A CONFIRMED DEAL: The Houston Astros have announced that their best seasoned outfield player, who signed a five-year, $130 million contract with the Baltimore Orioles, is leaving.

Looking back on Orioles teams of recent years shows how much better this group is.

There are lots of reasons to feel grateful about the 2024 Orioles: the AL’s best record (24-12), one of the game’s most dynamic offenses, consistent Top 3 placement in the power rankings. Baltimore has a bona fide ace in Corbin Burnes and several others convincingly playing one these days (Dean Kremer, John Means, Kyle Bradish and even Cole Irvin). Their young core of prospects is dynamic, making hard contact, and playing exciting basketball.

Here’s another reason to feel grateful: think back on where the team was this same point in the season a couple of years ago.

Actually, let’s do just that. Here is a quick look at Orioles teams of the recent past, with a focus on wins and losses, most valuable players, and league rank along several offensive and defensive metrics, through May 8.

On pitching, we’ll look at fielding-independent pitching (FIP), which is similar to ERA but focuses solely on events in the pitcher’s control (walks, strikeouts, etc). On offense, we’ll examine adjusted weighted runs created (wRC+) and home runs. wRC+ looks at a player’s total offense (things like walks, singles, doubles, steals, etc) to quantify how many runs a player is “worth” to his team in a year, adjusted for park factors.

A “Great” wRC+ is 140; an “Excellent” one is 160. We’ll measure top team players’ value using Fangraphs WAR (fWAR). Finally, we’ll look at Fangraphs’ “Def” metric, which measures defensive value in terms of defensive runs saved plus a positional adjustment.

Here is where we are right now, and here is the verdict: we are spoiled. The Orioles are playing great baseball, and they’re having fun doing it. Fans are mooing at games, players are chugging from the Hydration Station after long bombs, and each week it feels like there’s a different guy playing the hero.

The team’s best player, Gunnar Henderson, has a massive 2.2 WAR after just a month. He’s one of the hardest hitters in the league at the plate, an advanced base stealer, and is playing eye-popping defense. As with the rest of his team, though, Fangraphs metrics are not in love with the Orioles’ defense, about the only team weakness we can find, save the bullpen (more on that later).

Meanwhile, there’s no shame in Corbin Burnes being the team’s most valuable pitcher through one month. The 2021 Cy Young winner hasn’t been bulletproof in April/May, but at 3-2 with a 2.83 ERA and 47 K’s in 47.2 innings he’s been a strong #1.