Baltimore Orioles: Minor leauge signings

The Baltimore Orioles yesterday signed RHP Brady Rogers and catcher Taylor Davis to minor league contracts. Both are expected to get invites to spring training. And I would suspect that both have a shot at making the big league roster depending on how that goes.

Rogers was drafted by Houston (when current Orioles’ GM Mike Elias was there) in 2012, and appeared on the way to having a decent big league career. However he was derailed by Tommy Johns surgery in 2017, and was never really able to regain his form. Obviously this is a low-risk move for an Orioles’ franchise who needs to stockpile pitching.

Davis was signed by the Chicago Cubs in July of 2011 as a non-drafted free agent. A career .235 hitter in the minors, he’s apparently very good at framing pitches. He’ll join a large group of catchers looking to break camp in the major leagues with the Birds. Thus catcher will be an important position battle to watch as Grapefruit League play goes along.

Baltimore Orioles to begin Birdland Caravan

The Baltimore Orioles had to come up with a new way to connect with fans after scraping FanFest this year. They had the inaugural “Winter Warm-up” at Camden Yards in December, which seemed like a great event other than the fact that it was on Eutaw Street and it rained. But now we know what the other part of the plan is going to be.

The O’s will be hosting the first ever Birdland Caravan next month. In essence, players, coaches, and alumni will be venturing out into the community over a three-day period, hosting a series of Happy Hours for fans. The official release and the schedule of events is available by clicking here.

Other franchises do this sort of thing, and I think it could be a nice event to attend. Specifically, my understanding is that the February 7th event at the Green Turtle in White Marsh includes a guest bartending feature. So if you’ve ever wanted to get a martini from an Orioles’ player or coach, there’s your chance!

However this all falls under community outreach, and it’s a good thing. You’ll notice that none of the events on the docket are actually in Baltimore. They’re in surrounding suburbs and across the Old Line State. As opposed to FanFest or Winter Warm-up, this event is about the Orioles coming to you.

Baltimore Orioles: How often to play starters this spring?

Baltimore Orioles’ pitchers and catchers are due to report to Ed Smith Stadium in Sarasota for Spring Training three weeks from yesterday (February 11th). It’s going to happen – ready or not! Roughly a week later position players will be due to report, and February 22nd is the Grapefruit League opener on the road against the Atlanta Braves.

What will the lineup look like that day for the Orioles? Which players get the plush travel assignment that morning from manager Brandon Hyde, and get to play “on the road” against Atlanta? How often veterans or starters find themselves wearing gray during the spring is always an interesting topic.

I would submit that Oriole “regulars” should be seeing as much time as possible in these spring games. This is a very important spring training for the O’s, as they want to make some strides this year. And it all starts in the spring.

It’s a tough line to walk at times because Brandon Hyde will also want to get a look at some younger players, and some minor leaguers. And you do have to be fair to those guys about getting them into games and giving them time to develop. However the “regulars” could also benefit from appearing in an additional game or two above the slate of home games at Ed Smith Stadium.

This isn’t to say that the regulars get the day off when the team’s on the road and they aren’t on the travel roster. They stay behind at the complex, work out, take batting practice, etc. It’s still very much a full work day for them. But nothing beats live games.

Baltimore Orioles: Adley Rutschman get spring training invite

The Baltimore Orioles are giving their top prospect from last year’s draft, Adley Rutschman, an invite to big league spring training. That means that anyone who makes the trek down to Sarasota for Florida Grapefruit League games starting next month will potentially get a look at Rutschman.

Fans shouldn’t let this get their hopes up to see Rutschman in the big leagues this year. The Orioles would be foolish to bring Rutschman to the big leagues in 2020. It’s impossible that he’s ready for that. Seasoning a prospect does in fact take time.

But we will see him in major league games during the spring. I would expect him to be on travel rosters as the spring goes on, meaning he’ll be facing some big league pitching. I’d also expect to see him as a defensive replacement in home games at Ed Smith Stadium, giving the home fans a chance to see him play. Again however, don’t be shocked when he’s cut and goes down to minor league camp. This is just a chance for him to get his beak wet.

Baltimore Orioles: MLB Handled the Houston scandal properly

Baltimore Orioles’ fans and fans of other teams across the league are increasingly more angry at MLB commissioner Rob Manfred regarding the Houston Astros’ cheating scandale. Many people are saying that the players should be punished for their transgressions. They’re right about that – but so is the commissioner in terms of how this was handled.

The players should absolutely face discipline. However while this hasn’t been confirmed, it’s presumed that all 69 players that were interviewed were granted immunity by Commissioner Manfred. Again this is assumed, however if immunity was granted one would be led to believe that it was done in writing.

