Worldwide Sports News

The Orioles outfield is completely remade going into the 2026 season, with Colton Cowser now the full time CF and Taylor Ward brought in to man LF. However, the Orioles outfielder I am most excited to see take the field in 2026 is rookie Dylan Beavers.

The 24-year-old former Cal Golden Bear comes into 2026 after a 2025 season that saw him take a massive leap as a player. Beavers finished the 2024 season as the Orioles No. 8 prospect, seemingly destined to remain stuck behind Heston Kjerstad and Enrique Bradfield Jr. in the O’s prospect pecking order. Instead, Beavers parlayed a Triple-A season that saw him hit .304 with a .934 OPS, 15 HRs and 31 SBs into an August MLB debut and clear status as the Orioles best OF prospect.

However, his rise to Top 100 prospect status and encouraging Major League cameo doesn’t guarantee him a starting spot with the 2026 O’s. With Ward and Cowser set for a lion share of the playing time in left and center, Beavers is set to battle it out with Tyler O’Neill for the RF job.

If O’Neill can stay healthy, the two may form a platoon with Beavers playing against right handed pitchers and TON playing against lefties. Beavers was particularly strong against righties in his short debut, posting a .798 OPS with eight extra-base hits in 90 ABs. If he can improve upon those numbers, he may force manager Craig Albernaz to give him the every-day RF role.

Major projection sites seem differ on how they think Beavers’ season will play out:

• ZiPS: .249/.336/.414 with 17 HR and 15 SB in 550 PA
• BRef: .247/.347/.407 with 8 HR and 5 SB in 269 PA

FanGraphs’ ZiPS projection paints a picture of Beavers playing a major role in the Orioles outfield, getting close to a 20/20 season while taking a slight step back from the .375 on-base percentage he posted in 2025. It helps that ZiPS projects the oft-injured O’Neill to only play 89 games in 2026.

Baseball Reference projects Beavers as more of a part-time player who splits time all season with O’Neill. Each projection service projects the 24-year-old to take a jump in his batting average, while taking a dip on on-base percentage and maintaining his slugging output.

If Beavers outperforms the modest projections, he could become the exact hitter the exact hitter the Orioles need at the top of their lineup. In his 35 games last season, he posted an elite chase rate and BB%, suggesting the .375 OPS is something that he can maintain as he gains more Major League exposure. He also showcased near elite speed that could make 25+ SB a real possibility. If everything breaks right, the O’s could have a faster version of Nick Markakis patrolling RF for years to come.

We need to start this with an acknowledgement that Anthony Volpe will turn 25 on April 28th, the same age Aaron Judge was in his breakout season, so we can’t write the Yankee shortstop off just yet. Ok, age acknowledged.

I do still think the Yankees have an Anthony Volpe problem. The club has given him all the runway in the world — 472 games played out of a possible 486 to start his career. In that time he has never been a league average hitter, and while his 2024 was above average, entirely due to his strong defense, the onetime Top 10 prospect in baseball hasn’t exactly lived up to his billing.

And as Yogi said, it gets late early out there. Volpe has just three years of team control left, admittedly with players’ contract status ahead of a possible work stoppage next season up in the air. If his baseline is an 85ish wRC+ and you’re relying on defense, that’s not exactly something you want to bank on as arbitration raises creep up.

Volpe has also never been optioned to Triple-A, which is what we’re here to talk about today. He’s not going to be ready for Opening Day, as he continues to recover from shoulder surgery in the offseason. It’s tempting to bank on his healthy return being enough for a step forward, except for his remarkable consistency in producing a .660 OPS over three seasons. A rehab assignment is all but guaranteed, but I think the Yankees should go further than that.

I’m willing to concede that Volpe’s shoulder injury contributed to his poor defense, but his approach at the plate has been all over the place throughout his career. He’s vacillated between a contact-heavy attitude and one that prioritizes driving the ball in the air, and neither have really stuck. He runs into troughs where he steps in the bucket on every swing for three weeks that guts his overall production, even when he manages to establish some kind of average-or-better batting line.

