SARASOTA, Fla. – Cedric Mullins, Anthony Santander and Dean Kremer will be leaving Orioles camp in a few weeks to get ready for the World Baseball Classic. They got together this morning on the Camden Yards replica field and played their own game.

Kremer threw live batting practice to Mullins and Santander, providing one of the most interesting scenes from the first three days of spring training workouts.

You can only watch so many bullpen sessions.

Mullins drove Kremer’s final pitch over the right field fence and the batting cage beyond it. Some observers gasped and hollered, but Mullins downplayed his achievement, saying Kremer told him what was coming.

An impressive blast, nonetheless.

SARASOTA, Fla. – With his fourth bullpen session completed, the intensity level on a gradual increase, Orioles closer Félix Bautista is gaining confidence that he’ll break camp with the team and be ready to pitch on Opening Day in Boston.

Bautista didn’t begin throwing until last month. The Orioles placed him on a rehab program for his left knee and worked to strengthen a right shoulder that became fatigued in September.

The delays in getting back on a mound put into question whether Bautista would be included in their eight-man bullpen.  

“Thank God I feel really good,” he said this morning via interpreter Brandon Quinones. “I don’t feel like I have any setbacks, I don’t feel any discomfort or pain in my shoulder or knee, so as right now I hope that I’ll be ready for opening day. I really do.”

Dillon Tate might miss the first month with a strained right flexor/forearm strain, and losing Bautista would strike another potentially damaging blow. Bautista threw again yesterday and headed back indoors, optimistic about his progress and the outlook for his spring training.

SARASOTA, Fla. – Seth Johnson has a locker inside the Orioles' spring training clubhouse, his seat at one end of a row that includes veteran Kyle Gibson and heralded rookies Grayson Rodriguez and DL Hall. Johnson is on the 40-man roster and various organizational top-prospect lists, placing 10^th in the most recent rankings from MLBPipeline.com, 12^th on Prospects150 – which describes his upside as “immense”- and 16^th by The Athletic.

Where you won’t find Johnson after the Orioles break camp is on an affiliate’s roster. He can’t pitch following his Tommy John surgery in August, two days after they acquired him from the Rays in a three-team trade that sent clubhouse leader and inspiration Trey Mancini to the Astros.

The Orioles obviously knew of the pending procedure, which likely made him available, along with the deep pitching in Tampa Bay’s system, and deemed him as worth the wait.

Many baseball insiders regarded him as a steal.

Johnson, a 24-year-old right-hander and 40^th overall pick in the 2019 draft out of Campbell University, the same North Carolina school that produced center fielder Cedric Mullins, had a hunch that he might be traded. But he also knew the unique circumstances, his elbow injury hardly an industry secret, could dissuade some teams from pursuing him.

SARASOTA, Fla. – Being two days into workouts prevents Orioles manager Brandon Hyde from identifying many rock-solid certainties, including roles for some pitchers who are in the starters mix. However, it isn’t too soon for him to wonder how he’s going to replace Félix Bautista if the big right-hander isn’t on the opening day roster.

Bautista threw a bullpen session earlier today, but he’s on a rehabilitation program for the left knee that he injured in late September, and the Orioles are working to strengthen his right shoulder after a bout with fatigue that limited his use down the stretch.

Whether Bautista is in Boston on March 30 depends on more than his health. He must reach an innings total that satisfies the Orioles after being withheld from earlier exhibition games.

“He could be able to break for Opening Day,” executive vice president/general manager Mike Elias said yesterday, “depending on how much of a ramp-up we’re able to get him.”

Bautista became the Orioles’ saves leader with 15 after they traded Jorge López to the Twins at the deadline. López totaled 19 during his first All-Star season.

SARASOTA, Fla. – The wave of injury news yesterday that dampened an otherwise energetic atmosphere surrounding the first workout for pitchers and catchers, and a return to spring training normalcy after three years of chaos, didn’t carry DL Hall out of the Orioles’ opening day plans.

Not in Hall’s mind, anyway.

Executive vice president/general manager Mike Elias revealed that Hall began experiencing soreness in his lower right lumbar area about three weeks ago, putting the rookie behind other pitchers in camp. Not as serious as Dillon Tate’s strained right flexor/forearm that could cost him the first month of the season. Perhaps not as threatening as Félix Bautista’s rehab on his left knee and work to strengthen his right shoulder that might limit his innings to where he can’t break camp with the team. But a red flag nonetheless when it’s raised above one of the top pitching prospects.

