Baltimore Orioles’ Class A affiliate Delmarva Shorebirds, led by manager Kyle Moore were named the MiLB Team of the Year for 2019 earlier this week. That’s one heck of an honor for a team that’s part of an organization that’s rebuilding, such as the Orioles. Moore on this past season:
I think it was just how hard the guys played and how we stuck with it, even after the All-Star break — it was such a young group of guys,. I think with a group in their first year of pro ball, the staff did a great job keeping these guys going all year because we started off hot. But the Washington Nationals will tell you it’s not how you start, and we ended up finishing good, too. We went through July and August and the kids got better.
Quote courtesy of Andrew Battifarano, MiLB.com
Delmarva won 65.2% of their games, and they did it with pitching. Excellent pitching, incidentally. Orioles’ fans like to say that they’d like to know when they’ll start to see the fruits of labor regarding the rebuild. If that’s any indication, it’s coming.
As has been stated ad hoc on this column, the Orioles’ system was ranked in the 20’s in 2018 by Baseball America. In 2019 they were ranked 8th. The Delmarva Shorebirds are a prime example of how the organization is up and coming. Congratulations to everyone involved in that stellar operation in Salisbury, and we hope for their sake that this trend continues.
Birdland Crush 