Two months with Scranton allows Volpe to fully recover from labrum surgery, as well as work out those persistent mechanical failures in a much-lower-stakes environment. José Caballero, who will be at shortstop on Opening Day, is projected to produce exactly the same as Tony Fox’s 2025, and five points of wRC+ shy of Volpe’s 2026 projections. In effect, the Yankees have two Anthony Volpes on the roster already — Caballero shined in his post-trade-deadline time with the Yankees, so giving him some room to run starting the season may help him stay on that higher level, while giving Volpe time to correct his habitual swing failures can help HIM in the long run.

There is an icky factor to this suggestion, of course. A player accrues a year of MLB service after 172 days on either the 26 man roster or the injured list. Rehab assignments come within the scope of an IL stint, so Volpe would continue to accrue service on a brief trip to Scranton. Wheat I’m proposing is a much longer time at Triple-A, one that would make it impossible for Volpe to be on the 26-man roster for 172 days. This will delay Volpe’s free agency, ticketing him for the 2030 class instead of 2029.

That’s no small sacrifice to ask of a player, especially a player who could have his age-26 season wiped out by a work stoppage. You don’t need a player’s consent for a minor league option until he has five years of MLB service, but being clear with Volpe about the expectations, and the investment in his long-term success, would be crucial to this kind of decision.

I believe there is a world where Anthony Volpe could be an above-average MLB hitter. I believe that he has strange mechanical deviations and I also believe he has gotten into his own head on more than one occasion. Giving him a real Triple-A run, with a real chance at fixing what’s broken in his offensive approach, is the best way to square that complicated circle.

Scottsdale, Ariz. – The Colorado Rockies invited 20 non-roster players to join Major League camp this year. Chief among them is their 2025 No. 2 prospect Charlie Condon (No. 2 Mid-Season PuRP).

The IF/OF was drafted third-overall in the 2024 MLB Draft out of the University of Georgia and has had a meteoric rise through the system. He finished 2025 in Double-A Hartford before being selected to the Arizona Fall League. While in the AFL, Condon was also selected as a Fall Star and as the winner of the Dernell Stenson Sportsmanship Award winner. (In case you’re wondering, he said he put the award “on a dresser in [his] bedroom” but is also hoping to “one day…expand the trophy closet a little more.”)

This year, he made his debut in big-league camp.

“It’s great,” Condon said last weekend of his initial experience. “[It’s] just nice to be around the guys of the big-league group. They’ve been very welcoming to me so far. It’s been a good experience…I know all the guys here are really excited to work.”

Condon has been using the time to get to know all of the teammates he might start playing alongside soon.

“There have been a handful of guys that I’ve overlapped with in the minor league system here,” Condon said, “but just getting to know the guys that I haven’t played with yet [and] getting to know some of the new guys that we brought in this offseason…we’ve got a good group of position players. Just hanging out at first base the past couple of days, we’ve got some great guys over there. So it’s been fun to continue to get to know the guys I have played with and create relationships with the guys I haven’t.”

In addition to meeting his teammates, Condon is also eager to try out some of his offseason adjustments.

“I just worked on adjustability at the plate,” he said. “I brought my hands up a little bit higher to feel a little bit more of a natural turn.

“I felt like I hit well in the Fall League for average, but it’s got to kind of get that OPS and better ball flight [and] kind of feeling more of a natural turn in my swing. So hopefully that’ll lead to some more power production this year and things like that. But other than that, just getting stronger, staying healthy and being ready to go for today.”

In addition to his own personal adjustments, he’s also staying ready for the Rockies in whatever position they might need him to play – either strictly at first base or in the outfield.

“I’m kind of day-to-day wherever they need me,” he said. 

“The majority of my work has been at first base recently, but I still get out in the outfield and shag some balls during BP. [I] keep getting routes in and things like that so the corner outfields are never foreign to me, so [I’m] just keeping those in my back pocket. Wherever they need me – I feel comfortable at first base, I feel comfortable in the corner outfields, and [I’ll] just keep going from there.”

Condon is most looking forward to “the challenge” of big league camp.

“I feel like this is the best competition I’m going to have seen so far in my career, and I’m excited for it,” he said, smiling. 

“I feel like I’ve shown well against some of the other competition in the minor leagues, but [this is] as high as you can get to face the best competition you can. I’m excited about that, and I’m excited about growing closer with this group of guys as well.”

And most of all, he – like many others – is taking note of the clubhouse vibes.

