In 2021, three major league teams lost at least 102 games. Two years later, two of them — the Arizona Diamondbacks and the Texas Rangers — will meet in the World Series.

The Orioles complete that trio of past losers, and although an American League Division Series sweep at the hands of the Rangers prevented them from reaching that same stage, their regular season featured more accomplishments than either club. After going 52-110 in 2021, Baltimore won 101 games and the AL East in 2023, enjoying what was comfortably MLB’s largest two-year improvement over the past century.

If Texas claims its first championship, it will have only two more victories across the regular season and postseason than the Orioles managed, while it’s not possible for Arizona to catch Baltimore in that regard. Yet, the Rangers and Diamondbacks are in the World Series, and the Orioles are at home.

Both teams, though, offer templates for Baltimore heading into the offseason. At his end-of-the-season news conference about 36 hours after the Orioles were eliminated, executive vice president and general manager Mike Elias had little to say when it came to how he’ll approach the winter, saying that it was too early and not necessarily beneficial to dive into details. But aspects of the last two clubs standing exemplify checklist items for Elias and Baltimore’s front office this offseason.

Add legitimate pitching

Before Wednesday’s waiver claim of left-hander Tucker Davidson from the Kansas City Royals, here were the pitchers the Orioles had acquired directly onto their 40-man roster over the past year: free-agent signees Kyle Gibson and Mychal Givens; trade acquisitions Darwinzon Hernández, Cole Irvin, Danny Coulombe, Shintaro Fujinami and Jack Flaherty; waiver claims Jacob Webb and Jorge López; and Rule 5 draft pick Andrew Politi. Collectively, the group cost the Orioles about $20 million and five prospects Baseball America ranked among their top 30 at the time of the trades, though all were outside the organization’s top 10.

None of those pitchers started a playoff game. Politi, Givens, Hernández and López didn’t make it to the end of the season in the organization. Irvin and Fujinami were left off the ALDS roster. The two highest-paid pitchers on it, Gibson and Flaherty, were used as long relievers when the Orioles were being blown out. Webb surrendered a game-deciding home run in Game 1 and a grand slam that broke open Game 2. Acquired for cash from the Minnesota Twins on the cusp of the season, Coulombe was the only member of this group to be worth at least one win above replacement in the regular season using the methodologies of both FanGraphs and Baseball-Reference.

Comparatively, among the pitchers the Rangers have added in that same span are multitime Cy Young Award winners Jacob deGrom and Max Scherzer; veteran left-handers Jordan Montgomery and Andrew Heaney; and dominant postseason pitcher Nathan Eovaldi. All have made at least one start during the playoffs except deGrom, who in six starts before Tommy John elbow reconstruction produced as many wins above replacement, according to Baseball-Reference, or more than all of Baltimore’s additions other than Coulombe.

The Diamondbacks were relatively tame, though their trade to acquire closer Paul Sewald from Seattle has paid off handsomely in the postseason. Their top starter, Zac Gallen, was acquired in a 2019 trade and has since blossomed into a Cy Young Award candidate; the Orioles perhaps have their own version of that in Kyle Bradish, who leads their core of early-career starters.

But as the ALDS showed, greater fortification is needed. Baltimore has shown reluctance to make splashy moves, but one wouldn’t necessarily be required. Eovaldi, who pitched seven innings of one-run ball to knock out the Orioles, signed for a guaranteed two years and $34 million, a deal structure Elias said the Orioles have had on the table with players they were unable to acquire.

“Those pursuits will be on the menu again,” he said. “We’re trying to win.”

Extend a young star

The Diamondbacks aren’t going to the World Series because they signed rookie outfielder Corbin Carroll to an eight-year, $111 million extension before this season. But it could help the possibility of returning throughout the 2020s.

Including a club option for 2031, the agreement goes for three seasons beyond Carroll’s initial period of team control. As Arizona fans have watched him shine in the postseason — including three key hits against the Philadelphia Phillies in Game 7 of the National League Championship Series — they do so knowing their prized phenom will be a Diamondback for years to come.

Orioles fans do not have the same certainty. In nearly five years under Elias, the only guaranteed multiyear contracts Baltimore has given out have been two-year pacts with pitchers recovering from Tommy John surgery. None of those agreements bought out any would-be free-agent seasons.

Infielder Gunnar Henderson, Carroll’s AL counterpart as the favorite for Rookie of the Year, has five more years of club control remaining, and catcher Adley Rutschman, the runner-up for that honor last year, has four left. In that sense, there’s not exactly a rush to ink the pair — Elias’ first two draft picks with Baltimore and the club’s top position players by wins above replacement in 2023 — to long-term contracts. But several other teams have reached extended agreements with their phenoms, and the continued absence of such a deal with Henderson or Rutschman adds to the looming possibility they spend much of their careers elsewhere.