Hall said this morning that he felt “some minor discomfort” in his lower back. “Nothing too crazy.”

“Obviously, I’m already on the way back up,” he said. “I’ve already started back throwing and everything. I just shut down for a couple weeks. I’m good to go now.”

SARASOTA, Fla. – Tyler Wells lost about 20 pounds during the offseason and gained a fiancée last month. Two big wins for the right-hander before he stepped onto a mound.

Wells proposed to girlfriend Melissa after taking a deep breath captured on video, the only evidence of his nervousness. He knew that she’d accept, but the moment still threatened to overwhelm him.

As he's done in his professional life, Wells came through in the clutch.

Prone to what he called “stress eating,” Wells said his weight ballooned to 275 pounds before a stricter devotion to conditioning, inspired also by his two stops on the injured list in 2022, enabled him to recapture his 38-inch waist.

The former Rule 5 pick wants to hold onto his rotation spot but insists that he hasn’t sized up the competition.  

SARASOTA, Fla. – The Orioles implemented a policy under their new regime that eliminated public consumption of the contract statuses of their front office and manager. Brandon Hyde has entered his option year after his hiring in December 2018, but anything beyond it remains under wraps.  

Executive vice president/general manager Mike Elias, who’s believed to be working under a five-year deal handed out a month before he selected Hyde, also is unwilling to share any details. However, he offered more hints this morning about their long-term futures in Baltimore.

Asked specifically about Hyde, Elias said, “It’s an area that for better or for worse, I don’t believe it’s in the club’s interests, in anyone working here’s interests, to know the expiration dates on the contracts of our baseball ops employees. That includes him.

“I think you can look at the job that we’ve done rebuilding this team and I know he and I are very proud of it. Obviously, we have an outstanding working relationship so far that’s been very successful, in my opinion, and productive for the team, and I think that people are, for better or worse, going to have to get used to he and I here for a while. I think we’re going to have a lot of success going forward, and he’s done a great job and I was glad to see him get some recognition last year.

“I also was very proud of the fact that, for maybe the first time in recent baseball history, we’ve had the same manager from the beginning of a rebuild through the point of competition, and I think that says a lot and is something he doesn’t get enough credit for.”

SARASOTA, Fla. – The opening day roster projections in Orioles camp took a huge hit before players filtered onto the back fields for the first workout with pitchers and catchers.

Reliever Dillon Tate will begin the season on the injured list after straining his right flexor/forearm in November. The explanation for why he isn’t pitching in the World Baseball Classic.

Closer Félix Bautista is questionable for opening day because he’s been rehabbing his left knee all winter and immersed in a strengthening program for his right shoulder, which will keep him out of games until later in spring training.

Left-hander DL Hall also is going to be slow-played in camp after experiencing lower right lumbar discomfort about three weeks ago.

Executive vice president/general manager Mike Elias began this morning’s media session by listing the injuries and trying to offer projections on time missed.

SARASOTA, Fla. – Now it’s getting serious.

Stories will be filed from Florida camps, beginning with this morning’s hour-long media access inside the clubhouse at the Ed Smith Stadium complex. Executive vice president/general manger Mike Elias and manager Brandon Hyde will be available before the first workout with pitchers and catchers.

The Birdland Caravan provided early access to Elias, Hyde and many of the players who would draw crowds at their lockers.

Other topics for them will develop later. I’m interested in getting some of the guys who didn’t make it to Maryland and the breweries.

Newly engaged Tyler Wells is staying on a starter’s routine but with no promises that he’s in the rotation. What are his expectations? How would he handle a switch back to the bullpen after he went through the process of converting from Rule 5 relief to starter – and impressing over the first half before the first of his two injuries?

Report day has arrived for Orioles pitchers and catchers. No media access until Thursday morning, but spring training is underway.

Players are taking their physicals, a process that probably started earlier with the group that beat the deadline. The first official workout is Thursday but the fields and cages aren’t off-limits.

John Means said his first half-mound session is Monday, so we’ll have to wait.

I can’t wait for the next person to ask, “So, when do you leave for spring break?”

Let me put this as succinctly as possible, and in the spirit intended. It is not spring break. I am not chugging beers through a funnel and dancing on the beach at Siesta Key.

A dozen guarantees on the Orioles were published a few days ago, with me reserving the right to claim that my account was hacked if I’m wrong.

The safer road traveled is the one with plenty of exits and nothing concrete.

