
The Orioles got through yesterday without any new injuries. Yay!
Hello, friends.
Don’t forget that the “spring forward” part of daylight savings time happened last night.
There are now 18 days remaining until Orioles Opening Day. There’s still a good amount of spring training to get through between now and then, with exhibition games running through March 24. Today, there are two O’s games coming, with split squad action as one set of Orioles plays the Twins at home and another set plays the Phillies on the road.
The home game will be on Orioles radio only, with the road game, if you really want to watch it, on Phillies TV. Tomoyuki Sugano is set to start the home game. I hope he does well. You can guess at how much of a priority the road game is for the Orioles pitching staff since they’ve got Thaddeus Ward, a person whose existence you were definitely aware of before I mentioned the name just now, making that start.
In yesterday’s Grapefruit League affair, the Orioles lost to the Rays, 6-3. The bulk of the stink was concentrated in the one inning pitched by Seranthony Domínguez, with the reliever managing to give up five runs on five hits. You can never be sure how much a spring training outing is the result of experimentation or some other weird only-in-March-in-Florida kind of condition. I was disappointed by Domínguez last year and so I’m ready to be disappointed by him again this year, but I hope to be wrong.
Better things going on in that game included Charlie Morton tossing three scoreless innings with four strikeouts, and scoreless innings from each of Cionel Pérez, Yennier Cano, and Gregory Soto. We can work with that.
Also on the bright side is that as far as we know so far, there were no new injuries suffered during that game. The last week was not a good one on the injury front. I’d really like to see Gunnar Henderson declared well, or at least enough on the path to recovery that a return date that’s before Opening Day can be targeted. The longer we go without that happening, the more I’ll be worried that last year’s best Orioles player will miss the start of the season.
Since the start of spring training, I’ve been setting myself a rule of no panic about someone who stinks before March 10. I’m trying to stick to that but here we are and March 10 is tomorrow so there aren’t any more freebie days left after today. Whoever looks like he’s bad needs to either get better or get shuffled out.
Around the blogO’sphere
Orioles find themselves with roster spots to fill (Orioles.com)
Jake Rill considers the fill-ins for definitely IL guys Grayson Rodriguez and Andrew Kittredge, as well as possibilities if Gunnar Henderson doesn’t improve in time.
With two key Orioles injuries, here are five options for camp competition still on the market (The Baltimore Banner)
I’d rather just roll the dice with Cade Povich than sign any of these starting pitchers, but I think there’s something to be said for trying to bring in David Robertson in response to Kittredge’s knee injury.
Lack of an ace threatens to undermine Orioles season before it begins (The Baltimore Sun)
An extremely similar article to this could have been written even if Rodriguez had not gotten hurt. Mike Elias took a chance that he didn’t have to do anything big. He may be spectacularly wrong.
Birthdays and Orioles anniversaries
There is one current Oriole who has a birthday today. Happy 31st to Yennier Cano! A pair of former O’s also are celebrating a birthday: 2021 one-game pitcher Zack Burdi, and 2011 reliever Clay Rapada.
Is today your birthday? Happy birthday to you! Your birthday buddies for today include: continental namesake Amerigo Vespucci (1451), baseball Hall of Famers Billy Southworth (1893) and Arky Vaughn (1912), first man in space Yuri Gagarin (1934), actor Oscar Isaac (1979), BTS rapper Suga (1993), and gold medal gymnast Sunisa Lee (2003).
On this day in history…
In 1862, one Union and one Confederate warship dueled to a draw in the Battle of Hampton Roads, a noteworthy occasion for military history as it was the first battle between ironclads – steel-hulled steam-propelled ships as opposed to wooden ones.
In 1916, Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa raided across the border into the United States, leading about 500 men into Columbus, New Mexico for reasons that are hazy to history. The raid prompted President Wilson to order the US Army into Mexico to capture Villa; the military proved unable to do so.
In 1959, New York’s American International Toy Fair saw the debut of the Barbie doll. Over a billion dolls have since been sold.
**
And that’s the way it is in Birdland on March 9. Have a safe Sunday.