So given the outrage that exists, if Commissioner Manfred went back on his word and issued discipline to players, he would be putting the league at legal risk. And it would be an open-and-shut case. So then people demand to know why immunity was granted in the first place. The answer is fairly easy…

…the league would have never cracked the case the way that it did had there been no testimony from players. And the only way the commissioner could get the players to talk was through a promise of immunity. It’s all very much a Catch-22 in a sense.

But there’s another reason that giving immunity to the players was the right thing to do. Commissioner Manfred undoubtedly saw how things spiraled out of control during the NFL’s Bountygate scandal. Suspending the coaches and executives involved isn’t privy to an appeal. When NFL players were suspended for their roles in that scandal, the union got involved and it turned into a mess.

So the immunity situation aside, Manfred didn’t want to be in a situation where he was suspending multiple players and having the MLBPA get involved in appeals among other things. They want this to go away, as well they should.

Again, Commissioner Manfred would be putting the league at legal risk if he disciplined the players at this point. Now the is an exception to this. If new evidence were to come out, or if a player or players were found to have lied, one could then argue the immunity was null and void. However as it stands now, this is just something with which fans will have to deal and accept.

Baltimore Orioles: Is Rio Ruiz the answer at third?

Rio Ruiz provided the Baltimore Orioles and their fans with the most memorable moment of the 2019 season, hitting a walk off homer to defeat the Houston Astros in August. (Evidently Houston didn’t have some elaborate cheating scheme going that day at Camden Yards. But I digress.) the big question facing him now is whether or not he’ll be the starting third baseman in 2020.

And the answer to that appears to be yes. If for no other reason, by default. He’s the main third base candidate on the roster right now. Granted that could change, but for now it’s the case. Last year Ruiz started 114 games at the hot corner. Now before people say that whatever the O’s did last year didn’t work, keep in mind that they’re a rebuilding team. They’re trying to find their way.

Incidentally, Ruiz also fielded at a 9.69 clip at third last year. There’s room for improvement, but that means that almost 97% of the time Ruiz wasn’t committing an error. Most teams will take that.

Offense is Ruiz’s bugaboo in a sense. He only hit .232 last year. And he’s struggled at the plate for much of his short career. The Orioles would like to see more production out of that spot in the lineup.

However again, I suspect that Ruiz will be the starting third baseman in Sarasota, and on Opening Day at Oriole Park at Camden Yards. This barring a free agent signing or a trade.

Baltimore Orioles: Did MLB crackdown on cheating for more than one reason?

Commissioner Rob Manfred put the Baltimore Orioles and the rest of MLB on notice with his penalties to the Houston Astros this week regarding sign stealing and cheating. It’s not going to be tolerated. For the record, I agree with that, and I agree with the penalties to Houston (and eventually Boston).

However I also suspect that these penalties are being dished out for more reasons thank just the integrity of the game, per se. Professional sports, including Major League Baseball, are getting cozier and cozier with the gambling industry. I won’t get into the hypocrisy of this regarding baseball, but I’ll simply state that the fact is the league’s accepting gambling more and more.

PointsBet Sportsbook announced yesterday that any bets involving the New York Yankees, the Houston Astros, and/or the World Series in 2017 will be issued a full refund. Now while the Yankees’ sense of entitlement with 26 rings in their arsenal already does come across as smug, the fact is that anyone who placed a bet does have a legitimate gripe.

Sportsbooks are going to eventually be partners to various leagues. Heck, there are rumors that part of the new entertainment center at Nationals Park in Washington is going to be a Sportsbook. Can you imagine that? Gambling IN a big league park?

However if that’s going to become a thing, it behooves MLB to ensure that the games are fair more and more. And I suppose there’s some irony in that. Gambling helping to clean up the game. Imagine that.

Baltimore Orioles: Buck Showalter interviewed with Houston

Former Baltimore Orioles’ manager Buck Showalter interviewed yesterday with the Houston Astros earlier this week for their managerial job. Showalter of course led the O’s from August of 2010 through the culmination of the 2018 season. Showalter led the O’s to their first playoff birth since 1997 in 2012, and their first division crown in as much time in 2014. His contract was not renewed at the end of 2018.

Personally I think it would be a perfect situation for Buck. It would probably be the most talented team by far that he would have inherited in his career. It’s a championship-caliber team, that will probably have a chip on it’s shoulder given the scandal which has erupted. Buck’s probably just the type of manager who would be able to put a stop to the type of antics which got Houston into this mess to begin with.

The flip side of course is the Orioles. More specifically, the Orioles’ fans. While it would be tougher to see him go to Boston because they’re in the Orioles’ division, I think it would be hard for a lot of people seeing Buck manage another team. And I’m not going to lie, you can count this non-biased writer as one of them.

