Why not 10? No reason. Or maybe a shortened spring training, so a shortened amount of questions. No, not really. Just no reason. Major League Baseball will not start as planned on March 26. The Orioles were scheduled to open at home with a three-game series with the Yankees followed by a three-game series with Boston. I won’t be covering the team during a scheduled ... read more
If and when we get back to a point where baseball players can take the field, how long will it take before regular season games can be played? That’s a good question that can only be answered when we know the start date. But a shortened second spring training of at least two weeks seems likely. Would two weeks be enough? Probably not, but the ... read more
Over the next few weeks, let’s take a look at some aspects of the Orioles and how they were shaping up at the time that spring training was halted. Today, a look at the rotation. To me the rotation was setting up this way: No. 1 - John Means: He was slated to be the opening day starter if the opener was going to be ... read more
The Orioles held a conference call today with both executive vice president and general manager Mike Elias and senior vice president of community development and communications Jennifer Grondahl to discuss the current shutdown of baseball. Check Roch Kubatko’s blog for Elias’ updates on baseball operations and I will post Grondahl’s comments on the business side for the club here. Grondahl’s opening comments to reporters: “We’re ... read more
The Major League Baseball First-Year Player Draft is scheduled for June 10-12. The Orioles will hold the No. 2 overall pick for the first time. They’ve now picked No. 1 overall twice, but never have had the second pick. The Detroit Tigers, who went 47-114 in 2019, have the No. 1 pick for the second time in three years. They selected Auburn right-hander Casey Mize ... read more
Keeping an ongoing dialogue with fans and readers during the shutdown of baseball is important to me. Along those lines, today I have a few questions for you. We shall start with a pretty simple one but I look forward to getting the responses. Which player is your favorite all-time Oriole and why? Mine is Brooks Robinson. He was a star player for the Orioles ... read more
He was a key player the Orioles acquired in mid-2018 in the trade of Manny Machado to the Los Angeles Dodgers. Now Orioles minor league right-hander Zach Pop is going through the process of getting back to pitching after Tommy John surgery of last May. He is progressing well, but finding out some of the challenges of a process that can take a pitcher 12 ... read more
No Sarasota dateline on this story. No spring competitions to track. No games to be played. The baseball industry is shut down for now and we all wait to find out when it will be back. Yes, it’s possible, I guess, that the season could be shut down. I see no reason to be too concerned about that just yet. For now, as we await ... read more
