Winter is over (for baseball teams, anyway), and the long march towards the postseason begins today. Get hype!
Good morning Birdland,
We made it! The dark, cold winter is behind us. Just don’t look out your window, and instead turn your focus to Sarasota, Florida. That is where Orioles pitchers and catchers (and probably some other position players) will be reporting throughout the day. Their first workout will take place tomorrow.
There may be a couple of inches of snow on the ground around Baltimore right now, but it’s expected to be 83 degrees and sunny in Sarasota. The rest of the week should be similar, so prepare yourself for plenty of pictures of players “in the best shape of their life.”
This week is always an exciting, yet ultimately uneventful, one. It is good to see the players in all of their glory, but there won’t be much to glean until they actually start playing the games. Even then, none of it really matters until the final week of spring, when teams actually start to play like they would in the regular season. Alas, we care anyway, as we should.
Thanks to the trauma we all experienced last year, when Mike Elias dropped the bomb that Kyle Bradish and John Means would start the season on the IL, it’s understandable to enter this day with some trepidation. Sinister news could be lurking.
My biggest concern right now is any sort of setback for closer Félix Bautista, who missed all of last year following Tommy John surgery. The team has indicated he may not be 100% on Opening Day. The other player I’m thinking about is Bradish. He is going to miss most of the season after his own Tommy John surgery. He needs to have a nearly flawless recovery in order to contribute this season, and the team could really use him. Any bad news on him would be a big blow.
But let’s not be negative! This is a holiday for baseball lovers, and we should act as such. Rejoice! Pitchers and catchers report today!
Links
More on competing in Orioles camp as pitchers and catchers report today | Roch Kubatko
It feels like there will be relatively little competition this year. The team’s roster is largely set, barring injuries or more big trades. That feels a little weird, and usually something annoying happens in March to upend statements like that.
3 Orioles storylines to follow this spring | Orioles.com
For me, Jackson Holliday is the main event this spring. The Orioles do not need him to be a star this year. He is likely to start the season at the bottom of the lineup and have relatively little pressure on him. But he will need to show growth, and by September you have to imagine that the club hopes he will be their leadoff hitter, setting the table for Gunnar Henderson day to day.
Orioles spring training is here: Roster battles, big questions and important dates | The Baltimore Banner
This article mentions Trevor Rogers as someone worth watching. That is fair as he probably has an outside shot to unseat Dean Kremer in the fifth spot of the rotation. The Orioles would probably like to have a lefty in the mix, and they traded for him for some reason last year. Maybe he shows why this spring.
After his 2024 struggles, Orioles pitcher Trevor Rogers is trying to turn a weakness into a strength | Baltimore Baseball
More on Rogers. He could be this year’s version of Cole Irvin, who showed new life on his fastball early in camp a season ago. Rogers could use a few extra ticks on a four-seamer that has been slowing down recently.
Orioles birthdays
Is it your birthday? Happy birthday!
- Heston Kjerstad turns 26. The second overall pick in the 2020 draft has battled injuries his entire professional career, limiting him to just 52 MLB games so far. The expectation heading into 2025 is that he plays a much larger role on this team.
- Chris Snyder is 44 today. An MLB catcher for a decade, Snyder had a nine-game pitstop with the Orioles in 2013.
- Adam Stern celebrates his 45th birthday. He played six games in the Orioles outfield during the 2010 campaign.
- Don Stanhouse is 74 years old. The right-handed pitcher played in three seasons for the Orioles, first from 1978-79, and then again in ‘82. The best season of his career was arguably 1979, when he posted a 142 ERA+, saved 21 games, and made his lone All-Star game.
- The late Pat Dobson (b. 1942, d. 2006) was born on this day. He had a two-season run with the Orioles from 1971-72. In ‘71, he was part of the Orioles “Big Four” pitchers that all won 20 games in the regular season.
- It is a posthumous birthday for Jerry Walker (b. 1939, d. 2024). He pitched in parts of four seasons for the O’s from 1957-60. The peak of his career was in ‘59, when he had a 2.92 ERA over 182 innings and made the all-star squad.
This day in O’s history
February 12th has been a slow day in Orioles history, according to Baseball Reference. So, instead, here are a few happenings from beyond Birdland:
1947 – The largest observed iron meteorite creates a crater in the Soviet Union.
1994 – Edvard Munch’s famed painting The Scream is stolen from the National Gallery of Norway. It was later recovered.
2001 – NEAR Shoemaker, designed by the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, becomes the first spacecraft to land on an asteroid.