Jim Johnson led all of baseball with 101 saves over the past two seasons. On September 27th, Dan Duquette told Roch Kubatko of MASN that, “Jim Johnson is one of our core players,” and it was the team’s intention to keep him despite the $10.8M projected salary for 2014. Fast forward to late last week when Buster Olney tweeted that the Orioles were willing to listen to offers on Johnson. After a flurry of rumors yesterday, Duquette decided to allocate his resources to balance the roster to make it more competitive.

Doing so creates a large hole in the back of the Orioles’ bullpen as Johnson also led all of baseball in games finished over the past two seasons. Johnson stepped in to fill the void left by Kevin Gregg’s ineffectiveness two seasons ago, and now someone else has the opportunity to do so. When Johnson did so, it was the easy choice as he had displayed the skills to do so while getting the ball to Gregg to attempt to save games. In looking at the current 40-man roster for Baltimore, there does not seem as clear a choice this time around.

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