“Obviously I wasn’t in big league camp last year, but there feels to be a different energy amongst the guys around here with the new leadership that we have,” he said. “There’s a lot of optimism, which is great. I think we’ve got some people in the right places and [we’re] just going to continue to keep moving forward and pushing the rock a little bit further.”

Rockies embrace ‘Camp Schaeffer’ as franchise tries new methods to turn things around | Denver Post ($)

After being lauded as “insular” for many years, the Rockies are doing things differently this year — they’re opening camp up. On Tuesday, they sent out footage of a base-running drill; yesterday, they were very intentional about showing the media what a ‘day in the life’ looks like under the new regime. Schaeffer and DePodesta have said repeatedly that they value transparency and communication — and this is more proof of that.

RJ Petit aims to make impact with Rockies after Rule 5 draft selection | Denver Gazette ($)

RJ Petit was taken in the Rule 5 Draft by the Colorado Rockies in December and will be part of the Rockies’ bullpen in 2026. Kevin Henry profiles the towering 6-foot-8, 300-pound right-hander and what he could bring to the table.

Grading The Colorado Rockies Potential Starting Rotation For 2026 | Sports Illustrated

As we’ve discussed at length recently, grades are always arbitrary, especially when it comes to the national media and the Colorado Rockies. However, Jeremy Gretzer gave the Rockies’ rotation a B- for their efforts to retool and bolster a young rotation, even though they have a long way to go to completely rebuild the thing. He predicts the rotation as Kyle Freeland, José Quintana, Michael Lorenzen, Tomoyuki Sugano and Ryan Feltner. Do you agree with his grade and rotation?

Please keep in mind our Purple Row Community Guidelines when you’re commenting. Thanks!

There was a time, not so long ago, when bullpen roles felt rigid. The setup man handled the eighth. The closer handled the ninth. Everyone else filled in the gaps and tried not to make a mess of things. But if there’s one quiet constant of Brewers baseball over the last several years, it’s this: they’ve understood the value of the multi-inning reliever better than most.

This isn’t some trendy, Rays-style opener experiment. It’s more practical than that. The Brewers have consistently built bullpens that don’t just survive when a starter exits in the fifth inning; they stabilize the game. And that stability often comes from the guy who throws the sixth and seventh instead of just one clean inning with the bases empty.

Modern starting pitching just doesn’t last the way it used to. Even good starters are carefully managed the third time through the order. Injuries pile up. Pitch counts climb. October-style urgency seeps into random Tuesday nights in June. If your bullpen is constructed entirely of one-inning specialists, you’re asking for burnout by August.

The Brewers have largely avoided that trap.

Think back to how they’ve deployed arms over the past several seasons. Whether it was a converted starter finding new life in relief or a swingman shuttling between roles, Milwaukee has consistently found ways to squeeze two or three innings out of pitchers who might be pigeonholed elsewhere. When a starter exits after four innings, it’s not a scramble. It’s often a bridge.

And that bridge matters more than the ninth inning sometimes.

We spend a lot of time talking about closers, and understandably so. High-leverage outs are dramatic. But the highest leverage point in a game frequently arrives in the sixth with two on and one out, not the ninth with the bases empty. The Brewers have shown a willingness to let their better non-closer arms handle those spots and keep going if they’re efficient. That’s not old-school long relief. That’s targeted aggression.

It also protects the bullpen as a whole. If one reliever can give you 2 1/3 clean innings on 28 pitches, that’s two other arms who get a full day off. Over 162 games, those saved bullets add up. Milwaukee’s ability to keep its late-inning arms fresh deep into seasons hasn’t been accidental. The approach fits the organization’s broader identity.

The Brewers are rarely the team with the deepest rotation on paper. They don’t wade into the top tier of free agency for 200-inning workhorses — just look at them trading aces like Corbin Burnes and Freddy Peralta before they inevitably lose them to free agency.

Instead, they build layers of pitching. Optionable depth. Pitchers with starter backgrounds who can slide into relief. Relievers who can stretch beyond the standard three outs if the matchup and pitch count allow it.

It’s flexible, and flexibility is currency in today’s game.

There’s also a developmental angle here. Milwaukee has long shown a knack for identifying pitchers with one or two standout traits and maximizing them. A fastball with unusual ride. A breaking ball with elite spin. In shorter bursts, those traits can dominate. But when those pitchers prove capable of turning a lineup over once without losing effectiveness, the Brewers don’t rush to cap them at a single inning. They experiment. They stretch them to 30 or 40 pitches. They see what happens.

