When I came across this article recently, the prevailing feeling was jealousy. This guy has caught 81 home run balls during big league games over the years. Over the years, before I began to work in the media and more than a few years ago, I attended hundreds and hundreds of games. My home run caught count is zero.
Yep, only 81 behind and my days in the stands hoping to catch a homer are pretty much over.
I think there are stories out there of fans claiming to have caught thousands of baseballs...
When you look at the various lists of Orioles top prospects, most of them will have more hitters than pitchers among the top 10. That is certainly true of MLBPipeline.com, which ranks hitters as six of its top nine prospects for the Orioles, and Baseball America, which ranks hitters in six of the top eight spots.
And these include high draft picks the club has made since executive vice president and general manager Mike Elias and his staff took over before the 2019 season. He has been here for...
According to stats on FanGraphs.com, Orioles pitchers collectively averaged 93 mph with their fastball velocity in 2021. At one time, that number may have been among the best in the majors, but it only ranked tied for 20th last season. The New York Yankees and Chicago White Sox tied for the major league lead, averaging 94.7 mph per fastball.
Among O's pitchers throwing 20 innings or more last season, just four averaged 95 mph or more.
96.8 mph - Tanner Scott 95.9 mph - Connor Greene 95.5 mph -...
While we have taken some space here in recent days to begin to size up 2022 Orioles rotation candidates - and will continue to do some of that moving forward - let's take a look at the bigger picture today.
That is, the rotation as a whole and how should team management approach it this coming season?
Plan A: The club has reached an agreement with right-hander Jordan Lyles. At a minimum, they hope he can eat some innings allowing younger pitchers more time to get minor league seasoning...
In recent years, there were not many players signed as international amateurs by the Orioles that made it all the way to the majors. But Aussie Alexander Wells pulled that off during the 2021 season, making his big league debut in late June.
The soft-tosser had four stints on the roster, beginning with his initial recall from Triple-A Norfolk on June 25. Over 11 games (eight starts), he went 2-3 with a 6.75 ERA. Over 42 2/3 innings, he allowed 53 hits and 10 homers with 16 walks and 26...
The new year arrives. We break out the new calendars. And it's also a good time to take a look ahead at what might be coming.
As it relates to baseball, getting a new collective bargaining agreement worked out before the scheduled start of spring training would be a great start. So fingers crossed that we see that early during 2022.
But once the season does begin, what could 2022 hold for the Orioles?
Will the team begin to turn the corner?: This would be big for a suffering fan base that has...
During a season that ended with 110 losses, there were still some things that were positives and/or just plain fun about the 2021 season. And it's not that starting next year that we won't still look back. We will. But today, on the final day of the 2021 calendar, we take another look back at the Orioles season.
Here are some of the best things we saw, wrote about and talked about this year.
No. 1 - Trey Mancini played in 147 games: After dealing with cancer and chemotherapy treatments, Trey...
Right-hander Mike Baumann, still one of the Orioles' top pitching prospects, had a cameo in the big leagues last September. There were two outings without an earned run allowed and two where he gave it up. But there was not much to judge or analyze off a 10-inning small sample.
But Baumann ended 2021 making it to the big leagues. And that was a success since his season began amid lingering injury concerns and a two-inning outing on May 15 at low Single-A Delmarva. His early numbers were not...
This time of year is usually pretty slow in baseball. And with the lockout on top of that, it's been real slow. And things may not speed up for a while, but hopefully it won't be too far into the new year when we get some better news on that front.
Today I want to wish every reader and your family a merry Christmas and happy holidays! I appreciate this community today and every day.
Just a short entry today to look back at a few recent items of news and feel free to leave any comments. But...
When Christmas Eve comes along every year, I always think back to where I was on Dec. 24, 1977, and how sports kind of ruined Christmas for the high school junior me that year.
I was at Baltimore's Memorial Stadium with about 60,000 other fans hoping to cheer on the Colts to a playoff win over coach John Madden's Oakland Raiders. The winner of that game would move on to the AFC Championship. Looking back now, so many years later, there was a ton of talent on the field that day and the game...
