Orioles pitching prospect Kyle Bradish is ranked among the club's top 10 prospects on lists from Baseball America and MLBPipeline.com. He is rated No. 8 by MLBPipeline.com and No. 9 via Baseball America. This week, FanGraphs.com topped that, ranking the right-hander No. 7 when it released its list of the O's top 45 prospects. The outlet puts a 60 grade on his fastball, which tops in the 97 mph range, and a 55 on his curveball. As I have noted numerous times in this blog, FanGraphs also noted...

It was around Thanksgiving and it was a tweet that got a lot of attention around Birdland. ESPN's Buster Olney tweeted the Orioles were "dangling" lefty John Means in trade talks. Olney cited other teams, not the Orioles, as his source. When a credible national reporter states such, it should get our attention. He does have great sources within the game. But I as wrote in this entry, I felt it was a matter more of the Orioles doing due diligence. I pointed out that there must be numerous...

Among the more humorous social media reactions to the Orioles moving back the left field fence approximately 30 feet this season is how former shortstop J.J. Hardy would have scored standing up on Delmon Young's bases-clearing double in Game 2 of the 2014 American League Division Series against the Tigers. The loudest moment in Camden Yards history. The press box literally shook. The new dimensions would have removed the heart-pounding excitement of a close play at the plate. Hardy's...

Heston Kjerstad won't claim that he never forgets a face, but the young outfielder was certain that he recognized one of the players who showed up in Sarasota last month to work out at the minicamps for hitters. The stranger wasn't at the fall instructional camp. He wasn't in the organization until January. Who was this guy? A little detective work revealed his identity and proved again that it's a small baseball world. Kjerstad already lived the coincidence of being teammates with...

Last week, we discussed which Nationals pitching prospects could make their major league debuts this season, aside from Cade Cavalli. This week, we're pivoting our attention to the position players on the farm. Amy Jennings and I wondered, during this week's episode of the "MASN All Access Podcast," when we might see them in Washington. But for the purposes of this post, this exercise is going to be more of an appreciation of the restocking of the Nats farm system with position players...

We haven't talked much about the Nationals roster in the last two months, because the roster hasn't changed at all in the last two months. So it might be time for a refresher on the current state of things, because it's easy to forget what this team currently has in place for 2022 and what it still needs to address once everyone's allowed to address needs again. Obviously, there will be an opportunity to add players as soon as the lockout ends, though it could be quite a mad rush by all 30...

Heston Kjerstad has outlasted the two hitters minicamps in Sarasota. The outfielder reports daily to the Ed Smith Stadium complex for workouts, slowly recouping those at-bats lost after a diagnosis of myocarditis in 2020. The facility is a second home to the University of Arkansas product, who first received an invitation to the fall instructional camp that ran from Oct. 18-Nov. 20. He went back to Fayetteville for a while and arranged sessions with his hitting and conditioning coaches - "a...

He is a talented young minor league manager on the rise. At just 35, Buck Britton is not too far away from his playing days on the Orioles farm. But coming up in the 2022 season, he will manage at Triple-A Norfolk as a first-time skipper at the game's highest minor league level. In their 28-year history, the Double-A Bowie Baysox have played for a league championship three times. They did that twice in two seasons under Britton. His 2019 team had a terrible 7-23 start, but still played for the...

Representatives for Major League Baseball and the players association will meet again on Saturday, at which time we finally should get confirmation whether the start of spring training is going to be delayed. That's the expectation, and has been for a while. But commissioner Rob Manfred wasn't ready to concede it yesterday during his media session at the owners' meetings in Orlando. "We understand where the calendar is," Manfred told reporters. "Until we have that conversation and see...

We haven't talked much about the Nationals roster in the last two months, because the roster hasn't changed at all in the last two months. So it might be time for a refresher on the current state of things, because it's easy to forget what this team currently has in place for 2022 and what it still needs to address once everyone's allowed to address needs again. Obviously, there will be an opportunity to add players as soon as the lockout ends, though it could be quite a mad rush by all 30...