Worldwide Sports News

Good morning, Camden Chatters.

The Orioles had their final off day of spring training yesterday, and now it’s an all-out sprint to the end of camp. The O’s will play 13 games in the next 11 days, which includes a pair of split-squad games next Thursday, the prospects-only Spring Breakout game next Friday, and games against the Nationals in both Baltimore and D.C. to close out their exhibition schedule March 22 and 23.

With less than two weeks until Opening Day, everyone seems to be wondering how the O’s will pare their current camp roster of 53 down to their season-opening 26-man. MASN’s Roch Kubatko, MLB’s Jake Rill, and Baltimore Baseball’s Rich Dubroff all offered their thoughts about how the roster might line up when the season starts. All three predict the Orioles to solve their six-starting-pitcher dilemma by having Zach Eflin start the season on the IL and continue to ramp up after last year’s back surgery. Things sure seem to be leaning that way, considering that Eflin has thrown just two innings this spring — impressive as they were — and isn’t currently scheduled to pitch for the rest of this week.

The three writers are mostly in sync about how the bulk of the roster will shake out. The biggest questions right now are the final couple of spots in the bullpen and on the bench. Kubatko and Rill advocate for hard-throwing, out-of-options righty Jackson Kowar, while Dubroff pegs the last bullpen spot for Yaramil Hiraldo. All seem to agree that Grant Wolfram has pitched his way onto the team with his stellar spring (five scoreless innings, nine strikeouts) while Albert Suárez (nine runs in 6.2 innings) has probably pitched his way off of it.

On the bench, the utility infield decision seems to come down to either Jeremiah Jackson (Dubroff’s pick) or Luis Vázquez (Rill’s selection). Personally I’d go with Vázquez, because if you have Coby Mayo as your starting third baseman, you need to have a competent defender available to replace him in the late innings, and Jackson isn’t that guy.

I think the beat writers have got the roster competition sized up pretty well based on who’s currently in camp. But I feel like the Orioles might have another significant move up their sleeve before the season starts. To me there’s still a bit too much redundancy among the position-player group — particularly Ryan Mountcastle, who isn’t going to knock Pete Alonso out of the lineup and doesn’t provide any defensive versatility beyond first base.

The bullpen also seems a little light, especially now that Andrew Kittredge is injured. I don’t like the idea of Keegan Akin and Yennier Cano getting high-leverage innings, not to mention the relatively unproven guys like Wolfram, Dietrich Enns, and Rico Garcia. Maybe there’s a way for the O’s to address two problems at once by trading Mountcastle for a relief pitcher if they can find an interested partner. Just spitballing here.

What say you, Camden Chatters? As of now, what would your Opening Day roster look like?

Links

As Mayo reacclimates to 3rd, his bat shows why he’s needed in O’s lineup – MLB.com

I’m going to be holding my breath every time an opposing batter hits a grounder to third base. But I’ll learn to live with it if Mayo keeps hitting like he’s been doing this spring.

Does Chris Davis belong in Orioles’ Hall of Fame? | MAILBAG – BaltimoreBaseball.com

Yes, of course he does. Davis’s O’s career was worlds better than some other guys in the Orioles Hall of Fame. But I understand why his epic collapse is still a a fresh wound for Orioles fans. I would have maybe waited a couple more years before putting him in.

Is new O’s outfielder Taylor Ward flying under the radar right now? – Steve Melewski

I’ve barely thought about Taylor Ward in months, so I suppose the answer is yes.

Orioles birthdays and history

Is today your birthday? Happy birthday! Only one player in O’s history has a March 13 birthday: happy 62nd to Will “The Thrill” Clark. He was best known for his prolific career with the Giants and Rangers, but he spent the last two years of his career in Baltimore from 1999-2000. Clark had a .964 OPS in his final season, including 1.081 in 51 games with the Cardinals after a deadline trade, so he certainly went out on top.

On this date in 1996, the Orioles traded outfielder Sherman Obando to the Expos for outfielder Tony Tarasco. Amidst an otherwise unremarkable two seasons with the Orioles, Tarasco infamously was the right fielder from whom Jeffrey Maier stole Derek Jeter’s fly ball at the fence in Game 1 of the 1996 ALCS. Three years later, Tarasco played 14 games for the Yankees, but as far as I know he had no further incidents with fans at the wall.

Greetings, Brew Crew Ball community. Welcome to March, as Opening Day is now less than two weeks away!

Feel free to use this thread to chat about (almost) anything you want: video games, food, movies, non-baseball sports, the Brewers, you name it. As long as it’s appropriate and is allowed by our moderators, it’s fair game here.

You know the drill.

This is now an open thread:

Free of charge for the discerning reader.Not much happened, but what did happen was important. Happy birthday to former Cubs Mark Leiter Jr. and Keegan Thompson*.