Any such thoughts among the fan base have been induced by the organization itself, with not only its lack of action but also its words. In August, Orioles CEO and Chairman John Angelos told The New York Times the franchise would struggle financially to retain all of its young talent.

“When people talk about giving this player $200 million, that player $150 million, we would be so financially underwater that you’d have to raise the prices massively,” Angelos said.

Asked about the veracity of that comment after the season, Elias said, in his experience, “things don’t [always] come out exactly how you meant them” when speaking with media before saying the front office “quietly” examines extension possibilities.

“We are very focused on keeping this organization as successful and healthy as possible within the constraints of reality,” Elias said. “Obviously, we have players here that we love, and you look at it right now and you go, ‘Boy, I wish we had those guys under contract for longer than they currently are,’ and a big part of the calculus of keeping this franchise healthy, is pursuing or examining opportunities to possibly keep some of these guys longer. I’ve said it over and over. We quietly work on this in the background. I don’t want to be the one out talking about it, but obviously, that’s a part of our job as a front office to tackle that subject.”

Maximize playoff odds

Much was made of MLB’s playoff format when the four teams that won at least 99 regular-season games combined for one playoff win against 11 losses.

But the 90-win Rangers, the AL’s fifth seed, facing the 84-win Diamondbacks, the NL’s sixth seed, shows the importance of just getting into the field. Either team surely would have preferred a bye of the wild-card round and home-field advantage throughout the postseason en route to the Fall Classic, but they won enough in the regular season to get to the postseason, then won enough there to reach the World Series.

The Orioles’ approach to the 2022 trade deadline — when Elias focused more on future playoff pushes than the one in front of him — doesn’t need to be relitigated, especially given how well it has seemingly paid off for Baltimore’s long-term future. But it’s worth noting the 2023 Diamondbacks won one fewer game with a run differential one run worse than the 2022 Orioles. Cracking the field with a mid-80s win total gives a team as much of a shot of a World Series as triple-digit victories.

Perhaps that justifies Elias’ modest approach to both the offseason and trade deadline, acknowledging his intent was to put the Orioles in the postseason. They of course managed to exceed expectations, but they could have won 10 fewer games and made the playoffs regardless. Maybe the format devalues the regular season, but it also reinforces the importance of taking advantage of every opportunity to get beyond it.

Of course, teams such as Arizona are the exception, not the rule. According to FanGraphs, the Diamondbacks rank 20th in the majors in payroll, with a sizeable portion of theirs devoted to players no longer in the organization. Since 2008, the World Series winner has, on average, ranked in the top eight among the league’s 30 teams in payroll, with the average participant ranked in the top 12, according to data from Spotrac. Arizona is only the third team in that span ranked 20th or lower, with Tampa Bay’s pennant-winning clubs in 2008 and 2020 ranked 28th.

Each opponent the Diamondbacks beat to reach the World Series had a higher payroll, with Arizona going 9-3 as clubs with lower payrolls otherwise went 7-17 through the first three playoff rounds. That includes an 0-3 showing from the Orioles, who ended 2023 ranked 29th, against the eighth-ranked Rangers.

But the Orioles got in, and an offseason spent devoted to increasing the probability they do so again could be enough to find Baltimore playing at this time next year.

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Police across Maine were alerted just last month to “veiled threats” by the U.S. Army reservist who would go on to carry out the worst mass shooting in the state’s history, one of a string of missed red flags that preceded the massacre.

Two local law enforcement chiefs told The Associated Press that a statewide awareness alert was sent in mid-September to be on the lookout for Robert Card after the firearms instructor made threats against his base and fellow soldiers. But after stepped-up patrols of the base and a visit to Card’s home – neither of which turned up any sign of him – they moved on.

“We added extra patrols, we did that for about two weeks. … The guy never showed up,” said Jack Clements, the police chief in Saco, home to the U.S. Army Reserve base where Card trained.

Sagadahoc County Sheriff Joel Merry, whose jurisdiction includes Card’s home in Bowdoin, said the Army Reserve tipped his department in September to the reservist’s threats, and the sheriff sent the awareness alert to every law enforcement agency in the state after his deputy came back empty-handed from a welfare check to Card’s home.

“We couldn’t locate him,” Merry said, adding that he couldn’t recall if there was any follow-up because “I don’t have any reports in front of me.”

Military officials declined to comment further about Card, specifically whether the threats relayed to the sheriff in September were new or the same ones Card had made during an Army reserve training exercise near West Point, New York, in July. That’s when police say Card was committed to a mental health facility for two weeks after acting erratically and “hearing voices and threats to shoot up” a military base.

