There's an 81 percent chance the 2024 American League East title will be won by the New York Yankees or the Baltimore Orioles.
That's according to FanGraphs, and it sounds about right. The Boston Red Sox, Toronto Blue Jays and Tampa Bay Rays are in uncertain places, while Yankees vs. Orioles feels like Rocky Balboa vs. Ivan Drago: two heavyweights squaring off in their primes.
Ah, but what about the next five years?
It's a fun question to ponder while the Yankees (19-12) and Orioles (19-10) jockey for first place in the AL East amid their first head-to-head showdown of the season. The early advantage belongs to Baltimore, which permitted New York just two runs in winning the first two of a four-game series at Oriole Park at Camden Yards.
The urgency for both teams to put crucial wins on the board against one another won't fade any time soon. But then again, the same is likely true of each club's status as a favorite in MLB's best division.
So, let's stretch our gaze to the next five years and weigh how these two clubs might continue to loom large in the AL East. It's about the talent they have now, the talent they have coming up, who's calling the shots and how deep each franchise's pockets go.
Weighing Their Present Outlooks
The Yankees and Orioles are just a game apart in the standings and outscoring their opponents by roughly the same margin. As such, records and run differentials won't be much help here.
Nor, for that matter, will simply name-dropping each team's stars.
Juan Soto is awesome, but so is Gunnar Henderson. Aaron Judge is a tremendous leader, but so is Adley Rutschman. Anthony Volpe is an exciting young infielder, but so is Jordan Westburg. Corbin Burnes is off to a great start, but so is Carlos Rodón.
Thinking wins above replacement could be the ultimate arbiter for this situation? Well, think again. As they are in the standings, these two teams are neck-and-neck in WAR:
- Yankees: 9.1 WAR
- Orioles: 9.1 WAR
Plus, the personnel the Yankees and Orioles have right now won't be the same personnel they'll have all season. It's therefore instructive to consult the ZiPS projection system for how much WAR they figure to get going forward.
Which, unfortunately, reveals a relatively small gap:
- Yankees: 34.5 WAR
- Orioles: 35.9 WAR
For their part, the Yankees can hope for Judge, who only has a .754 OPS, to get hot and for Gerrit Cole, who won the AL Cy Young Award in 2023, to make a full recovery from elbow discomfort.
For theirs, the Orioles will get Kyle Bradish and John Means back from arm injuries this month. And despite his disappointing first stint, Jackson Holliday, 20, remains an X-factor. He's sure to be seen again, at which point the hope will be that he'll actually live up to being MLB's No. 1 prospect.
Ultimately, it's hard to point to either one of these teams and definitively conclude, "Ah, yes, surely this will be the one that pulls away." They're both very good and likely haven't peaked yet.
Advantage: Push
Weighing Future Outlooks
Call that last conclusion a punt if you want, but I think we all know where this part is going.
If it's a question of which 20-something players these teams have locked up through 2028, we see one pretty good list and another significantly better list:
- Yankees: SS Anthony Volpe, 3B Oswaldo Cabrera, C Austin Wells, RHP Luis Gil, RHP Ian Hamilton
- Orioles: SS Gunnar Henderson, 3B Jordan Westburg, LF Colton Cowser, RHP Grayson Rodriguez, RHP Kyle Bradish
The only player in the Yankees' set who can be fairly called a star is Volpe, who won a Gold Glove last year and is now working on a 91-point improvement to his OPS relative to 2023.
Baltimore Orioles @OriolesThat's a Gunnar. <a href="">
This isn't even counting Rutschman, who's eligible for free agency after 2027. Nor is it counting the best prospects in a farm system that B/R's Joel Reuter has ranked at No. 2 in MLB. Not just Holliday, but also four top-100 types: C Samuel Basallo (No. 12), 3B Coby Mayo (No. 14) , OF Heston Kjerstad (No. 41) and OF Enrique Bradfield Jr. (No. 78).
Granted, the Yankees' also has five top-100 guys. Jasson Domínguez (No. 20) should be back from Tommy John surgery in June or July. In the meantime, fellow outfielder Spencer Jones (No. 43) is following up a hot spring with a .922 OPS for Double-A Somerset.