Here are a dozen subjects that come with assumptions, educated guesses and a range of possibilities, but they can’t be promised. We just don’t know without a crystal ball and a licensed fortune teller.

Are Dean Kremer, Kyle Bradish and Grayson Rodriguez in the opening day rotation?
We know two-fifths of it – Kyle Gibson and Cole Irvin. Kremer and Bradish earned the right to keep their jobs. How can you argue it? The club is on record that it wants Rodriguez to start. He has his own cheering section. But it would be wrong to write their names in ink. Too many other candidates, including Tyler Wells, DL Hall and Austin Voth.

The Orioles might or might not piggyback a starter.
It makes sense to do it. Could have six starters in a five-man rotation and better control Rodriguez’s workload. Makes sense not to because, as Mike Elias pointed out, the bullpen basically is reduced to seven relievers. That might be plenty on some teams, but the Orioles’ rotation isn't filled with innings eaters. So yes or no.

Cedric Mullins raised the bar to such impressive heights in 2021 with his first All-Star selection and Silver Slugger award, and becoming the first 30/30 player in Orioles history, that some regression the next summer was bound to happen. He became a tough act to follow. Blame it on himself.

Still productive at the plate, still dangerous on the basepaths and outstanding in the field, but a notch below his overall production.

Mullins established career highs with 64 RBIs and 34 steals. His 32 doubles were just five fewer than in the previous summer, and his 89 runs were only two short. He didn't commit an error and was a finalist for a Rawlings Gold Glove. But his average dropped from .291 to .258 and his OPS from .878 to .721.

Taking the usual offseason self-inventory has led Mullins to one particular area of his game. The decline versus left-handed pitching.

Mullins abandoned switch-hitting two years ago, surrendering to his poor splits and leaving the right side of the batter's box, and slashed .277/.337/.451 against southpaws. But he slashed .209/.265/.313 in 2022, compared to .279/.340/.441 against right-handers.

So close to the start of spring training, so insecure about how much I’m willing to guarantee about the 2023 Orioles.

They won’t move out of Baltimore during the season. Bet the house on it.

They won’t change managers. They won’t change mascots. They won’t change Boog’s BBQ into a vegan concession stand.

But what about the team itself prior to opening day? Here are a dozen:

Kyle Gibson and Cole Irvin are locks for the rotation.
One signed for $10 million and the other came in a trade that cost infield prospect Darell Hernaiz and is a needed left-hander. Gibson could be the opening day starter in Boston if the Orioles want a right-hander at Fenway Park. The Orioles expect Grayson Rodriguez to break camp in the rotation. They are openly rooting for it. But I can’t issue an absolute guarantee. At least, not at the Gibson/Irvin level.

Four more days before Orioles pitchers and catchers are due at the spring training complex in Sarasota. Where has the time gone?

The mailbag already is in the best shape of its life. Bulky but strong enough to handle the extra weight.

You know the routine. You ask, I answer, you trust that I’m in the know, I trust that you won’t fact-check me. And we have our latest sequel to the beloved original.

Please excuse the reckless disregard for editing. We’re informal here. Take off your shoes, unzip your pants. No one is judging you.

We serve brevity by the buckets. You want more clarity? See an optometrist.

The volatile nature of a major league bullpen can push teams out of their comfort zone and into pure survival mode. Doesn’t matter how good it was in past seasons. Relievers are fickle in nature. They can carry you one summer and let you down the next. Be the pulse and break your heart.

The Orioles departed their camp in 2022 hopeful, but far from certain, that they’d get the necessary support from Félix Bautista, Bryan Baker, Cionel Pérez, Joey Krehbiel and Keegan Akin. They had seen glimpses from Dillon Tate, but nothing that sustained over a full season. They were working to reinvent Jorge López after his failures as a starter.

What resulted was a 3.49 ERA that ranked ninth in the majors and enabled the Orioles to post their first winning record in six years. It instantly made Brandon Hyde a better manager, and a more relaxed one. It meant everything.

Baker had the strongest finish, with his last 11 appearances scoreless over 12 1/3 innings. He flourished when others faded, an unexpected development with only one major league outing prior to joining the Orioles.

The right-hander posted a 2.13 ERA in his final 40 games, compared to a 5.60 ERA in the first 26, which included two starts that fouled up his numbers. The ERA was 1.82 in the last 22 games.

The Orioles are bringing back seven of their minor league managers in the same roles in 2023, but also replacing and relocating several coaches.

