There is publicly available data from outlets like FanGraphs.com and BaseballSavant.com that can provide us some, shall we say, just beyond the basic stats information.

My curiosity yesterday led me to this question: How did opponents pitch the Orioles this season? Did they get more fastballs than other teams saw or less? Which pitches did they see more than others?

Here is what the O's batters were thrown this year and how that ranked in MLB and the ranking is from first (as in they saw the most fastballs to 30th, they saw the least) to least.

* Fastballs - 47.6 percent, 16th in MLB.

* Sliders - 20.1 percent, 30th in MLB.

For eight players from the Orioles organization, the 2024 Arizona Fall League provided some nice high-level additional experience. Not only did they play on a Surprise Saguaros team that had the best record in the six-team league at 18-10, they played in the AFL championship game.

Salt River beat Surprise 3-2, but players got in extra work the last few weeks that could benefit them down the road.

The Fall League experience was also nice for Surprise manager Roberto Mercado, who managed the Orioles High-A Aberdeen teams in 2022 and 2023 and was skipper this past season at Double-A Bowie.

The Baysox were 62-75 this season. Aberdeen went 147-120 in his two seasons there, advancing to the playoffs in a 2022 season which ended with Mercado being named the O’s Cal Ripken Sr. Player Development Award winner.

A former head coach at New Britian High School in Connecticut, who has several years' experience also coaching in the Cape Cod League, Mercado managed an AFL team featuring prospects from the Orioles, Astros, Guardians, Royals and Rangers.

I’m about 2 ½ weeks past my open-heart surgery and progress is slow but steady.

I just typed that sentence without having to lie down.

The heavier lifting comes as we move into December, into a new year and to Sarasota for spring training. The 40-man roster has 39 players and the Orioles have multiple items remaining on their shopping list. They also need to hire a bench coach and major league coach.

Let’s look at four more topics and decisions hovering around the Orioles, with you, the reader, telling me how they’re going to turn out.

John Means is rehabbing from his second Tommy John surgery and he’s a first-timer on the free-agent market. He has a second child on the way and the same desire to pitch.

The pending move from Nippon Professional Baseball to Major League Baseball by right-handed pitcher Roki Sasaki could create some chaos with MLB’s system to sign international amateurs.

Currently teams get limited pool amounts to sign these players, some as young as age 16. It is essentially a hard cap on the total amount a team can spend.

The issue here is that, at 23, Sasaki is too young to qualify to be signed as a “foreign professional” and he instead will be signed, per MLB rules, as an “international amateur” meaning he will be signed as a minor league free agent.

He is getting at most, the entire amount in the pool of the team he picks to sign with. In the international signing period that runs thru this Dec. 15, the Los Angeles Dodgers have the largest remaining pool amount, at $2,502,500 with the Orioles next at $2,147,300 followed by the New York Yankees at $1,487,200 and then San Francisco at $1,247,500.

Sasaki has not even been posted yet and that could lead his actual signing to occur after the beginning of a new international signing period on Jan. 15, 2025. At that point the bonus pools reset for all clubs for the Jan. 15 signing class. The top pools for several teams will have amounts of $7.555 million. The Orioles are in a group of teams that will have $6.908 million to spend.

The Orioles have made the following roster moves:

• Selected the contracts of RHP Kade Strowd and RHP Brandon Young from Triple-A Norfolk.

The Orioles’ 40-man roster currently has 39 players.

RHP Corbin Burnes and OF Anthony Santander have declined the club’s qualifying offers for the 2025 season.

When it comes to the Orioles offense, a much, much discussed topic in Birdland since the 2024 season ended, there are a variety of opinions.

Holding the one that counts most, Orioles executive vice president and general manager Mike Elias expressed his take on the Baltimore offense last Friday – the same day he announced the left-field wall was being moved in for next season.

That should help the team score more runs, but they were never lacking in homers actually, finishing second in the AL and MLB last year with 235.

Maybe the closer wall will help the O’s pursue a right-handed hitter via free agency, although Elias said that was not the reason for the move. This was more about the long-term and a continuing effort to get the home park to play more neutral with offense.

On a related matter, will the O’s offensive philosophy be changing, Elias was asked.

The Orioles don’t have much of a presence in this week’s Baseball Writers’ Association of America Awards. Tonight is their one chance at a winner.

Colton Cowser is a finalist for American League Rookie of the Year with Yankees pitcher Luis Gil and catcher Austin Wells.

The BBWAA doesn’t provide odds, which would give away the result and kill the drama. However, Cowser feels like the favorite as an everyday player with the offensive and defensive resume. Gil is the stiffest competition.

