Adley Rutschman won’t be the Orioles’ starting catcher in 2020. After making him the first overall pick in last June’s draft and signing him to a record $8.1 million signing bonus, the Orioles are grooming him to be their catcher for many years to come. Rutschman briefly played at Rookie Level Gulf...
Jim Palmer celebrated his 74th birthday last Tuesday. The Hall of Fame pitcher, who’s been a longtime Orioles broadcaster, spoke last Friday from his home in Southern California about the current state of the Orioles, and his health. Palmer missed the last few weeks of the season after he was diagnosed with...
Orioles outfielder DJ Stewart had surgery on his right ankle on Thursday. Stewart injured the ankle in a game at Arlington, Texas on June 5 and missed two months of major league time. The team said Stewart “underwent a successful microfracture procedure on his right ankle.” The procedure was performed by Dr....
No one could have imagined John Means’ rookie season for the Orioles. It’s hard to measure just how good it was. According to Baseballreference.com’s measure of WAR, Means had a 4.5, which was ninth among American League pitchers. When the 2019 season started, it would have been difficult for anyone to think...
Now that the Washington Nationals have qualified for the World Series, it makes life even more difficult for fans of the Orioles. Some Oriole fans have begun rooting for the Nationals, others don’t care, and still others are pained by their success. In the 50-year history of the Nationals and their predecessors,...
This winter should be a happy one for Trey Mancini. He had his most complete season in the major leagues and was voted Most Valuable Oriole. The trouble was that Mancini was the best player on a team that lost 108 games. Mancini had an .899 OPS and improved in every offensive...
Oriole fans had two distinct lines of thinking about Chris Davis in 2019. One group was convinced that his presence on the Orioles was holding the team and its best prospects back. The other thought that the Orioles were so bad that Davis’ performance didn’t matter very much. Anecdotally, at least, the...
Conventional wisdom is that Mike Elias would like to pattern the Orioles after the Houston Astros, the team he worked for before coming to Baltimore. He wouldn’t mind mimicking the Astros’ success, but the Orioles’ general manager has said more than once that he also admires the work of the St. Louis...
One of the most puzzling players on this year’s Orioles was reliever Mychal Givens. Manager Brandon Hyde and pitching coach Doug Brocail inherited a bullpen full of pitchers they knew little or nothing about, and they hoped they could lean on Givens. It turns out they couldn’t, and Givens’ future with the...
It’s been just over a year since Buck Showalter’s eight-plus-year tenure as Orioles’ manager ended. Since then, the Orioles have undergone a makeover, and Showalter, the 24th-winningest manager in baseball history, has been out of the game. This year, Showalter spent most of the year in his Dallas home. In the second...