While I understood why the Orioles wanted to make a clean break and go in a totally different direction after 2018, I did feel that Showalter should have had the opportunity to come back if he wanted to do so. I still feel that way. It wasn’t just the fact that he put a winning product on the field for the first time in so many years, it was that he restored pride to an organization and a city that had searched for it for so long.

That’s Buck Showalter’s legacy in Baltimore. It’s simple, but poetic. He restored pride to the Orioles. And in large part to the fans as well. He often said that he “got Baltimore.” And that’s important; it’s a city that a lot of people find difficult to “get,” for one reason or another. So would it be tough to see him in another uniform? Absolutely. But that’s how this business of baseball works sometimes.

Former Toronto manager John Gibbons is also reportedly going to interview for the job. Which direction they go is another story, but ANY organization would be lucky to have Buck Showalter at the helm. With that said, Orioles fans shouldn’t blame manager Brandon Hyde for not being Buck. Yes, personally I believe that Buck should still be here. But that’s not to say that Hyde isn’t a good guy for the job, and that he isn’t doing a decent job.

For what it’s worth, Houston comes to Camden Yards for a three-game set on Friday, June 5th. If Buck Showalter’s in the third base side visitors’ dugout, my hope is that Baltimore turns out that night and that weekend and shows it’s appreciation.

Baltimore Orioles: Could the Birds take advantage after the cheating scandal?

The Baltimore Orioles find themselves in a league with two teams that already are and/or will be guillotined due to the cheating scandal in MLB. Both Houston and Boston have fired their managers, and while the organizational discipline hasn’t come down yet on Boston, odds are it’ll be similar to what we saw with Houston. The Orioles have the additional benefit of being in the same division with Boston, a team which again is about to be handicapped for years to come.

Could this help the Orioles in 2020? Yes…it could possibly help them. But more poignantly, does it make the Orioles reconsider their strategy of not going after big ticket items? And by that, I mean via trades.

I think it’s a long shot, but there’s always a chance that GM Mike Elias in effect decides to become a buyer in a sense, and maybe makes a trade for a player currently on Houston or Boston’s roster. Again, I think this is a long shot. But it’s something to consider, and it’s something that I hope Elias would at least give some thought to doing. If not now, perhaps at the trade deadline.

Why should this effect the Orioles’ direction? Those two teams are going to be losing some top draft picks the next couple of years. That will thin out the herd in their farm systems by a country mile. So might they perhaps consider swinging a trade for a major league player right now in exchange for a prospect who could re-energize their farm system?

I suspect that both teams would hold off on doing something like that until after the season starts. They’re both still good teams with good players; odds are they aren’t about to punt the season before it starts. Now if at the deadline things aren’t going well, would it not be something they’d at least consider?

Which brings us back to the Orioles. Would they want to potentially move the rebuilding process along quicker by perhaps acquiring a great player from a championship-caliber team? That’s really a tough call. You’d be sacrificing some farm system depth for a player who probably isn’t going to help you right here and right now. But one who perhaps might have a few years left of team control and could help you to contend down the line. I can’t tell you which is the best way to proceed. But I can tell you that I think Elias would be foolish to not at least consider that option.

Baltimore Orioles: Who’s managing Boston on Sunday, March 23rd?

The Baltimore Orioles open the home portion of their Florida Grapefruit League schedule on Sunday March 23, 2020 against the Boston Red Sox. It’s fairly safe to say that Brandon Hyde will be in the home dugout at Ed Smith Stadium that afternoon managing the O’s. But who’s going to be manning the third base side visitors’ dugout?

As of last night, Boston’s current manager, Alex Cora, and the BoSox “mutually agreed to part ways.” Basically, the writing was on the wall. Incidentally the league said that the investigation into the Red Sox is still ongoing, and Cora and the organization could still face penalties. If what happened to Houston is any blueprint, the Red Sox organization is about to be guillotined.

Because he figured so prominently in the Houston situation and then appeared to bring the same system to Boston, many people “in the know” are saying that discipline for Cora was going to be worse than what Hinch got in Houston. Are we talking perhaps a two-year suspension? That part’s unclear.

Many fans have openly wondered whether the tentacles of this thing could reach the Orioles given that Mike Elias and much of his staff came from Houston. Anything’s possible, folks. Let’s not kid ourselves into thinking that Houston and Boston were the only teams pulling stunts like this. That would be incredibly naive and foolish.

However I tend to believe that Elias would have been suspended on Monday with the rest of the Houston personnel had he been on the league’s radar. I also tend to believe that given the fact that his name didn’t appear in the official report, odds are he’s in the clear. But you know who’s not in the clear? The Boston Red Sox.