Cowser, 24, already earned the Players Choice award last month as the league’s Outstanding Rookie after batting .242/.321.447 with 24 doubles, three triples, 24 home runs, 69 RBIs and 52 walks in 153 games. He became the third Oriole in four years to be recognized following Ryan Mountcastle in 2021 and Gunnar Henderson in 2023. Adley Rutschman was a finalist in 2022.

The 172 strikeouts present an area for improvement in camp and during the upcoming season. Colton can get started on it after his left hand heals from surgery to repair a fracture.

If the Orioles do not re-sign right-hander Corbin Burnes and are not in the final hunt for lefty Max Fried and find that Roki Sasaki gets posted but signs with another team, there is still another stud pitcher out there to potentially sign.

He is a two-time Cy Young Award winner with huge strikeout numbers and was the best pitcher in the majors last season starting July 9. Did we mention he does not have a qualifying offer attached to him and no draft picks would be lost for signing him?

He is lefty Blake Snell, who in, what could be his one year with San Francisco, went 5-3 with a 3.12 ERA over 20 starts and 104 innings.

A Scott Boras client, Snell had designs on a $200 million dollar or more deal last winter via free agency. But he did not get that and signed very late, during training, with the Giants for a two-year deal and $62 million. It included an opt out after this past season and he has taken that.

Snell got off to a terrible start after signing late. He had a 9.51 ERA after his first six starts and made injured list stints with a left adductor strain and left groin strain. 

The hurricane damage to the roof of Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg will send the Tampa Bay Rays to a new home for the 2025 season.

When Hurricane Milton tore through Florida on Oct. 9, the storm's winds destroyed a large portion of Tropicana Field's fiberglass roof. 

The Rays will play their home games for next season at Steinbrenner Field in Tampa, which is about 20 miles from Tropicana Field. The Yankees use Steinbrenner Field as their spring training home, and that will continue. They also have a Low-A Florida State League team that uses that facility, and that will also continue, although they are expected to use other fields and not the stadium field. There are more than 40 days when the Rays and Tampa Tarpons will both be scheduled to play at Steinbrenner Field. 

The Rays will continue to hold spring training at Charlotte Sports Park in Port Charlotte. Their first regular-season homestand will take place at Steinbrenner Field. They host Colorado on Opening Day March 27 and play the Rockies and Pittsburgh in those first six home games. Tampa Bay will play 16 of its first 22 games next season in their temporary home at Steinbrenner Field.

Next season the Orioles are scheduled to play the Rays on the road June 16-19 for four games, and they will play a three-game series versus the Rays in Tampa from July 18-20, the first series out of the All-Star break.

The Orioles today announced their 2024 Holiday Gift Guide, featuring a variety of ticket offers, gift cards, merchandise, and Birdland Memberships, ensuring there is something to make every O’s fan happy this holiday season. 

Fans can get a head start on their holiday shopping during the Orioles Team Store Black Friday Sale on Friday, November 29, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Deals will include 40 percent off all men’s, women’s, and kids’ apparel, with the exclusion of jerseys, as well as 40 percent off all headwear. The first 150 customers at the Team Store will receive an Orioles Holiday Ornament and fans who spend $150 or more will get an Orioles Holiday Mini Bat. All fans who make a purchase will have the opportunity to spin the O’s Holiday Prize Wheel. Complimentary parking will be available in the North Warehouse Lot. For more information, visit Orioles.com/TeamStore.

GIFTS FOR EVERY FAN

City Connect Bomber Jacket

Get ready for winter, and March baseball, with the brand-new City Connect Bomber Jacket. The nylon bomber jacket features Baltimore across the chest, allowing fans to show off their hometown pride. The jackets are available in-person at the Orioles Team Store.

For some pro baseball players, a long, long season will end tonight in the Arizona Fall League championship game. O’s top 30 prospect Creed Willems is one of that group.

Spring training was a long time ago and so was his Opening Day with High-A Aberdeen April 5. It was a year where he missed several weeks mid-summer with a left hamstring injury. But he also advanced to Double-A Bowie for the season’s final 16 games. He put up a .784 OPS between the IronBirds and Baysox. He’s had a strong 19-game run for Surprise in the AFL, which hosts tonight’s championship game at 8 p.m. ET on MLB Network.

Then he will drive home to Texas and finally get some rest after a solid season for the O’s No. 22 prospect via MLBPipeline.com and No. 25 on Baseball America.

A catcher and lefty hitter, the O’s drafted Willems in round eight of the 2021 MLB Draft. He had a strong college commitment to TCU. But an over-slot $1 million dollar signing bonus sent him on his way to pro ball.

In 19 games for Surprise in the AFL, he’s hit a robust .338/.391/.500/.891 with five doubles, a triple, two homers and 11 RBIs. He played in the Fall Stars game.

The big news yesterday wasn’t a free-agent signing or trade. It wasn’t impactful to the 40-man roster.