Often, what happens is that the middle innings stop being a liability.

That might not show up in the save column, but it shows up in win expectancy. It shows up in series wins where the bullpen doesn’t feel fried by Sunday afternoon. It shows up in September when key relievers still have life on their fastballs.

If you want some easy current examples, look at Aaron Ashby and Jared Koenig, not to mention the now-departed Tobias Myers, all of whom filled that role at different points in 2025.

None of this means the Brewers have reinvented bullpen strategy. Plenty of teams deploy multi-inning arms. But Milwaukee has made it a habit rather than a contingency plan. When things go sideways early, they don’t panic. They patch the game together with purpose.

In a division that rarely offers much margin for error, that matters.

The art of the multi-inning reliever isn’t flashy. It won’t generate jersey sales. But it’s one of the reasons the Brewers so often feel competitive even when a game starts tilting in the wrong direction. They don’t just chase the final three outs. They control the gray area in the middle, and more often than not, that’s where games are actually decided.

Good morning baseball fans!

As we approach the beginning of the season, we’re going to be doing some questions for y’all about your thoughts about the San Francisco Giants and baseball in general!

Today’s question: What would be the darkest timeline for this season?

For those unfamiliar with the premise of the “darkest timeline,” it’s based on the episode of Community titled “Remedial Chaos Theory” in which a storyline plays out in various alternate realities based on the decision of which one of the main characters would go downstairs to get pizza.

You’ve probably seen the bit where Donald Glover’s character re-enters the scene with the pizzas while everything around him is on fire. And that wasn’t even the darkest timeline, just the most memorable (and meme-able) moment.

Basically the darkest timeline is the worst possible outcome with everything going as wrong as it could possibly go based on one factor changing.

A Giants example of this would be kind of like the 2021 team busting their butts, winning every game they possibly could win, only to have the Los Angeles Dodgers keep pace with them until the bitter end and ultimately overtake them in the first round of the playoffs because they were all tired as heck. And the Dodgers are like the monster in a horror movie.

You could also make a case for the 2011 season going pear-shaped after Buster Posey was injured. Or simply Game 6 of the 2002 World Series.

But in keeping with the spirit of the prompt, I’m going to go in a comical direction (read: joke. this is going to be a joke) and lay out my scenario for what could be the darkest timeline for the 2026 team.

On Opening Day, Tony Vitello is being hounded by the press after his recent statements about the handling of the announcement of his hiring, which causes a few too many people to be in a pre-game press conference in the dugout.

One of the attendees tries to toss a banana peel into the trash on their way out, but doesn’t realize they missed because they’re distracted by Lou Seal carrying a tray of drinks, dancing on the top of the dugout. Raphael Devers then slips on the banana peel, in cartoonish fashion, leading to a season ending injury.

Jung Hoo Lee and Willy Adames try to help, but Devers knocked over the water cooler on his way down and everything is slippery, so they crash into each other and end up on the concussion protocol for weeks.

Logan Webb attempts to set a good example to the rest of his team, and goes to warm up for the game. Unfortunately, he gets stung by a bee, causing him to throw an errant pitch directly into the knee of Matt Chapman, sidelining him for several days or even weeks, depending on the results of his MRI.

Lou Seal attempts to help boost morale by bringing the tray of drinks to the remaining players in the dugout, but trips on his way down the steps and spills hot coffee everywhere, as Patrick Bailey yells: “My eyes! The doctor said I’m not supposed to get coffee in them!”

The entirety of the infield and half of the relievers are now down with third degree burns, so Vitello begs the ownership to make corresponding moves immediately so they can actually field a team. But they’ve already spent too much money on real estate developments for the year, so they just send him deeds to various properties to shove into gloves and he tells them to take the field. And the season is over before it’s even started.

Annnnd, scene.

Feel free to come up with your own comical scenario, or go with something more realistic and depressing. Up to you!

What would be the darkest timeline for this season?

It’s pitching preview time, ladies and gentlemen. Over the next several days, I’ll be writing 10,000 words or so about everyone you might see pitching for the Red Sox to start the season. I’ve put the team’s starting options into tiers because that’s how my brain works. Don’t think of them as rankings, but rather buckets based on some similarities I see.