Today in baseball history:

• 1917 – After hearing that Gabby Street had caught a ball dropped off the Washington Monument in 1908, Brooklyn manager Wilbert Robinson brags that he could catch a ball dropped from an airplane at spring training, even though he is in his mid-50s and well above his playing weight. Robinson circles unsteadily under the descending spheroid. Instead, a grapefruit was secretly substituted and it explodes on impact with his glove. Once he feels the ooze, Robinson thinks it is blood, and screams that he is dying, until he tastes the juice. He later concedes that he probably would have been killed if a real baseball had been dropped from the plane. Aviatrix Ruth Law dropped the grapefruit as outfielder Casey Stengel assumed culpability for the switch.
• 1943 – The major leagues approve a new official ball manufactured by the Spalding Company for the upcoming season. Instead of the usual combination of cork and rubber, the inside of the ball is made up of recycled cork and balata, materials not needed in the war effort. Officials insist the ball will have the resiliency of the 1939 ball, but the players will express dismay that they cannot drive the new ball and point out the dearth of runs and homers in 1942 even with the old ball.
• 1954 – ABC’s attempt to turn a spring training game between the Phillies and White Sox in Clearwater, FL into a national telecast ends in a fiasco. As part of its contract to air the Game of the Week, the network has until now been prohibited from broadcasting any game within 75 miles of an existing major league franchise, but it tries to contravene this by omitting the clause from that broadcast’s contract. The teams only realize this just before the game is aired, and then force ABC to pull the game from the “illegitimate” stations. As the network is unable to do so in time, it simply stops the broadcast after three innings without providing an explanation to viewers.
• 1960 – The Chicago White Sox unveil an important uniform innovation. The Sox’s road uniforms feature players’ names on the backs of the jerseys, marking the first time that players’ names will appear on major league uniforms. The innovation will make it easier for fans watching games on television to identify the players on the field. The idea is yet another creation of colorful White Sox owner and innovator Bill Veeck.
• 1969 – In addition to this year’s lower mound and tightened strike zone, Major League Baseball tries an experimental ball with 10 percent more resiliency for a spring training game between the Mets and Tigers in Lakeland, Florida. It has an all-rubber center instead of a cork and rubber core, and the seams are higher than the regular ball. Mets pitcher Don Cardwell surrenders three home runs in the 4th inning to Dick McAuliffe, Norm Cash, and Gates Brown in the Tigers’ 7-4 victory. Tomorrow, in Phoenix, Arizona, the same ball is used in the Giants’ 13-1 win over the Angels, with Bobby Bonds hitting the only two homers off George Brunet. The players agree the ball is definitely livelier and sounds louder coming off the bat.
• 1986 – The father-and-son team of Hal and Brian McRae appears together in an exhibition game for the Kansas City Royals. Brian, who will be sent back to the minor leagues before the start of the season, will not make his major league debut until 1990. In 1991, Brian will play for his father when Hal takes over as Royals manager.
• 2006 – In Round Two of the inaugural World Baseball Classic, at Angel Stadium, slugger Hee-Seop Choi hits a three-run home run as South Korea humbles the United States, 7-3, to maintain its unbeaten run and leave the US’s title hopes in jeopardy. Ken Griffey, Jr. hits a solo homer and an RBI single.
• At Hiram Bithorn Stadium, Odalis Perez pitches 4.2 shutout innings and David Ortiz powers the Dominican Republic to a key victory over Cuba, 7-3. A 5th-inning mammoth blast by “Big Papi” – hit clear out of the stadium – is symbolic of Cuba’s defeat. In the second game, Victor Martinez belts a grand slam, Endy Chavez hits a two-run homer for the second consecutive day, and Carlos Zambrano combines with six pitchers on a seven-hit shutout, as Venezuela defeats Puerto Rico, 6-0. Pool Two is all knotted up with 1-1 records among all four teams.

Cubs Birthdays:Mal Eason, George Gaw, Eddie Butler, Mark Leiter Jr., Keegan Thompson*. Also notable: Home Run Baker HOF.

Today in history:

• 607 – 12th recorded perihelion passage of Halley’s Comet.
• 1639 – Cambridge College, Massachusetts, renamed Harvard for clergyman John Harvard.
• 1781 William Herschel sees what he thinks is a “comet” but is actually the discovery of the planet Uranus.
• 1930 – Clyde Tombaugh announces discovery of Pluto at Lowell Observatory.
• 1960 – NFL’s Chicago Cardinals move to St Louis.
• 1980 – John Wayne Gacy receives the death sentence in Illinois for the murder of 12 people.

This time next week… you will not be watching the Phillies play regular season baseball. This time the week after next… you will also not be watching the Phillies play regular season baseball. But one day before this time next week… then you’ll be watching Phillies regular season baseball.