Buck Britton will begin his second season as manager at Triple-A Norfolk after top prospects Adley Rutschman and Gunnar Henderson graduated to the majors last summer. Kyle Moore returns to Double-A Bowie, Roberto Mercado to High-A Aberdeen, Felipe Rojas Alou Jr. to Single-A Delmarva, Christian Frias to the Florida Complex League Orioles, and Chris Madera and Elbis Morel to the two Dominican Summer League entries.

Matt Packer shifts to complex coordinator of instruction after managing in the FCL last season. The Orioles are fielding one FCL team this year. They have a sufficient number of players, but only one game scheduled.

Among the new hires are Sherman Johnson as Bowie’s hitting coach and Austin Meine as Aberdeen pitching coach.

Johnson, who replaces Branden Becker, appeared in 10 game with the Angels in 2018 – going hitless in 11 plate appearances – and posted a .362 on-base percentage in nine minor league seasons that included stints in the Reds (2019) and Twins (2021) systems. He spent last year with independent Kane County.

Orioles outfielder Austin Hays takes pride in his ability to field anything that comes his way. Or anyone.

Hays was pouring beers at Crooked Crab Brewing Company in Odenton on Sunday, the Birdland Caravan’s final stop of the weekend, when a woman passed her 5-month-old daughter across the bar. An adorable and safe photo opportunity, with the baby secure in Hays’ hands.

The father of two young sons, Hays joked later that he might need a little girl to complete his family. After all, she did snuggle up against him. He took it as a sign.

In exactly one week, Orioles pitchers and catchers report to spring training in Sarasota and ready for the first workout the following morning. Position players are due the 20^th, but Hays won’t wait that long. He’s driven to give his team a complete season.

Hays avoided the injured list in 2022 but played in pain and delivered two different halves. He batted .270/.325/.454 with 12 home runs and 46 RBIs in the first 85 games and .220/.276/.349 with four homers and 14 RBIs in the last 60.

Players are heading down to Sarasota ahead of the designated report dates for spring training, and not just the five hitting prospects attending the development camp that began yesterday. Gunnar Henderson’s flight landed two days ago. The five Orioles participating in the World Baseball Classic – outfielders Cedric Mullins and Anthony Santander, pitchers Dean Kremer and Dillon Tate, and infielder Ramón Urías – will arrive early so they can leave camp early.

Rather than getting us closer to identifying the 26-man roster for opening day, it feels like the Birdland Caravan has created more confusion over its composition.

DL Hall may not fit in the mock bullpens, with executive vice president/general manager Mike Elias suggesting that the left-hander could be sent down if unable to make the rotation in spring training.

“That part hasn’t been decided,” Elias said. “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”

We knew that Hall would arrive in camp as a starter and be stretched out, that the Orioles would keep developing him to occupy a spot in the rotation, but the ‘pen seemed like a solid and logical alternative following his 10 appearances last September. A weapon for the later innings.

The Orioles began their latest development camp this morning at the Ed Smith Stadium complex, with five of their top prospects working out until Feb. 14.

Outfielders Colton Cowser and Heston Kjerstad and infielders Jackson Holliday, Coby Mayo and Connor Norby are spring training invites receiving an opportunity to meet early with the major league staff and instructors.

Manager Brandon Hyde, co-hitting coaches Ryan Fuller and Matt Borgschulte, offensive strategy coach Cody Asche and strength and conditioning coach Trey Wiedman will be joined by Triple-A Norfolk manager Buck Britton, coordinator of instruction Jeff Kunkel, minor league hitting coach Brink Ambler and High-A Aberdeen development coach Ryan Goll.

Ambler served as Single-A Delmarva’s hitting coach in 2022 after his promotion from minors technology coordinator.

MLB Pipeline ranks Holliday as the Orioles’ No. 3 prospect after they selected him with the first overall pick in last year’s draft. Cowser is fourth, Mayo seventh, Kjerstad ninth and Norby 11^th.

The blonde hair was much shorter, but Kyle Stowers kept his same enthusiasm for being a major league player. The excitement about debuting in August, the smiles as fans lined up to get a photo with him in Salisbury.

He greeted one group as if they were friends from high school.

Stowers isn’t assuming that he’s on the Orioles’ roster for opening day. The chances are good, but to relax about it is risking a rude wakeup call.

“I want to be there,” Stowers said, “and I want to help the team win in every way I can.”

Stowers played in 34 games, the first two in Toronto during a June series after Anthony Santander went on the restricted list due to his vaccination status. The real call-up came in August, with the Orioles still in the thick of the wild card race.