It was a bit of a surprise when the Orioles reached an agreement with free agent right-hander Jordan Lyles on a deal that will pay him $7 million for the 2022 season. They agreed to sign Lyles before the lockout began, but the signing will not become official until after it ends.
But when it does end, will Lyles' deal be just the first the Orioles add with free agent pitchers? Will they sign another pitcher to a similar deal, and if so, who could it be?
After the experience of last season,...
Sometimes in this space, we take a look at the Orioles at a micro level, checking on the present and future for a player like Tyler Wells, as we did here on Monday. Sometimes we take a bigger-picture view, discussing how the rebuild is going, as we did here yesterday.
The 30,000-foot view can often be more fun to discuss - and more complicated, too. Yesterday's blog produced many interesting comments. Some predictable, some not. As always, some see what the Orioles are doing - the rebuilding -...
The rebuilding of a baseball team - in this case, the Orioles - can be extremely hard to judge along the way. In the end, probably years from now, it will be easier to look back and see if executive vice president and general manager Mike Elias and his staff made more right moves along the way.
The rebuild's success or ultimate failure will be easier to judge in a long view looking backward.
Did they win enough to produce a contending team, one built to contend over many years, not just one or...
Considering that there are often situations where teams selecting pitchers in the Rule 5 draft try to spend all season hiding such a player and using him sparingly, right-hander Tyler Wells worked out much better than that for the 2021 Orioles.
In looking back at the Rule 5 from Dec. 10, 2020, there were 18 players selected in the major league phase. With the 5th pick, the Orioles took right-hander Mac Sceroler from the Cincinnati Reds, and with the 17th pick, they selected Wells from the...
It's been a while so it's about time for me to ask my readers once again about their opinions. Time for our latest edition of "A Few Questions for O's fans."
With a lockout ongoing the news has come more slowly, but there have still been some things happening, such as the announcement this week of the 2022 big league coaching staff.
So on to today's questions.
* Trey Mancini, after missing the entire 2020 season, returned last year to produce a stat line of .255/.326/.432 and played in...
One is not officially signed yet and one is, but the Orioles have contract agreements in place with infielder Rougned Odor and right-handed pitcher Jordan Lyles. The Odor deal was announced and Lyles' pact will become official after the lockout ends.
The term placeholder - not a favorite of mine - comes to mind here. They were not added to be key players of the club's core moving forward. They were added to help now, eat innings, hit a few homers, hold down a position while the club waits for...
Over the years, in both the minors and major leagues, Orioles outfielder Austin Hays has flashed his vast potential and multi-tool talent. He showed more of that during a 2021 season where he was able to stay on the field for 131 games and 529 plate appearances. He ranked fourth on the team in both categories, behind only Cedric Mullins, Trey Mancini and Ryan Mountcastle. With young outfielders like Kyle Stowers and Robert Neustrom getting closer to the majors, and Yusniel Diaz still trying...
The Orioles added two pitchers Wednesday in the Triple-A phase of the Rule 5 draft. This phase is very different than the major league Rule 5, which was postponed for now during the lockout. These players do not need to be placed on the 40-man roster and they are, essentially, now Orioles. No need to send either of them back to the team from which each was claimed. They can also play on any affiliate the Orioles send them to in 2022.
Since these players were neither on any club's 40-man roster...
I recently talked with Jim Callis of MLBPipeline.com about some of the players the Orioles selected in the 2021 First-Year Player Draft. But we also, for a separate Zoom interview, discussed some players that had big years this past season on the O's farm. Players who did not yet need to be added to the 40-man roster but players who, in the case of three of them, are closing in on a shot with the Orioles.
We discussed outfielder Kyle Stowers, who played at three levels in 2021, ending the year...
They were the last Orioles affiliate to win a league championship. They had to rally from being down two games to one in a best-of-five finals to win, but did, and an epic postgame celebration followed when the 2015 Double-A Bowie Baysox claimed their one and only Eastern League championship.
That Bowie team included Trey Mancini, Chance Sisco, Mike Yastrzemski and Corban Joseph, plus some minor league vets that came up big, like Quincy Latimore, Brandon Snyder, Terry Doyle and Garabez...