re able to spend, put together a Blue Jays-like rotation this off season that could lead them in next year. And when you give those multi-year deals, continue to help you year after year. That’s been the other thing with the Blue Jays. Yes, they felt like they had to patchwork with, you know, adding Bieber and getting Sherzer this season and calling up you Savage, but they’ve had, you know, the the Basset and the Gauzeman and the Brios locked in. And even when Brio started to struggle, they had other reinforcements. Even when they basically just completely lost Alec Manoa, remember they DF8 him this year. He’s now on the Braves. Like he’s nothing for the Blue Jays. Now he was their ace at one point a couple of years ago, they’ve been able to backfill because they have these guys kind of on retainer on these longerterm deals. That is the flip side. But to do that, you have to spend. And that is the final thing we’re going to get to after the break. 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So, we’re talking three things that the Orioles could learn from the Toronto Blue Jays and their run to the World Series this year. Number one was your own hitters with some changes can get better and kind of lead your offense even after a bad year. Remember, the Blue Jays won 74 games last year and are now in the World Series. The Royals won 75 this year. Second one is improving starting rotation can take you far. The Orioles have the makings of that, but they got to add to it to get those guys in there. And the third thing is that kind of goes with the second thing, the money needs to be spent in free agency or via contracts you take on via trade to get those guys in here. We still have not seen even after the ownership change and David Rubenstein coming in before the 2024 season. In his first offseason, we did not see the big spending. This is now offseason number two for David Rubenstein. Willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. He’s only had one offseason so far. It’s not a trend until it happens twice. Let’s see what they do this off season. But even though they gave out their first multi-year contract under Elias Tyler O’Neal, we’ve still not seen the Orioles give out a multi-year deal to a pitcher at all, let alone a starting pitcher. But the Dodgers and Blue Jays each have four starting pitchers on their rosters right now on multi-year deals. It’s risky to absolutely do that. That’s the reason why the O’s haven’t done it. It’s backed up by data. Major League pitchers get hurt. Orioles fans know this better than most the past couple of seasons, but basically every team knows this because the elbow and shoulder injury epidemic is a huge problem across Major League Baseball, and it’s talked about a ton. It’s not just affecting the Orioles. It’s not an Orioles problem. It’s an everyone problem. Pitchers get hurt. You sign guys like Corbin Burns to six-year deals who have had great track records of health, they get Tommy John Surgery before they can even help you. That’s exactly what happened to the Arizona Diamondbacks this year after Burns was with the Orioles. This happens to guys time after time after time. So, it’s risky to give out $150, $200 million and have a guy be able to blow out the next day from his elbow and you lose him for potentially a year and a half. But the reward can also be huge because for the Dodgers for example, Blake Snell, Shay Otani, Yoshinu Yamamoto, Tyler Glass now have all had injury concerns within the past two years on their arms. And yet they are all healthy right now and turning into one of the best postseason rotations we have seen in a long, long time. On the Blue Jays side, you have some other guys who have had some injury concerns in the past. So, they’ve been fairly healthy, but Max Scherzer and Shane Bieber and even Gossman, Brios is injured now. Like, these guys have been hurt, but enough of them are healthy now with Trey Savage in the mix as well to get them to the World Series. The reward can be gigantic. If it all lines up, you end up with one of the best rotations in baseball. You have to spend to do it. The Dodgers are first and the Blue Jays are currently fifth in terms of team payroll as calculated by fan graphs. The Orioles this year 16th. Now, that’s way up from being in the low 20s for most of the Elias and Angelo’s time. It went up under Rubenstein. That was nice to see, but it’s got to get higher. And the spending still has to be smart. You don’t just want to spend money just for spending money’s sake. That’s not what’s going to get you there. It needs to be smart, at least smartish spending that brings in good players. But here are the World Series matchups the past couple of years and their payrolls. This year, Dodgers, Blue Jays first and fifth. Last year, Yankees Dodgers first and third. 2023, Rangers, Dback 7th and 21st. There’s an outlier. 2022, Phillies Astros fifth and seventh. 2021, Braves Astros 11th and third. 2020, CO season doesn’t count. 2019, Nats and Astros fifth and sixth. 2018, Red Sox and Dodgers first and second. 2017, Dodgers and Astros first and eighth. 2016, here’s another outlier. Cubs and Guardians third and 22nd. 2015, Royals and Mets 7th and 13th. There’s going to be outliers. There’s going to be teams who go on amazing runs, but you essentially need to be in the top 10 in payroll to even get to the World Series. And when you want to talk about the teams who won those World Series, I believe the only winner outside the top 10 was I think it was the Braves were 11th in payroll in 2021. And that’s because they just had a young team that had taken these crazy low rate extensions to be on their team somehow. I don’t know how they agreed to any of them and and they were 11th and they won the World Series. Like to win, you got to really be in the top 10 and pushing not towards the top five, but usually got to be in the top 10 to win the World Series and at the very least be in the top half to at least compete for it. Top 10 in spending, you would think for the Orioles would mean they improved the roster, right? They added two pitchers. They added a big hitter that could absolutely get them from 16th to ninth in spending. And not only in terms of what payroll is, put them in a better spot. But in terms of the talent on their roster, would certainly put them in a much better spot to turn things around from this year and compete for a World Series in 2026, just like the Blue Jays have gradually done over the years to build up that payroll, be in the mix for an Otani or a Sasaki, and be ready for this moment to finally come to them. Right? John Schneider had not won a playoff game as Blue Jays manager until this year and now he’s managing in the World Series. People can learn, change, get better, and you can add is things the Orioles need to do and things they can learn from the Blue Jays this year so that maybe their season can look like the Blue Jays of 2025 for the O’s in 2026. That’ll do it for this episode and this week on the show. Thank you so much for tuning in. Make sure to like, comment, and subscribe to the Lockdown Orioles YouTube channel. Follow the show. Subscribe, leave a fivestar rating and a review wherever you listen. Spotify, Apple Podcast. That really helps us out. And always shoot me an email, right? Mailbag questions, O’s questions, want to talk some ball, you got some critiques for the show, whatever it may be, you can always email me locked ongmail.com. I’ll be back next week. We had two more managerial hirings. Kurt Suzuki with the Angels, although that was an internal hire. And then how about Tony Bello being official to the Giants maybe as the World Series gets underway, wraps up next week, getting closer to an O’s hiring. My prediction is going to happen next week and I’ll have all the coverage here. Plus, we’ll continue with those Orioles player reviews for the 2025 season. Next week, most likely we’ll get into Kyle Bradish. We’ll talk Alex Jackson, maybe Jeremiah Jackson, and oh yeah, the much anticipated Adley Rushman episode. What in the world’s going on there? We’ll break that down next week on the show. Official World Series prediction. Enjoy game one tonight and the other games this weekend. I think the Blue Jays win one at home and then the Dodgers win in five. It’s just too much pitching. They’re too good. I’d say the Dodgers go back to back. But I will be back on Monday. Until then, I’m Connor Nukem and this has been the Locked On Orioles podcast, part of the Locked on Podcast Network, your team every day.

The Baltimore Orioles could learn a lot from how the Toronto Blue Jays have made their way to the World Series this year. Host Connor Newcomb discusses how the Orioles could emulate the Blue Jays offensive improvement, veteran staff, and overall spending in order to get back on track in 2026.

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