\u201cThe Bird\u2019s Nest.\u201d\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\nBanner, announced as the Orioles\u2019 new general manager on Monday, has spent 18 seasons in baseball operations with focuses in player development and scouting. Beginning his career in Boston, Banner served in a variety of roles for the Red Sox, including coordinator of amateur scouting, assistant director of player personnel and vice president of player personnel.\u00a0<\/p>\n
From there, he went to Queens to serve as the Mets executive director of player development. In 2018, his first year in the role, New York had an intriguing first base prospect: Pete Alonso. The next season, Alonso produced one of the best rookie seasons in major league history, pumping 53 home runs with a .941 OPS.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Most recently, Banner served as the assistant general manager for the Cubs, and has been credited as a pivotal piece of Chicago\u2019s acquisition of Pete Crow-Armstrong, the likely National League MVP that Banner grew familiar with in New York.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Crow-Armstrong was a first-round pick by the Mets, but didn\u2019t vault into MLB Pipeline\u2019s top 100 until 2023. At the time of the trade that sent him to Chicago\u2019s system, the speedy outfielder had played just six minor league games and there were questions about how much power he\u2019d produce in the future, according to Pipeline.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He was tied for the major league lead with 45 home runs this season.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In Baltimore, Banner will \u201clead the organization\u2019s player development, coaching and performance efforts, while also partnering with (Mike) Elias on strategy, staffing, and talent acquisition, among other duties,\u201d according to the Orioles.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The expectation won\u2019t be that he oversees the development of talents the caliber of Crow-Armstrong and Alonso. In fact, his tallest task may not be in the minor leagues at all.<\/p>\n
In 2026, the Orioles brought in plenty of talent. Alonso over-delivered on his massive offseason deal. Shane Baz posted 13 quality starts and 179.0 innings, Blaze Alexander hit over .300 in 93 games, and Taylor Ward reached base at a .383 clip before being flipped at the deadline. There were plenty of under-the-radar additions, too, such as Christian Encarnacion-Strand and Cam Sanders.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But a big area in which the club fell short, as Elias acknowledged in his end-of-season press conference, was in the lack of production from the team\u2019s young core. \u201cA lot of guys that came on like gangbusters or were excellent in the minor leagues have had their production go backwards a little bit in a way that wasn\u2019t expected,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
This is, arguably, the most important task at hand for Banner. How can the club get the most out of the likes of Henderson, Holliday, Samuel Basallo and more? Henderson is just two years removed from a top-five American League MVP finish and 8.8 bWAR season. Holliday was ranked as the best prospect in the game in 2024, ahead of the likes of Jackson Chourio and Paul Skenes. The talent is undeniable. The production in 2026 wasn\u2019t up to expectations.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Baltimore can sign talented free agents and make quality trades this offseason. But the team\u2019s success in 2027 likely hinges on the players already in-house.\u00a0<\/p>\n
It would appear that the new GM, with a lengthy background in talent identification and development, is well-suited for the task. Elias called Banner \u201cone of the rising talents in our league for some time,\u201d a claim supported by reports of Banner being a finalist for the Athletics\u2019 president of baseball operations role from The Athletic\u2019s Ken Rosenthal and ESPN\u2019s Jeff Passan, among others.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Orioles are a storied franchise with a passionate fanbase, a historic ballpark, and an organization full of talent,\u201d Banner said in the O\u2019s press release about the hire. Now, it\u2019ll be up to him to get the most out of that talent.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Be sure to check out the full podcast here<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It feels strange to say that the Orioles need to make strides in their player development.\u00a0 The club…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":835456,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2374],"tags":[143,47,2538,5,1129,44,47837,4,125,4238,44705],"class_list":["post-835455","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-baltimore-orioles","tag-baltimore","tag-baltimore-orioles","tag-baltimoreorioles","tag-baseball","tag-brendan-mortensen","tag-featured","tag-jared-banner","tag-mlb","tag-orioles","tag-podcast","tag-the-birds-nest"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/117486944514856254","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/835455","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=835455"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/835455\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/835456"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=835455"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=835455"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=835455"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}