Peter Schmuck: Orioles signing slugger Pete Alonso answers a huge question and creates some others

To all those cynical fans who thought the new Orioles ownership would never step up to sign an elite free agent, this one’s for you and everybody else who suffered through the hugely disappointing 2025 season.

President of baseball operations Mike Elias set out to recharge the Orioles’ offense and create better left-right balance in a lineup that was too vulnerable to left-handed pitching and succeeded on both counts with the signing of big-time slugger Pete Alonso to a reported five-year, $155 million contract.

Obviously, Alonso will strike plenty of fear into left-handed pitchers and also make the lineup safer for the Orioles’ promising group of left-handed hitters. The price is high, but not high enough to set an Orioles record for the most expensive deal in club history, which still belongs to Chris Davis, who signed an ill-fated seven-year, $161 million deal back in 2016.

Anyone who follows baseball even casually knows that Alonso has elite power. He has failed to hit at least 34 home runs in just one of his seven major league seasons, and that was the Covid-shortened 2020 campaign, and the pace he set during those 57 games would have stretched out to more than 40 over a full season

He also is one of the game’s most durable players, appearing in all 162 games for the New York Mets the past two seasons and at least 152 in every season except 2020.

Now the focus shifts to acquiring a top-of-the rotation pitcher and figuring out what to do with the big surplus that the Alonso deal has created at first base. For the moment, the Orioles have four players capable of playing significant innings there, with Ryan Mountcastle headed for arbitration and top prospects Coby Mayo and Samuel Basallo coming into their own, which means that something will have to give.

That something probably will be a trade for a starting pitcher and the latest speculation has focused on Miami Marlins right-hander Edward Cabrera. There is little chance the Orioles part with Basallo and the Marlins probably aren’t interested in paying Mountcastle what he figures to get in arbitration, so the most likely scenario would be a deal involving Mayo.

Elias has kept his word and hit the Winter Meetings hard after giving signs of his desire to significantly improve the ballclub when he traded promising young starter Grayson Rodriguez to the Angels for right-handed-hitting outfielder Taylor Ward. He also has a recent trade history with the Marlins, who dealt starter Trevor Rogers to the O’s at the 2024 trade deadline for a package including promising outfielder Kyle Stowers.

It has to be painful for Elias to part with so much young talent, but the sudden downturn in his team’s fortunes after a successful rebuild has left him with no choice but to risk watching some of his potential stars reach that potential somewhere else. He really doesn’t have any other choice.