From June 30 through July 3 of 2014, at Oriole Park at Camden Yards, the Orioles swept the Rangers in a four-game series. The Orioles proceeded to win the American League East, and the Rangers wound up finishing poorly enough to select fourth overall in the 2015 amateur draft.
The Yankees had a professional scout, Tim Naehring, at that series, yet his job wasn’t to eyeball the Orioles to help slow them down in the pennant race. Rather, Naehring was on a long-range mission.
“I remember when Elvis Andrus and J.J. Hardy matched up in a four-gamer in Baltimore,” Naehring, now the Yankees’ vice president of baseball operations, said last week.