Unless you're one of those who mines the minor leagues for every possible nugget of information, you didn't really know who Jake Noll was heading into 2019 spring training for the Nationals. Maybe you knew he was a seventh-round pick in the 2016 First-Year Player Draft out of Florida Gulf Coast. Maybe you were aware that he'd followed up a .291/.341/.412 campaign between Single-A Potomac and Double-A Harrisburg in 2018 with a .265/.309/.429 log in limited Arizona Fall League play with Salt...

The return of Wade LeBlanc to the Orioles organization came as a surprise with no access to behind-the-scenes negotiations. LeBlanc walked off the mound on Aug. 23, went on the 60-day injured list, hit the free agent market again and figured to be a fading memory in Orioles history. I don't recall anyone predicting that he'd sign another minor league deal, but he's going back to the Ed Smith Stadium complex later this month. The attention given to his return disappeared as quickly as LeBlanc...

The Los Angeles Dodgers now have a rotation featuring three Cy Young Award winners, and the Orioles of a few years ago know what it is like to challenge that. I think the Dodgers made a smart move with the free agent signing of right-hander Trevor Bauer. Yes, Bauer can opt after the first or second years of the deal, but Los Angeles hopes to get the top-of-rotation quality Bauer and maybe win another World Series or two over the next two years. For that, they could be out $40 million for his...

The signing of a veteran starting pitcher was a certainty as the Orioles attempted to set their camp roster. Could have been a major league deal, could have been a minor league deal. Could have been one major league and one minor league deal. Could have been two minor league deals. But an experienced starter was going to be slotted into the rotation. Deal with it. Wade LeBlanc reached agreement last week on a minor league contract, followed by former Cy Young Award winner Félix Hernández...

When did veteran starter Wade LeBlanc know that he was coming back to the Orioles? Shortly after he left them. LeBlanc didn't pitch after the first inning of an Aug. 23 game against the Red Sox at Camden Yards, his sixth start with his new team, due to a stress fracture in his left elbow. The Orioles put him on the 60-day injured list while recalling rookie Keegan Akin, but shortened the distance between them despite LeBlanc's return to Louisiana. The Orioles kept checking on LeBlanc's...

We've been surmising all winter that the National League East is going to be a beast in 2021. And now that winter is turning into spring (at least, in Florida and Arizona) we're starting to get a true sense of what each of the division's five clubs will actually look like this season. That was especially true Friday when the Nationals' two likeliest challengers were directly involved in the two biggest free agent signings of the day: Marcell Ozuna, who went back to the Braves for four years...

He may have ultimately opted out of the 2020 big league season, but the Orioles would certainly take a repeat of Félix Hernández's spring training performance from last year when the right-hander takes the mound in Sarasota over the next few weeks. Signed by the club this week to a minor league deal that will pay him $1 million if he's in the majors, Hernández recorded a 1.98 ERA with 14 strikeouts over 13 2/3 innings. He was well on his way to wrapping up a spot in the Atlanta...

Mark Daschbach didn't miss a single game of his son's junior season at Stanford. As Andrew Daschbach tore through the Pac-12 in 2019, smashing 17 home runs for the second consecutive year, Mark was there to witness it all. "I think he lives vicariously through me," Andrew said. Mark, a Stanford graduate himself, even made the trip east from Atherton, Calif., several times later that year to see Andrew begin his pro career with the short-season Single-A Aberdeen IronBirds. "He's loved...

So little went right for the Nationals last season that it's easy to get excited about the players that made significant improvement. Tanner Rainey is one of them, a bulldog of a right-hander who used the shortened 2020 season to show that all that fantasy baseball chatter about players making a leap in their age-27 seasons isn't just idle babble. Rainey has something few pitchers possess: a triple-digit fastball with life. And though he is often mentioned as a closer of the future, the...

Hi, folks. It's been a while since we've done one of these. That's in part because there's finally been a nice run of news to report and analysis to write the last couple of weeks. It took long enough, but at last stuff is happening. And now we're a mere 12 days away from pitchers and catchers reporting to West Palm Beach, Fla. Are the Nationals done building their 2021 roster? Is the lineup deep enough? Is the bullpen stocked with enough reliable arms? Is the bench still missing...