Yesterday we started with a look at Garrett Crochet, one of the best pitchers in baseball. Today we move on to..

Tier Two: Been Around The Block

This next tier consists of Ranger Suarez and Sonny Gray, the two guys who are getting paid a lot of money to be in the Red Sox rotation. Suarez is entering his eighth season, while Gray is entering his 14th. While labeling guys as “a decent two” or “a three for a playoff team” is a silly endeavor in my opinion, these guys will likely start on the second and third day of the season.

Ranger Suárez

2025 in a sentence: Suarez started the season on the IL, but was rock solid once he got back on the field in May.

Ranger Suarez has been remarkably consistent over the past four seasons. He’s averaging 26 starts, 147 innings, and a 3.59 ERA over that span. 2026 will be his first season with a team not named the Philadelphia Phillies, but you can expect more of the same from Suarez.

For Suarez, it’s all about command. He’s going to be really tough on lefties and won’t see many of them as a result. He pounds the inside part of the plate with sinkers and four-seamers, before turning to his curveball and slider out of the zone to put hitters away. The curveball is particularly effective at getting hitters to expand the zone; the chase rate on the pitch over the last three seasons is nearly 50%. He’ll also mix in his changeup with two strikes, though the Red Sox have generally avoided same-handed changeups. It’s been incredibly effective in small samples, though, so they might allow him to keep that arrow in his quiver.

On the other side, it’s a much more even mix, with each of his five pitches accounting for 15% and 25% of his offerings. His sinker still leads the way and gets early strikes, but the contact against it from righties is better than lefties, while his cutter is a reliable strike-getter early in at-bats as well and avoids hard contact. A kind of fun, or at least fun to me, testament to his command is that only two non-four-seam pitches generated a higher percentage of foul balls than Suarez’s cutter (27.7%). Because he doesn’t use the pitch in two-strike counts very often, those are almost entirely productive pitches.

While Suarez will throw any pitch in any count, he turns to his changeup and curveball most often as his strikeout pitches against righties. The changeup is incredibly effective with a two-strike chase rate of 43%. The curveball isn’t as devastating, but he avoids mistakes with it and can drop it in the zone for free strikes. He uses the four-seam at the top of the zone as well, and it’s outperformed what one might expect given the shape over the past three seasons, with putaway rates over 20% thanks to impeccable command.

Suarez has his approach, and when he executes, he’s as good as anyone. He’s slated to pitch in the World Baseball Classic for Venezuela, which will give us a good look at any tweaks he made to his arsenal over the offseason. It’d be nice to see him gain a tick or two of velocity as well. He was at about 93 mph just two years ago, but a sudden drop has him sitting closer to 90 mph today. Suarez is your favorite pitcher’s favorite pitcher and has shown the ability to survive without premium velocity. I’d expect more of the same from him in 2026.

More Suarez: How new Red Sox pitcher Ranger Suárez finesses his way through a lineup

Sonny Gray

2025 in a sentence: Gray’s season line was marred by a number of blow-up outings, but the underlying numbers paint a better picture.

Sonny Gray had five games with six or more earned runs allowed last season. I hate excluding games from a line because they all count, but I feel comfortable calling that a fluke. His 26.7% strikeout rate was among the best in baseball, as was his 5% walk rate.

Gray had reverse splits in 2025, but is roughly platoon-neutral for his career. He used six different pitches in 2025, with significant differences against each side of the plate. Early in at-bats, righties primarily saw sinkers and cutters, with occasional curveballs dropped in for called strikes. With two strikes, he went to his sweeper. Gray called himself one of the best spinners in the league, and his sweeper supports that. Against righties, nearly one in every four pitches resulted in a whiff. They also swung at over 50% of the sweepers he threw out of the zone. He pairs it with a backdoor sinker that freezes hitters as they give up on the pitch, expecting it to spin off the plate.

Against lefties, Gray used more four-seam fastballs and curveballs early in counts. Each pitch had a strike rate over 65%, but the ideal contact rate against each was on the high side, though opponents hit the ball on the ground frequently. A changeup accounted for 15% of his pitches to lefties, primarily early in at-bats, but a 55% strike rate and 43% ideal contact rate make it a candidate to be replaced by something else. His cutter and sinker each earned strikes at a high rate in a small sample, but were also hit hard. With two strikes, his sweeper was again the star, getting whiffs on 26% of pitches, as well as a huge chase rate (48.7%). The contact quality from lefties is somewhat of a concern, but his ability to miss bats compensates for it.

