Jim Duquette is one of the real bright minds in baseball media today. One reason for that may be the time he spent over the years working in MLB front offices.

Today we’re all lucky he took time to do this podcast just days ahead of the start of the 2025 Winter Meetings in Orlando.

O’s fans know Jim well, both from his time as Orioles’ co-general manager with Mike Flanagan in 2006 and 2007 to his time now in broadcasting.

“Duq” as I call him, is an outstanding commentator and analyst and heard Monday through Friday with co-host Mike Ferrin on their “Power Alley” show on MLB Network Radio via Sirius-XM. That show airs from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. ET. Jim also co-hosts a Sunday show on the network with former GM Jim Bowden.

O’s fans also know him from many appearances over the years on MASN and also on 105.7 FM the Fan sports radio.

Jim and Mike will broadcast their show next week live from the Winter Meetings.

In this podcast we covered a lot of ground and one topic we discussed was will the O’s spend big money on a free agent starting pitcher and who should they pursue?

I even asked Jim if it turns out that Mike Elias is concerned that the price of pitching gets too high (after all Dylan Cease already signed for $210 million), could it be that O’s ownership actually has to sort of overrule him to get a big deal done?

“I think part of that learning curve and let’s say aggressiveness and push (to spend more for Baltimore now) is coming from ownership now,” said Duquette. “Whether it’s (David) Rubenstein or (Mike) Arougheti or both.

“I think for sure in those type of situations, when you have an executive who is maybe not as risk-averse as others within MLB, I think it does help that the owner is like, ‘Listen, I’m not worried about the risk on this one. I’m giving you the permission to go sign him.’”

We got into a lot of topics with Jim today and even spent some time talking about Flanagan and Jim’s time working with Mike atop the O’s baseball operations department.

A great guy who spent a lot of time to drop some knowledge for us today. Thanks to Duq!

Enjoy this one Birdland.

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