Spring Training Successes: Minor League Members of the 40 Man Roster

Following up on the series of preview blogs I wrote about these players a few weeks back, here are all of the autographs I got from the Minor League guys on the O's 40 man.


Rhyne Hughes signed at both games I went to but I missed him on the first day. This is my first autograph from him, and I wanted to get at least 2 but I won't complain. I didn't immediately recognize him when we walked by on the first day and I think he looks quite different in person than he does on his cards.


These cards looks like they were designed to be signed. There's too much open space when they aren't autographed but once the signature is added it looks great. The Hughes card above is also from the Tristar Projections set but his wasn't cut off at the waist for some reason.

Brandon signed a trio of cards for me, but this is the most unique. As you can see, it's from the '07 Hawaii Winter Baseball set and that was the only year I bought one of these sets. It featured 5 or 6 other Orioles Minor Leaguers, including my boy, Matt Wieters, but I didn't buy the set for him or Snyder. I bought it because it includes the only card produced of Ryohei Tanaka, a RP who was on the Baysox in '09. I have not yet gotten Ryohei's autograph but this shows you how far I will go to obtain a card of a random Minor League player to get their autograph on a card.

This is a cool action shot for a Minor League team set. The Baysox did a nice job on their cards last season. The orange border is cool as well.


And why stop now? Here is the third Snyder card I got signed from the equally cool 2006 Ironbirds set.


Chorye kind of missed the card with his C when he was signing it. I think that he was trying to avoid the black jersey but I would've preferred that he kept his autograph totally on the card. Oh well. At least it's an Orioles card.


Since I seem to only have good things to say about the Minor League sets in today's post, I won't stop now. I like the rolling blue wave at the bottom of the Tides '09 set. The orange jersey and blue border clash a little bit but I like it anyway. Also, Troy has always seemed like a nice guy and a good signer to boot.