Authorities say the 40-year-old Card opened fire with a high-powered rifle on a bowling alley and then a bar in Lewiston Wednesday night, killing 18 people and wounding 13 more. After an intensive two-day search that put the state on edge, Card was found dead Friday from a self-inflicted gunshot.

Despite the earlier threats, the FBI said Saturday Card had not been on its radar, telling AP it “did not have nor did it receive any tips or information concerning Robert Card.” The bureau added that its instant background check system “was not provided with or in possession of any information that would have prohibited Card from a lawful firearm purchase.”

Card’s case stands as a glaring example of missed red flags, with many unanswered questions about what the military, police, mental health professionals and relatives could have done to prevent the massacre.

While Maine does not have a red flag law, it does have a more limited “ yellow-flag ” law that would still allow police to petition a judge to take a person’s firearms away if a medical practitioner deems that person to be a threat.

For his part, Saco police Chief Clements defended his department’s response to the alert about Card, which he described as a “generic thing that came out saying, hey, you know, we’ve had some report that this guy’s made some veiled threats.”

Clements noted that his department gets many such alerts and that his officers gave this one its due attention, keeping an eye on the base for any sign of Card.

“Never came in contact with this guy, never received any phone calls from the reserve center saying, ‘Hey, we got somebody who was causing a problem,’” he said. “We never got anything.”

Another law enforcement agency that came in contact with Card was the New York State Police, which on July 16 was called in West Point by commanders of the Army Reserve’s 3rd Battalion, 304th Infantry Regiment with concerns about Card’s erratic behavior and “threats to other members of his military unit” during a training exercise, according to a State Police document obtained by AP. State Police troopers took Card, a sergeant 1st class, to the Keller Army Community Hospital at West Point for what would be two weeks of mental health evaluation.

What New York State Police did about Card’s threats is unclear. The agency declined to comment to the AP on the case and did not respond to a request for reports or possible body-camera footage of their interactions with Card.

“This is an active investigation, and the New York State Police does not comment on active investigations, nor investigations in which we are not the lead agency,” it said in a statement Friday before Card was found dead. A state police spokesman refused to comment Saturday.

Jonathan Crisp, an army lawyer for two decades before starting a criminal defense practice, said when soldiers are committed involuntarily to mental health facilities by others in the chain of command, it is a “reportable” event under Army regulations that triggers a requirement to alert others. A provost marshal enters the incident into a military database that puts the FBI on notice so it can enter the name into a background list of people prevented from buying weapons.

“If they took him and he didn’t want to go and he refused to be admitted, it’s a slam dunk,” Crisp said. “This should have been reported.”

But Maine Department of Public Safety Commissioner Michael Sauschuck said in news conference Saturday that while Card had a history of mental illness, there was no evidence that he had ever been involuntarily committed.

“Just because there appears to be a mental health nexus to this scenario, the vast majority of people with mental health diagnosis will never hurt anybody,” Sauschuck said.

Jody Madeira, an Indiana University law professor who has studied gun laws, said police in one state can alert counterparts in another state that someone is a danger, and the military can do the same with local police.

She said someone dropped the ball because Card’s threats and medical evaluation should have triggered a yellow flag seizure of his guns when he returned home.

“He slipped through the cracks,” Madeira said. “There were warning signs.”

DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip — Thousands of people broke into aid warehouses in Gaza to take flour and basic hygiene products, a U.N. agency said Sunday, in a mark of growing desperation and the breakdown of public order three weeks into the war between Israel and Gaza’s militant Hamas rulers.

Tanks and infantry pushed into Gaza over the weekend as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced a “second stage” in the war, three weeks after Hamas launched a brutal incursion into Israel. The widening ground offensive came as Israel also pounded the territory from air, land and sea.

The bombardment — described by Gaza residents as the most intense of the war — knocked out most communications in the territory late Friday, largely cutting off the besieged enclave’s 2.3 million people from the world. Communications were restored to much of Gaza early Sunday.

The Israeli military said Sunday it had struck over 450 militant targets over the past 24 hours, including Hamas command centers, observation posts and anti-tank missile launching positions. It said more ground forces were sent into Gaza overnight.

Thomas White, Gaza for the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, known as UNRWA, said the warehouse break-ins were “a worrying sign that civil order is starting to break down after three weeks of war and a tight siege on Gaza. People are scared, frustrated and desperate,” he said.

UNRWA provides basic services to hundreds of thousands of people in Gaza. Its schools across the territory have been transformed into packed shelters housing Palestinians displaced by the conflict. Israel has allowed only a small trickle of aid to enter from Egypt, some of which was stored in one of the warehouses that was broken into, UNRWA said.

