On the surface, Ramón Laureano seems like a superfluous signing for the Baltimore Orioles.
Now that the deal is official, Baltimore will carry seven on their 40-man roster to Sarasota, Fla., for spring training.
More importantly, all of those outfielders have Major League experience and many of them don’t have minor-league options.
At most, Baltimore will carry five of them into the regular season, as none of them have significant position flexibility.
Naturally, depth is important in spring training and injuries are something every team tries to prepare for. The $4 million the Orioles will pay Laureano is a small price to pay for that depth.
But there may be a deeper reason for the Orioles bringing Laureano to Baltimore, one that has nothing to do with his bounce-back statistically with Atlanta last season.
One must go way back, all the way back to 2014 when Laureano was a college prospect at Northeastern Oklahoma A&M College.
Back then, Laureano was the Houston Astros’ 16th-round pick. The Dominican Republic native has played for three different teams since then.
But, in the draft room in Houston that day was a scouting director still building his credentials to become a general manager one day — Mike Elias.
Yep, the Baltimore Orioles general manager was part of the scouting staff that evaluated and drafted Laureano more than a decade ago. Scouts have long memories in baseball.
MLB.com pointed out the connection after the agreement was announced. This may be Elias’ way of paying it back to Laureano after his long, circuitous route in the game.
Houston traded him to the Athletics in late 2017 for a reliever. With the A’s, he broke into the Majors and became a consistent contributor in the outfield and finished his six years there with a slash line of .246/.318/.433/.752. He also hit 68 of his 82 career home runs there.
The Athletics designated him for assignment late in 2023 and he signed with Cleveland, where he struggled and was then DFA’ed in late May of last year.
He landed with Atlanta and his numbers bounced back. He finished with a slash line of .296/.327/.505/.832 with 10 home runs and 29 RBI 67 games.
The Braves opted not to tender him a deal and he hit free agency. Landing with the Orioles gives him a chance to land another MLB job, and a chance for him to reunite with a scouting director that helped him get drafted.
