SARASOTA, Fla. — The Orioles finished last season atop the AL East, their 101 wins putting them a convincing 19 games ahead of the Yankees.
Then they went out and added an ace in Corbin Burnes to join all their young talent coming back with another year of experience under their belt and still have more on the way with the game’s top-ranked farm system — including the No. 1 prospect in baseball.
That is what stands between the Yankees and getting back to the top of the division.
“I think they’ll be really good again,” manager Aaron Boone said Saturday before the Yankees got their first look of the spring at the Orioles in a 7-3 loss at Ed Smith Stadium. “Looking forward to that challenge. Obviously, they’ve come fully out of their rebuild and established a really good young core of players. It’s the American League East. You always look forward to going up against the best, but certainly they are formidable.”
Boone likes to say that you have to pack your lunch to play in the AL East, but the Yankees got their lunch served to them last season a year after winning the division in 2022.
Their fourth-place finish was their lowest since 2016 — the year they sold at the trade deadline — as they went 22-30 within the division, including 6-7 against the Orioles, on the way to 82-80.
After a number of offseasons spent trying to close the gap with the Astros in the American League, the Yankees will first have to prove they have closed the gap within their own division.
Though Boone’s club certainly has reason to believe it has gotten better — both through external additions and internal improvements — the Orioles don’t appear to be going anywhere anytime soon.
With a young core including catcher Adley Rutschman, third baseman Gunnar Henderson and right-handers Kyle Bradish and Grayson Rodriguez — and extensions suddenly seeming more plausible with a new ownership group on the way — the Orioles bolstered their rotation this offseason by trading for Burnes.
And this spring they are giving 20-year-old shortstop Jackson Holliday a chance to win the starting job.
Besides having a Cy Young winner anchoring their rotation, the only difference this time around for the Orioles might be that they actually enter the year with high expectations.
“I don’t think our mindset’s changed,” Orioles manager Brandon Hyde said Saturday morning. “I think the way the season ended last year [getting swept by the Rangers in the ALDS] made our guys even hungrier.
“We won the division last year — we’re proud of that, so we’re trying to defend that. We’re not looking at what other people are saying or writing or anything else. It’s a long season. We’re just really focusing on us getting better every single day and putting the best team out there we can and getting guys better. We’re still a really young team that’s going to have ups and downs. We’re just trying to be as consistent as possible. We did a great job of that last year.”
As for what Hyde made of the Yankees’ offseason moves, he quipped, “Which one?”
“I think everybody in our division is going into this year thinking they’re trying to get to the postseason,” Hyde said. “The Yankees made moves this offseason to try to improve their club. Adding Juan Soto there in the top third of their order is definitely going to help. But we can’t control what other teams do around us.”
The Yankees still have some work to do before they can start thinking about dethroning the Orioles.
The only thing they know for certain is that nothing will come easy within the division.
“The AL East is a beast, man,” said Marcus Stroman, back in the division after breaking in with the Blue Jays. “I haven’t been here for a minute, but it’s what I came up in. Every night it’s one through nine, you really gotta come with it. … I’m excited to play in Fenway, to play against Baltimore [who is] an incredible team now. The Rays are one of the scrappiest teams to pitch against in the league. That makes it fun. Playing against the best talent and competition in the world, for me, that’s what you want.”