Juliette Touma, a spokesperson for the agency, said the crowds broke into four facilities on Saturday. She said the warehouses did not contain any fuel, which has been in critically short supply since Israel cut off all shipments after the start of the war.

Residents living near Shifa Hospital, Gaza’s largest, meanwhile said Israeli airstrikes overnight hit near the hospital complex and blocked many roads leading to it. Israel accuses Hamas of having a secret command post beneath the hospital, without providing much evidence.

Tens of thousands of civilians are sheltering in Shifa, which is also packed with patients wounded in the strikes.

“Reaching the hospital has become increasingly difficult,” Mahmoud al-Sawah, who is sheltering in the hospital, said over the phone. “It seems they want to cut off the area.” Another Gaza City resident, Abdallah Sayed, said the Israeli bombing over the past two days was “the most violent and intense” since the war started.

The army recently released computer-generated images showing what it said were Hamas installations in and around Shifa Hospital, as well as interrogations of captured Hamas fighters who might have been speaking under duress. Israel has made similar claims before, but has not substantiated them.

Little is known about Hamas’ tunnels and other infrastructure, and the claims could not be independently verified. Hamas’ government denied the allegations and said they were aimed at justifying future strikes on the facility.

The Palestinian Red Crescent rescue service said another Gaza City hospital received two calls from Israeli authorities on Sunday ordering it to evacuate. It said airstrikes have hit as close as 50 meters (yards) from the Al-Quds Hospital, where 12,000 people are sheltering.

Israel had ordered the hospital to evacuate more than a week ago, but it and other medical facilities have refused, saying it would mean death for patients on ventilators.

There was no immediate Israeli comment on the latest evacuation order or the strikes near Shifa.

Israel says most residents have heeded its orders to flee to the southern part of the besieged territory, but hundreds of thousands remain in the north, in part because Israel has also bombarded targets in so-called safe zones.

An Israeli airstrike hit a two-story house in the southern city of Khan Younis on Sunday, killing at least 13 people, including 10 from one family. The bodies were brought to the nearby Nasser Hospital, according to an Associated Press journalist at the scene.

The escalation has meanwhile ratcheted up domestic pressure on Israel’s government to secure the release of some 230 hostages seized in the Oct. 7 rampage, when Hamas fighters from Gaza breached Israel’s defenses and stormed into nearby towns, gunning down civilians and soldiers in a surprise attack.

Desperate family members met with Netanyahu on Saturday and expressed support for an exchange for Palestinian prisoners held in Israel.

Hamas’ top leader in Gaza, Yehia Sinwar, said Palestinian militants “are ready immediately” to release all hostages if Israel releases all of the thousands of Palestinians held in its prisons. Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, an Israeli military spokesman, dismissed the offer as “psychological terror.”

Netanyahu told the nationally televised news conference that Israel is determined to bring back all the hostages, and maintained that the expanding ground operation “will help us in this mission.” He said he couldn’t reveal everything that is being done due to the sensitivity and secrecy of the efforts.

“This is the second stage of the war, whose objectives are clear: to destroy the military and governmental capabilities of Hamas and bring the hostages home,” he said in his first time taking questions from journalists since the war began.

Netanyahu also acknowledged that the Oct. 7 “debacle,” in which more than 1,400 people were killed, would need a thorough investigation, adding that “everyone will have to answer questions, including me.”

The Israeli military said it was gradually expanding its ground operations inside Gaza, while stopping short of calling it an all-out invasion. Casualties on both sides are expected to rise sharply as Israeli forces and Palestinian militants battle in dense residential areas.

Despite the Israeli offensive, Palestinian militants have continued firing rockets into Israel, with the constant sirens in southern Israel a reminder of the threat.

The Palestinian death toll in Gaza rose Saturday to just over 7,700 people since the war began, with 377 deaths reported since late Friday, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. Most of those killed have been women and minors, the ministry said.

An estimated 1,700 people remain trapped beneath the rubble, according to the Health Ministry, which has said it bases its estimates on distress calls it received.

Israel says its strikes target Hamas fighters and infrastructure and that the militants operate among civilians, putting them in danger.

More than 1.4 million people across Gaza have fled their homes, nearly half crowding into U.N. schools and shelters, following repeated warnings by the Israeli military that they would be in danger if they remained in northern Gaza.

Gaza’s sole power plant shut down shortly after the start of the war, and Israel has allowed no fuel to enter, saying Hamas would use it for military purposes.

Hospitals are struggling to keep emergency generators running to operate incubators and other life-saving equipment, and the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees is also trying to keep water pumps and bakeries running to meet essential needs.