Unless opening day gets rained out again, in which case you will be watching the Phillies play regular season baseball this time the week after next.

Anyway, onto the links.

Phillies news

Mark your calendars: on August 7th, Chase Utley joins the Phillies Wall of Fame.

Aaron Nola changed his offseason training approach, and the early results look good. ($)

Zack Wheeler will be taking the next step in his recovery with a live batting practice this Saturday.

MLB news

MLB.com’s Mike Petriello evaluates every MLB ballpark by how hard it is to play outfield there. Phillies outfielders have it tough.

Dan Szymborski of FanGraphs takes a look at the scenarios that could spell doom for top teams, including the Phillies. ($)

Start checking those old binders and boxes: a one of a kind Aaron Judge card just sold for $5.2 million. (I checked my old collection, but all I found was a 1st edition shadowless Charizard. Darn.)

It’s about that time in spring where the real games start to get close, we’ve seen everyone take the field for a few weeks, and some surprise names have had hot starts while others are working off the rust. The Yankees are making their roster decisions on a near-daily basis, whittling down their invitee list starting with the obvious prospects that were always here just to get a look-see and some time with their hopefully-future teammates and coaches. Everyone else around the league is doing the same, and as those rosters begin to take shape we can start to consider where our relative preseason rankings fall.

The Yankees are expected to be contenders, both within the locker room and by the media at large. It’s expected, but it shouldn’t be taken for granted that their aim is playing in October because as we’ve seen in recent years… there’s plenty of teams that aren’t. Still, sometimes the team that’s finally looking to make some strides towards contention manages to skip a step or two and finds themselves playing deeper in the fall then they’ve done in a long time, or a team that’s been in the dance a bunch of times just to get kicked right out finally puts it all together to go on a magical run. You can’t predict baseball, as a famous radio broadcaster once said, and every year there’s one or two teams that really turn heads just based on how far they got in the end. Who could it be this year?

The Mariners and Blue Jays both fit the bill last year, meeting in the ALCS after years of playoff frustration with the latter making their first World Series since the early 90s. This year teams will be ready for them, but will they be ready for a team like the Rangers, who had a stellar rotation bogged down by one of the weakest lineups in baseball? Perhaps it all turns around for them, and they find themselves back in it like their 2023 run. Or maybe the AL Central finally gets some respect, with the Guardians once again getting little fanfare despite winning the division three out of the last four years. The Tigers have the flashiest piece with their ace Tarik Skubal and they added Framber Valdez to form a monster 1-2 combo, but don’t count Kansas City out with Bobby Witt Jr. leading the charge. Their rotation is formidable as well, and their supplementary hitters could be enough to get them back into a Wild Card Series.

Over in the National League, the Mets and Phillies have leapfrogged Atlanta after the Braves spent more than a half-decade ruling it. Atlanta missed the postseason altogether, and they face an uphill battle to get back into it, but perhaps Ronald Acuna Jr. and company can surprise some folks and get back on top this year. The NL Central could be the most ripe field for dark horses, as Milwaukee stunned with an MLB-best 97 wins last year but faces competition to hold onto their new crown. The Cubs remain a threat, and while the Cardinals have faded into the foreground of a division they once dominated the Reds could take a leap and prove that ownership should have invested in them more with another ticket to October. The Pirates would be a truly absurd team to rise out of the ashes due to their overall ineptitude, but they do have Paul Skenes — and wouldn’t it be fun to see him in meaningful games come September? About the only division that doesn’t seem interesting on this front is the NL West, as the Dodgers have remained kings for over a decade barring one strange 2021 run from the Giants and the Padres are known contenders who’ve had to settle for the Wild Card.

If you forced me to pick one team from each side to watch out for, I’d go with Kansas City and Atlanta. I don’t expect the Royals to go very deep, but I think they could give their contemporaries in the Central a run for their money and perhaps upset one of them in the standings. As for Atlanta, despite all their years ruling the East it was the year that they looked their least appealing in that span that they won it all. The Mets and Phillies are flashier, but there’s plenty of room for one of them to combust this season, and I’ll believe Atlanta’s down for the count when I see it. Who would your picks be, and how far do you think they’ll go?

Today on the site, Josh leads off with some thoughts on the ABS Challenge influence on this season and how teams will be poised to utilize it. Matt takes us back to the Deadball Era to wish Home Run Baker a happy birthday, Jeff walks us through how the Yankees’ archrivals will look heading into 2026 with a Red Sox preview, and after the exhibition I’ll be around to answer your latest mailbag questions.

Today’s Matchup

New York Yankees vs. Atlanta Braves

Time: 1:05 p.m. EST

Video: Gotham Sports App, Gray TV, MLB Network (out-of-network, only)

Venue: CoolToday Park, North Port, FL