I mentioned blow-up outings, and home runs were the culprit for many of them. He allowed 25 on the season, though his 22.7% home run per fly ball rate should come down closer to league average. Overall, for Gray, I’d expect his splits to flip, with righties having a more difficult time than lefties, based on his ability to pitch to the glove side. RedSoxStats on Twitter pointed out that over the last two seasons, most of his hard contact allowed has come to right center field, where the Red Sox have two Gold Glove outfielders stationed on a nightly basis.

Gray isn’t the flashiest pitcher in the rotation, but he’s a veteran who will mix his pitches, sequence, and compete each time he takes the mound.

More Gray: Meet the New Guy: Sonny Gray

This post is part of a series of daily questions that we’ll ask the community here at Amazin’ Avenue throughout the month of February. We hope you find the questions engaging and that our prompts can spark some fun conversations in the comments. We’ll see you there and plan to have staff chiming in, too.

Which spring training storyline will age poorly?

As the adage about the baseball’s simplicity goes, you throw the ball, you hit the ball, you catch the ball, you win all your games, and you go undefeated.

The 2026 Ole Miss baseball team did most of those things in their wins over Nevada (3), Arkansas State (1), and Jackson State (1), which was a fine start to the season. Obviously, the level of competition is not what it will be during their trip to Houston at the end of this month and once they get to March, but ain’t nothing wrong with any level of TCB in the early non-conference slate.

So let’s look at some of the key stats produced in the first week, keeping in mind some are not sustainable and at least one needs to get fixed ASAP or it will cost them meaningful games.

Run Differential

Ole Miss is sitting at a cool +39 (54-15) , with two of their wins achieving a 7-inning run rule. Of note, the Rebels trailed Arkansas State 6-4 after 5 innings and rallied to win 7-6, and their lowest run output was 5 runs in the second game against Nevada.

It’s encouraging to not see a grotesque 3 runs or under game, an offense that can score when they’re not at their best, and a pitching staff that isn’t bleeding out late in games.

At the Plate

These are acceptable (ACCEPTABLE) team numbers:

• .488 on-base percentage
• .588 slugging percentage
• 10 dingers*
• 39 walks to 37 strikeouts
• 19 total extra-base hits

*4 came against Jackson State, which means 6 in the other 4 games.

They get on base and smash the baseball. It’s also encouraging to see more walks than strikeouts, which we would love to see hold steady as the season goes on.

Most importantly, Tristan Bissetta decided his home run celebration will involve giving the Italian pinched fingers gesture to the student section.

On the Mound

Much like the hitting, Ole Miss’ pitching as been on point:

• 1.15 WHIP
• 5.5 to 1 strikeout-to-walk ratio
• 9 earned runs*
• 2 dingers allowed
• 11 total extra-base hits

*More on this in a minute!

Like the hitters, they’ve dominated their opponents, and we love to see only 10 total walks. Not making it easy for opposing offenses helps win games while also not driving everyone insane.

In the Field

Granted, I don’t remember specifics, but I’m certain the Joker’s origin story involved him rooting for a college baseball team incapable of doing basic things correctly. Things like fielding a ball cleanly, throwing the ball into a teammate’s glove, and catching a ball thrown to you.

Ole Miss has 9 errors through 5 games. If there is a positive, 5 of those came against Arkansas State, which means 4 errors total in the other 4 games. Still not great!

Last year’s team made 68 errors in 64 games and had a team fielding percentage of .970. This year’s team has a fielding percentage of .949 and is on pace for 115 errors in 64 games

Look, none of us want to become the Joker, but that’s where we’re headed if Ole Miss doesn’t rise to an average fielding team. I don’t know how much a team can transform its fielding incompetence within a season, but if this team wants to have a shot at Omaha, they have to figure out a way to limit the nonsense.

Next Up

• vs. Missouri State (Friday)
• vs. Missouri State (Saturday)
• vs. Missouri State (Sunday)

No word if Bobby Petrino will be on hand to support his former employer.

Hello, friends.

