Well This Is A New One- Oriole #927, Miguel Gonzalez (UPDATED)

For the first time in my recent collecting experience a player, who I don't believe has ever been featured on a baseball card, made his Orioles debut last night.

Miguel Gonzalez, a 28 year old pitcher from Mexico, made his Orioles and MLB debut in last night's game against the Blue Jays. He pitched 3.1 innings in relief of Jake Arrieta and gave up four hits, one earned run and struck out five. Unfortunately, he also allowed two inherited runners to score at the beginning of his outing, and the Orioles ended up losing 8-6, so that could have made a difference. But all-in-all, he had a successful debut and will be an intriguing member of the bullpen.

Photo "borrowed" from Yahoo

Miguel pitched in the minors for five seasons, spending the 2005-07 seasons in the Angels system and 2010-11 in the Red Sox system before the Orioles signed him to a minor league deal this past off-season. (I believe that he was injured in 2008-09.) He either moved from level to level of the farm system too often or the teams he pitched for just didn't produce a card set while he was with the various minor league teams. I've never run into this before, and in this day and age, it seems so odd to have a player reach the Majors having never been featured on some cardboard! To further complicate things, the White Sox have a catching prospect also named Miguel Gonzalez who does have a few cards out there.

The Orioles' Miguel had appeared in 11 games for the AAA Norfolk Tides, going 2-1 with a 1.50 ERA, prior to his call-up to Baltimore, and it's my hope that he will be included in the 2012 Tides team set. For now, I will try to get Miguel to sign a team card of some sort, and his name is currently added to my need list. I hate it when I have to add names to my list!

UPDATE-
Thanks to fellow Orioles autograph collector Russell, I've discovered that Miguel has at least this one card from his minor league playing days. This obviously changes most of what I wrote in the post, but since it's still not in my collection, I'm not changing anything!