Albert Suárez and a number of likely regulars travel to Tampa for today’s spring game.
Opening Day is 16 days away from today. If we count the final tune-up exhibition in Washington before the regular season, there are 14 spring training games remaining for everything to get in order. This is the point where I would like to see players who have been struggling so far turn that narrative around.
The expected regular lineup guys who are on the struggle bus in today’s lineup are Cedric Mullins and Ryan Mountcastle. Mullins, in his small spring sample to date, is OPSing a mere .344. Mountcastle is much better than that but still bad with a .611 OPS. Start showing something, guys! Don’t keep getting upstaged by Vimael Machín. Who, by the way, is also in this starting lineup as the Orioles play the Yankees.
This one will actually be on MASN. The network seems to like to take advantage when it can just piggy-back off of the other team’s TV feed. That’s what happened last night in the game against the Pirates and it will probably happen here again today.
There was a little bit of positive Orioles injury news before the game. Manager Brandon Hyde said that Gunnar Henderson was getting work in the cage, and that he’ll be taking ground balls tomorrow. That still doesn’t give much of a sense of what his timetable for return might be and whether that’s been thrown off Opening Day. But it’s better than if the vague nothingness was continuing with no concrete steps.
Orioles lineup
- Cedric Mullins – CF
- Adley Rutschman – C
- Tyler O’Neill – LF
- Colton Cowser – DH
- Ryan Mountcastle – 1B
- Ramón Laureano – RF
- Coby Mayo – 3B
- Vimael Machín – 2B
- Luis Vazquez – SS
In addition to Albert Suárez, Yennier Cano and Cionel Pérez are expected to pitch. There will be other innings covered by non-roster guys.