Maybe later.

Moving in and lowering the left field wall makes it easier to recruit right-handed hitters who otherwise might grew frustrated by fly balls dying on the track. The Oriole bird logo should be replaced by Ryan Mountcastle tilting back his head.

Orioles hitters lost 72 home runs over the last three years, according to Baseball Savant. Pitchers are happy. Batters are boiling.

The club isn’t returning to the old dimensions. The field will be tilted more toward neutral with the wall brought in as much as 20 feet and as little as nine.

If the Orioles felt strongly enough about outfielder Heston Kjerstad to put him on their playoff rosters the last two Octobers – and they did do that – could he be in their starting outfield on Opening Day 2025?

If the O’s lose free agent slugger Anthony Santander to another team, could Kjerstad take his spot in right field?

One argument against or making that more challenging is the club’s stated desire to add a right-handed bat. That doesn’t mean that bat will be Santander’s replacement necessarily, should he leave, but finding a right-handed hitting corner outfielder could be done perhaps more easily than at some other defensive spots.

If Santander left and the starters in the outfield are Colton Cowser, Cedric Mullins and Kjerstad that is three lefty hitters.

But on the other hand, when will the O’s truly know or see what they have with Kjerstad? They liked him enough to draft him No. 2 overall in 2020 out of Arkansas. We know his injury history and the bout of myocarditis which set him back early in his career, but that is in his rear-view now and again, he’s been on two playoff rosters in two chances to be on one.

A few questions stuck to the bottom of the mailbag again.

An attendant at Sinai Hospital told me that eight ounces or more of cherry juice lowers blood pressure. The bottle must have leaked.

It never should have been inside the mailbag. That’s my fault.

You ask and I answer. Here we go.

Any new minor league signings to report?
Yes. The club announced yesterday that right-hander Robinson Martínez signed a minor league deal. Martínez, 26, pitched in the Phillies system from 2015-19 and in the Marlins system in 2021-22. He has a 4.92 ERA and 1.502 WHIP in 133 games (seven starts) and averages 5.2 walks, 9.6 strikeouts and 0.6 home runs allowed per nine innings. He hasn’t pitched above Double-A. The Orioles assigned him to the Bowie Baysox.

The Orioles have made the following roster move:

• Agreed to terms on a 2025 minor league contract with RHP Robinson Martinez.

For former Oriole Al Bumbry, the 1973 American League Rookie of the Year, it was a wonderfully deserved honor.

At their 34^th annual banquet last Saturday, the Middle Atlantic Scouts Association honored Bumbry, now 77, with their “A Life in Baseball” award.

The man known as “the Bee” has had quite a life in the sport indeed. A ROY award, a 14-year career (13 as an Oriole), an O’s World Series title in 1983 and named an Orioles Hall of Famer in 1987. He was also a MLB coach for three teams, including the 1995 Orioles.

His 252 stolen bases rank third most in O’s history behind only Brady Anderson and Brian Roberts. He is third on the club’s all time triples list (holding the team record once hitting three in one game), ranks eight in runs scored and 10^th in games played.

A great Oriole we know now.

Orioles executive vice president/general manager Mike Elias wants to tackle the major league roster again but he’s also diving for depth.

The club announced yesterday that it signed infielder Vimael Machin to a minor league contract. No word on whether the deal includes an invitation to spring training.

Machin is 31 years old and two removed from his last big league exposure. He appeared in 112 games with the Athletics from 2020-22 and batted .208/.290/.261 with 14 doubles and a home run in 361 plate appearances.

On the defensive side, Machin made 81 appearances at third base, 15 at shortstop, seven at second base and one at first. Most of his minor league experience also is at third.

Machin played in 52 games with Triple-A Lehigh Valley in the Phillies’ organization in 2023, but he also made stops in Mexico, Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic. He spent most of this year in Mexico and hit .401/.495/.579 with 31 doubles, one triple, seven home runs and 54 RBIs in 85 games.

The Orioles have made the following roster move:

• Agreed to terms on a 2025 minor league contract with INF Vimael Machin.

With eight players, a manager and a strength coach from the Orioles organization, the Surprise Saguaros are chasing an Arizona Fall League championship.

The six-team AFL will see its regular season end tomorrow. On Friday, the second and third place teams meet in a playoff semi-final game. The winner will advance to meet the No. 1 seed on Saturday night at 8 p.m. ET.

After a loss yesterday, Surprise remains in first place at 16-10 (.615) by one game over Glendale and Salt River (both 16-12, .571) with two to play. These are the likely playoff teams.

Surprise is managed by Roberto Mercado, who managed the O's Double-A Bowie team this year. 

A look at the eight O’s organization players on the Surprise roster: