The Orioles filled out their 40-man roster this afternoon while again addressing pitching depth in the minors by claiming left-hander D.J. Snelten off waivers from the Giants and optioning him to Triple-A Norfolk. Snelten, 26, was designated for assignment on May 28. He made his major league debut in Game 2 of an April 28 doubleheader against the Dodgers. In four appearances with the Giants, Snelten allowed five earned runs and six total with nine hits and three walks in 4 1/3 innings. He...

Washington baseball fans still love Ken McMullen. The former Senators third baseman's 76th birthday was June 1, and there were dozens of likes and comments on a post recognizing the occasion on two D.C. Baseball History Facebook pages. The post included a photo of McMullen wearing a Senators uniform, in a fielding pose and wearing a batting helmet. McMullen came to the Senators in the same seven-player blockbuster that brought Frank Howard to the nation's capital, and McMullen flourished...

The Nationals look to stockpile their team for the future as the 2018 First-Year Player Draft gets underway tonight. The club has the No. 27 and No. 65 selections in the first two rounds. According to Baseball America, the Nationals will have a bonus pool of $5,603,800 to work with, which ranks 27th in allotted monies league-wide. Due to the team's on-field success in recent campaigns, they have selected in the lower half of each first round: Erick Fedde (18th, 2014), Carter Kieboom (28th,...

The First-Year Player Draft begins tonight and its significance to the Orioles is heightened by the approaching roster transformation related to future trades and possible free agent departures. Impact acquisitions are needed to cushion the blows which can be done via the returns on any deals and the selections made from the pool of high school and college talent. The latter needs to be more than just depth moves. But no pressure. The Orioles are prepared to punt on the 2018 season. They can...

ATLANTA - It's easy to look at Sunday's 4-2 loss to the Braves and place blame at the arms of Shawn Kelley and Tanner Roark, who surrendered the two late home runs that turned a one-run lead into a two-run defeat. Not that those two right-handers don't deserve some criticism for their failure to keep the ball in the park at the most critical points of the game, but all of this would be moot if the Nationals did something seemingly simple during the game: score another run. Let's be honest...

The first time I attended a baseball game at Oriole Park at Camden Yards, I didn't comprehend what I was doing there. I was merely a youngster, who couldn't have understood the magnitude of the stadium. I knew I enjoyed it. I knew it was majestic and it was part of what caused me to fall in love with not only the Orioles, but with baseball as a whole. There are certain things about it that draw you in. It's the gardens outside home plate plaza, which always seem to be blooming with bright...

The three-day, 40 round First-Year Player Draft begins tonight. The first round, which will be televised live on MLB Network, is scheduled to begin at 7 p.m. ET. Tonight, teams will draft through the second round and the completion of compensation picks after that round, so that takes the draft through 78 selections. The draft resumes at 1 p.m. ET on Tuesday with round three through 10, and concludes at Noon ET on Wednesday with selections in rounds 11 through 40. The Orioles will make two...

ATLANTA - Davey Martinez and his staff prepare for every conceivable scenario before they take their positions in the dugout for any given ballgame. And so they had concocted a plan this morning for what truly amounted to a worst-case scenario in today's series finale against the Braves: an early departure by Jeremy Hellickson. That plan was going to include Jefry Rodriguez, summoned from Double-A Harrisburg this morning, providing maybe two or three innings of relief only three days after an...

ATLANTA - After going 14 innings on Saturday, after watching Jeremy Hellickson depart with an apparent hamstring injury in the first inning today and then after watching the Braves rally to tie the game late, the Nationals reached a point late this afternoon where the need for their series finale to end was about to become more important than the need to win. That point didn't quite arrive, but it came close. The Nationals were forced to send Tanner Roark to the mound for the bottom of the...

ATLANTA - After watching their bullpen throw seven perfect innings during Saturday's 14-inning win, the last thing the Nationals needed was to have to turn to their relief corps early today. Which is exactly what happened after starter Jeremy Hellickson departed only two batters into the bottom of the first with what appeared to be a hamstring injury. Hellickson hurt himself trying to make a leaping catch of Mark Reynolds' high toss on Ozzie Albies' grounder to first. The ball caromed off...