More than their collection of sluggers and yearly climbs to the top of the home run charts, more than their well-built bullpen that's full of All-Stars, and more than their leave-it-late approach to free agency, this Orioles' run of success over the last four years has been defined by their willingness to lop off pieces of their future core to help them win right now.
In turning Dylan Bundy loose in the starting rotation, as the Orioles seem to be doing after announcing he'll start the third game after the All-Star break Sunday at Tampa Bay, the Orioles are putting a human face to that last aspect. There's a moral hazard to it, one they had to have considered as they risk their former top prospect becoming a symbol for a myopic focus on winning today at tomorrow's expense.
Their overall mindset when it comes to future assets is, to a point, admirable. In Boston, president Dave Dombrowski is being treated as if the strategy he's executing now and did for several years as the top baseball man in Detroit — selling off prospects for sure things — is exclusive to him. But Orioles executive vice president of baseball operations Dan Duquette has done the same to a smaller degree here.
He turned Jake Arrieta and Pedro Strop — young assets, if not prospects — into Scott Feldman; Josh Hader and others into Bud Norris; Eduardo Rodriguez into Andrew Miller; and Zach Davies into Gerardo Parra. In each case, he added to his major league team in the only way that's really possible in-season, and it cost the Orioles down the road.
The idea that Dylan Bundy will, at least temporarily, be part of the starting rotation, is of the same thought tree. It's also completely different.
Bundy, just 23 but locked onto the major league roster because he's out of options, has been a revelation this year in that he's pitching like the 19-year-old phenom who tore through the Orioles' system in 2012. He's pitching on four and five days rest in two- and three-inning stints, and his arm is fresh every time he steps on the mound. His fastball is sitting 94-96 mph and reaching 98 mph, his curveball is as sharp as ever, and the changeup he's developed is a reliable strikeout pitch.
Most importantly, his arm is healthy. He says his arm is recovering well after each outing. He's even taking bullpens just to stay sharp in between relief appearances. The old Bundy might not have said anything even if his arm was barking a bit. But now, he would, even if he's the type of pitcher who will take the ball even if he shouldn't.
All told, it's not like this wasn't coming. Manager Buck Showalter had said it was when, not if, Bundy would start.
But this whole year for him was in service to delivering a healthy Bundy to the starting rotation for 2017 and beyond. Despite an innings limit that kept him to just 103 2/3 minor league frames in his first professional season, 2012, Bundy needed Tommy John surgery in 2013. He came back slowly in the second half of 2014, and threw just 22 innings over eight starts in 2015 before shoulder soreness ended that season early, too. He was also feeling arm soreness in the Arizona Fall League last season, leaving there after just two appearances.
That means that many of the generally accepted baselines for innings growth are hard to apply to Bundy. Whether you want to add 30 innings to what he did last year, or increase it by 20 percent, you don't have a starter's workload.
All that is to say Bundy, once a top-10 prospect in baseball who still has a bright future, is a unique case here in a lot of ways. One way that the Orioles do not want him to be unique is for him to be the person who comes to fully represent their prioritization of the present over the future.
It's one thing to look at Rodriguez or Davies, or even Arrieta, and lament the circumstances that led to them shipping out of town. But they're all healthy with their whole careers ahead of them to do what they want to do — pitch — even if it's not for the Orioles.
Bundy is all of that wrapped in one Oklahoman package. He has the ability to help a current team desperate for starting pitching, and a pitching asset who will be under team control for years to come.
A healthy Bundy could make the Orioles contenders down the road. An effective Bundy as a starting pitcher could solidify the Orioles as contenders this year. How the latter influences the former could be a seminal stretch for the entire Orioles franchise.