Get ready for some more 7:05 games on Saturdays compared to this year.
Hello, friends.
There are four months and six days remaining until Orioles Opening Day 2025. That’s still a long way away, and most of those days won’t have any baseball happenings that are relevant to us. Perhaps tonight you will find the announcement of the MVP winners for the 2024 season as a nice diversion, even though we already know that Yankee bias in the voting kept Gunnar Henderson out of the top three spots.
Realistically, Henderson didn’t deserve a placement any higher than third anyway, so it’s not worth my energy to get indignant about the fact that he’ll probably come in fourth rather than third. It’s not like he was in the conversation as a possible winner down to the end of the season. So for anyone who thinks it would be fun for the Orioles to have an MVP winner for the first time since 1991, well: Maybe next year.
It’s the same for dreaming of an Oriole to win the Cy Young for the first time since Steve Stone did it in 1980. Those results were announced last night. Going into the season, you could hope that Corbin Burnes might be a competitor for the award, and he was up until he hit a rough patch in August. Burnes ultimately finished in fifth place, one point shy of Kansas City’s Cole Ragans in fourth.
As of right now, I’m not feeling too hopeful of any Orioles starting pitcher coming out of nowhere to win the 2025 Cy. Burnes is off into free agency and I assume he won’t be back here. I can’t imagine the Orioles signing someone who might be expected to seriously contend, like departing Atlanta free agent Max Fried, or the enigmatic Blake Snell, back on the market after suckering the Giants into offering $32 million for one season with a player opt-out.
Snell was hurt or bad for three months and then good enough for the last three months to opt out of there. Good thing it’s not my money or my favorite baseball team. Maybe Elias will surprise me and make Snell our problem around here. We’d all talk ourselves into that 1.45 ERA in the second half pretty quickly.
There’s always the dream of Roki Sasaki. Or maybe not. Commissioner Rob Manfred spoke to reporters yesterday and among his comments he indicated that Sasaki will end up signing in the 2025 international class – that is, after January 15.
That’s going to make for a chaotic time as every team that wants to have its maximum amount of money to entice Sasaki will have to put its against-the-rules-but-already-existing commitments to Latin American teenagers on hold until they know what happens to Sasaki. That could create space for another team to swoop in and sign those players. I think that the Orioles are a lot more likely to be a team that swoops in and scoops up guys who are left waiting than one of the teams that puts its guys on hold.
Around the blogO’sphere
What passes for Orioles news yesterday is that the team revealed the scheduled start time for all home games:
clear your schedules. home game times are here. pic.twitter.com/XDsEaiJZ8c
— Baltimore Orioles (@Orioles) November 20, 2024
6:35 Mondays-Thursdays continue, with many Saturdays remaining at 4:05 while others are set for 7:05. Not directly related to the Orioles, the absurdity of the relocated Oakland franchise being abbreviated as “ATH” is one thing that stands out to me. They could at least afford their temporary home the dignity of using the city name officially, but no.
After ‘baseline’ rookie season, Colton Cowser determined to take next step (The Baltimore Sun)
Cowser said, “If this is my baseline, I’m pretty excited.” I would agree that it will be exciting if 2024 turns out to be a baseline from which Cowser has a good chance to continue to improve.
Orioles offseason questions: How much will they spend? And how will Baltimore replace Corbin Burnes? (Yahoo Sports)
For everyone on the outside, the question of how much potential payroll increase the Orioles can absorb here this offseason is as big as it gets, because that will determine everything else that happens over the next three months or so.
The upcoming Roki Sasaki posting could have big reverberations (Steve Melewski)
MASN’s Melewski has more on the potential impact of Sasaki’s signing, with an explanation of how he will throw off the pools of teams who try to chase him.
If you haven’t checked it out yet, find us on Bluesky!
Birthdays and Orioles anniversaries
Today in 1977, Eddie Murray was named as the AL Rookie of the Year. Murray hit his first 27 of an eventual 504 career homers in that rookie season, batting .283/.333/.470 for the year. He would not post a lower OPS than that until 1989. Murray edged out Oakland’s Mitchell Page for the award and, if I’m being honest, Page was probably screwed by the voters of the day.
There are a pair of former Orioles who were born on this day. They are: 2015 pitcher Jason García, and 2014 outfielder Quintin Berry. Today is Berry’s 40th birthday, so an extra happy birthday to him.
Is today your birthday? Happy birthday to you! Your birthday buddies for today include three Baseball Hall of Fame players: Freddie Lindstrom (1905), Stan Musial (1920), and Ken Griffey Jr. (1969). You’ve also got this group of non-baseball people: philosopher Voltaire (1694), Declaration of Independence signer Josiah Bartlett (1729), basketball Hall of Famer Earl “the Pearl” Monroe (1944), singer-songwriter Björk (1965), pro football Hall of Famer and talk show host Michael Strahan (1971), and YouTuber Colleen Ballinger (1986).
On this day in history…
In 1877, Thomas Edison revealed his new invention, the phonograph.
In 1905, Albert Einstein published a paper that led to the creation of the now-famous formula for energy-mass equivalence: E = mc^2
In 1922, Georgia’s Rebecca Latimer Felton was sworn in to the United States Senate, making her the first female senator in history. More than a century later, 25 of 100 senators are women.
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And that’s the way it is in Birdland on November 21. Have a safe Thursday.