Color me naïve maybe, but I had no idea my little blog-article-opinion piece on Jeremy Guthrie and John Lackey posted on Thursday would stir up so many people. I guess bringing out the passion in readers and hearing from so many of you is a good thing - whether you rip me or not.

Since he hit .328 in 2006 between Bluefield and Aberdeen, the career of Billy Rowell has been on a downward spiral. While he is still very young, and the O's management remains solidly behind him, Rowell has put together back-to-back mediocre years at Frederick. Rowell w-Fred, 2008: .248-7-50....315 OBP.....368 slug......104 K's Rowell w-Fred, 2009 .225-9-39....284 OBP......336 slug.......122 K's Today in the final part of a three-part series reviewing the Frederick Keys' 2009 season,...

Today we continue our review of Oriole farm teams in the 2009 season with the a look at the Triple-A Norfolk Tides of the International League. The Tides finished the season at 71-71, in third place in the IL South. But when they were at full strength early on, Norfolk was the IL's best club. At the end of May, the Tides were in first place at 34-15. They regained first place as late as July 23rd. But after losing players like Oscar Salazar, Nolan Reimold, Matt Wieters, Lou Montanez, Brad...

Heading into the 2009 season, little was expected of O's minor league relief pitcher Luis Lebron. He missed most of 2008 due to a right elbow injury, pitching just 20 innings. It looked like he might be headed for Tommy John surgery but instead he chose to rehab the injury. At the start of the 2009 season, O's officials were just hoping he could get that mid 90's fastball back. And if he could develop some control of his pitches, all the better.

Orioles' manager Dave Trembley sounded like a proud dad on the other end of the phone line. He was excited to see one of his players get some national recognition when Adam Jones won his first AL Gold Glove for fielding. Jones became the first Oriole since Mike Mussina in 1999 to earn the honor and first O's outfielder to do so since Paul Blair in 1975.

Adam Jones said he was shocked and surprised but honored as well to win his first-ever American League Gold Glove. "The Gold Glove is hard to get into because so many guys win it consecutively. Ichiro and Torii do it every year and it's deserved. To get into that fraternity is an honor in itself," the 24-year-old Jones said. "It did (surprise me). I was just sitting here relaxed and got a call from our general manager. I was like 'wow.' I always thought I had a chance if I played a...

Two things came to mind when thinking about Adam Jones winning a Gold Glove award. One, after 12 straight losing seasons, it's great to see an Oriole get recognized for good play - in any award. When you follow a losing team you don't expect that teams' players to get many awards. This was a nice change. Second, you can't always use stats to prove something. The gentleman from Baseball Prospectus had several stats at hand on yesterday's ESPN News broadcast of the awards to show that...

No game is more about numbers than baseball. There is a stat for everything and in baseball the numbers seem to mean more, both for players now playing and even throughout history. There are magical numbers like 20 wins for a pitcher and a .300 batting average for a hitter. Even the most casual fans probably understand the basics of batting average, wins and losses, ERA, RBI and so on.

Since I've been asked a few times by readers how several of the O's injured minor league pitchers are doing now, today we try to answer that question. O's Director of Player Development David Stockstill was nice enough to update us on eight different O's hurlers. All the quotes throughout are from Stockstill.

Today we continue our review of the 2009 Norfolk Tides season by looking at how some Tides pitchers fared this year. We featured mostly hurlers that did not pitch in Baltimore this year. The quotes are from Tides' manager Gary Allenson. All stats in bold are with Norfolk only.