However, if this is the exciting aspect of the Yankees' future, the alarming part is that they're also on the hook to pay a ton of money to 30-something stars. Judge, Cole and Rodón will make a hair under $520 million between 2024 and 2028, and they also owe the husk of Giancarlo Stanton over $100 million through 2027.
Advantage: Orioles
Weighing Their Front Offices
Brian Cashman has been the Yankees' general manager since 1998, overseeing four World Series championships and 26 of the organization's 31 straight winning seasons.
The odds of an executive lucking into a resume like that aren't great, and it's not like it takes much effort to point out Cashman's achievements. He helped build the "Core Four" and drafted Judge, and the trade for Soto alone doesn't explain why the Yankees have the most improved offense of 2024.
But as we'll get to, what the 56-year-old has that most GMs don't is access to as much money as he could ask for. What he doesn't have as much of, apparently, is as much respect as Orioles GM Mike Elias.
This is according to a poll of MLB executives by The Athletic, which was meant to rank the league's top 10 front offices. The Orioles landed at No. 5, but the Yankees barely cracked the top 10.
The mic that Elias, now in his sixth year on the job, is within his rights to drop concerns how his Orioles rank fourth in MLB in wins since 2022 (the Yankees are fifth, for the record) despite opening said seasons ranked 30th, 29th and 26th in payroll.
That Elias had top-five draft picks to use on Rutschman, Kjerstad, Cowser and Holliday can't be ignored, but it's notable that Henderson (No. 42) and Westburg (No. 30) were lower selections. Nor can it be ignored that the Orioles are significantly better than the Oakland Athletics despite having something in common with them: Only two free agents on their 26-man roster.
This, of course, is to say nothing of Cashman's cloudy future. Though he's under contract through 2026, it was just last year that his leadership was coming under fire from every possible direction.
Advantage: Orioles
Weighing Their Resources
In the last 25 years, there's been one instance of the Yankees opening with a payroll outside of MLB's top five. In this same span, the Orioles have crept into the top 10 just twice.
The hope in Baltimore is that David Rubenstein, whose purchase of the Orioles from the Angelos family was finalized on March 27, will usher in a new era of spending. Whereas the late Peter Angelos was reportedly worth $2 billion as of 2020, Forbesputs Rubenstein's net worth at $3.9 billion.
A big-money extension for Rutschman? That seems plausible. A big-money deal for Burnes in free agency this winter? That, too.
But as easy as it is to daydream about such things, let's not mistake an owner's net worth for a team's revenue. Especially not in this case, as one of these teams pulled in more than twice as much money as the other in 2023:
You know, just in case anyone was wondering what makes the Yankees' spending possible. And the dollars are bound to keep flowing, especially if Cashman makes good on his threat to prevent Soto from making his own free-agent exodus.
Advantage: Yankees
Overall Advantage: Orioles
The scoring consists of one push and twice as many advantages for the Orioles, and I'll even wager that the Yankees' resources don't fully cancel out Baltimore's front-office advantage.
The almighty dollar only matters so much on the diamond, after all. Of this, that the Yankees have just one championship to show for their last 23 full seasons despite spending more money than any other team is telling proof.
Talent is the currency that really matters, and the Orioles have already procured a ton for both now and later despite stifling stinginess on the part of their former owners. If Rubenstein indeed proves to be less stingy, the organization's penchant for talent procurement only figures to get better.
Either way, this already feels like a golden age for what's historically been a one-sided rivalry.
The Yankees have a .596 all-time winning percentage against the Orioles and, save for in 1996 and 2012, the two clubs have a history of misaligned eras. It's a crime that Derek Jeter and Cal Ripken Jr. had their primes in different eras. Ditto for Mickey Mantle and Brooks Robinson, or Whitey Ford and Jim Palmer.
That's what feels so different about right now, especially with the Orioles having won nine of 15 head-to-head matchups since the start of last year. The underdog is rewriting the script.
If the Yankees want to even the score, well, they know where to find them.
