Last winter, the Orioles signed free agent shortstop José Iglesias to a one-year contract with a club option for 2021. At a position where you want to have a plus defender, he will be that for the Orioles when we see baseball again. He posted a career-high 1.4 Defensive Wins Above Replacement last season and leads all major league shortstops in fielding percentage since 2015. But the Orioles hope the long-term future of the position is currently on the farm, where in recent years, the club...

Oklahoma head coach Skip Johnson is a baseball lifer. He played the game in college for four seasons and has coached baseball since 1994, most recently as a long-time assistant at Texas from 2007-2016. Johnson arrived in Norman, Okla., in 2017 as the pitching coach and then took over the Sooners' top spot in June of that year. He has worked with eventual major leaguers in the past, especially those who played high school baseball in Texas. So when he puts those players in the same sentence...

The 2020 Minor League Baseball season is likely to be canceled as the sport remains shut down due to the coronavirus pandemic. However, the Orioles have made the decision to continue paying the players' stipends through the rest of the schedule. The team made the announcement earlier today. The final day of the regular season would have been Sept. 7, but the spring training camps closed on March 12 and there's been no activity. The Orioles already had agreed to $400 weekly payments through...

At a time when turning on the news can be depressing in so many ways, baseball had the chance to be our hero in recent weeks. We turn to sports for enjoyment and entertainment. It is a great diversion from life's issues for a few hours. Baseball had the chance. But so far, baseball has failed. The constant bickering between the players and owners, I believe, has had an opposite effect. I call it negotiation fatigue. Fans are tiring of the back and forth and tired of hearing another day when...

If the Orioles can complete their rebuild project and become perennial contenders, which is how it's supposed to play out, there could be a handful of first-round draft picks to hoist the World Series trophy. A team can dream. Adley Rutschman is supposed to be behind the plate for pitchers Grayson Rodriguez and DL Hall. Maybe Cody Sedlock as well, though he's much lower on various prospect lists. Hunter Harvey could close out the final game, assuming that he earns the role of late-inning...

While waiting for the commissioner to try to sell us on a season that will last about as long as spring training ... As I reviewed the list of past Orioles selections in the First-Year Player Draft, a yearly endeavor that illuminates the misses more than the hits, I stumbled upon a reliever taken with the 19th overall pick in 1993 out of Mississippi State. The same school, by the way, that produced shortstop Jordan Westburg, selected by the Orioles on Wednesday with the 30th pick. Jay Powell...

The Orioles didn't select a pitcher in the 2019 First-Year Player Draft until the College of Charleston's Griffin McLarty in the eighth round. They kept bypassing the top-rated arms this week and choose Carter Baumler from Dowling Catholic High in Iowa in the fifth and final round. Are the Orioles duplicating the approach used by the Astros to build a World Series champion? It would make sense, given executive vice president/general manager Mike Elias' role in those drafts. But the Astros...

When Hudson Haskin's world shut down in March, lives changing in drastic measures due to the coronavirus pandemic, he had no idea whether he'd play college baseball again. And whether the impact on his status in the First-Year Player Draft would be minimal or severe. Like so many other people around the world, all he could do was wait through it and count his blessings. Haskin wouldn't see another pitch at Tulane University, but the Orioles made it clear that they wanted him in their minor...

The Orioles selected six players the last two nights in the First-Year Player Draft and the first five-round Major League Baseball draft ever is in the books. In a Zoom call with Baltimore reporters late last night, O's supervisor of domestic scouting operation Brad Ciolek expanded on the club's scouting and interest in top pick Heston Kjerstad, the University of Arkansas outfielder that went No. 2 overall. "We liked him as a bat coming out of high school," Ciolek said. "At Arkansas, he...

Two days of the First-Year Player draft provided the ideal distraction from the back and forth between ownership and the Major League Baseball Players Association. Barely a peep about the length of a proposed season, percentages of prorated pay and an expanded playoff format that could shove 16 teams into October. And now, back to our regularly scheduled bickering, already in progress. Selecting players from the college and high school ranks is followed by negotiations on contracts, with the...