There are now 35 days remaining until Orioles Opening Day. That’s just five weeks away. Something vaguely resembling an Orioles game will be available on your television or other streaming device tomorrow with the opening of the Grapefruit League schedule.

This also means that today is the last day that there will just be general spring workouts that are not in some way oriented towards a game. For all of the focus on spring training being a time to iron out fundamentals and what not, there’s really only a handful of days after the full squad has reported before games start up and it becomes less about drills and more about game readiness.

The only thing that can come from these early days is bad news, probably news of the injury variety. I’m still looking to get something more specific about what’s going on with Jordan Westburg’s sore oblique. Mike Elias’s “surprise offseason injury” update from the start of camp implied that Westburg would miss only the first few exhibition games and that’s it, but Westburg’s self-assessment a couple of days later was vague and not supportive of that initial claim, with not even an aspirational timeline to when he might return.

My rule about baseball injury news is that vague is frequently eventually bad news that nobody wants to say right now. I hope that doesn’t prove to be the case with Westburg’s oblique as well. Specific news can also be bad, of course. You just know how specifically bad it is rather than having to wonder. Again, the games start tomorrow. I think they should have offered a firm date for his first game by now, and until they do that I’ll be at least a little bit concerned that they haven’t said one because there isn’t one.

Just last spring we saw Gunnar Henderson’s sore oblique drag out almost through the whole of spring training, with the Orioles perpetually acting like Henderson could be back in two or three more days. That didn’t do anybody any favors, especially when they rushed him back into action at the tail end of the recovery. If that is how it goes with Westburg, I hope they’ve learned their lesson. But I also hope that’s not how it goes with Westburg.

Orioles stuff you might have missed

Adam Jones arrives as guest coach, more from day 8 of Orioles camp (School of Roch)
Also includes Blaze Alexander hitting a home run off of Cade Povich, which probably shouldn’t be taken as a sign to get hype about Alexander. Good for him, though.

Building a football team out of all of the ‘really large humans’ at Orioles camp (Orioles.com)
There are a lot of possible linebackers around here, apparently.

Jeremiah Jackson on making an impression with Orioles: ‘Every day is a job interview’ (Baltimore Baseball)
Although he made a nice impression last year, it does seem like Jackson is going to have to fight for a roster spot even after the Jackson Holliday injury, and possibly even also if Westburg’s situation develops worse than they’ve revealed so far. I just don’t know if the Orioles will trust him to play an infield position.

OOPSY 2026 top 100 prospects (FanGraphs)
I’m pretty much only posting this because my guy Aron Estrada checks in at #31 on the top 100. Obviously, that makes this the best top 100 prospect list that anyone has put out yet this year.

Birthdays and Orioles anniversaries

Nothing of particular note is recorded for this day in Orioles history. That probably won’t change this year unless there’s some bad news.

Of all the players to ever play for the Orioles, not a single one was born on this day.

Is today your birthday? Happy birthday to you! You may not have any Orioles birthday buddies for today, but you do have these: astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus (1473), author Carson McCullers (1917), musician Smokey Robinson (1940), actor and movie maker Benicio del Toro (1967), singer-songwriter Chappell Roan (1998), and actress Millie Bobby Brown (2004).

On this day in history…

In 1674, the English and Dutch signed the Treaty of Westminster, which ended the Third Anglo-Dutch War. Relevant to today’s United States, the treaty transferred ownership of the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam to England, which renamed the area to New York.

In 1847, rescuers reached the stranded Donner Party in a pass in modern-day California. The group is now infamous for its survivors resorting to cannibalism to survive.

In 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which led to the internment of Japanese Americans into camps for the duration of World War II.

A random Orioles trivia question

I received a random book of Orioles trivia for Christmas. Each time it’s my turn in this space, I’ll post a question from the book until I either run out of questions or forget. The book has multiple choice answers, but that would be too easy for everyone here. Here’s today’s question:

Who slugged 31 home runs in 2002 to lead the Orioles that season?

The answer to Sunday’s question about the all-time Orioles triples leader, which stumped many who guessed, is Brooks Robinson. If you are guessing early in the day, please be considerate and place your answer behind spoiler text so that people arriving later can still have a fresh opportunity to guess.

**

And that’s the way it is in Birdland on February 19. Have a safe Thursday.