Who will be Oriole #1000?

After the five Orioles debuts to start the 2015 season, the team is now on the cusp of having the 1000th player in team history make their debut for the club. With 991 players having currently appeared in a game as an Oriole, it's almost a guarantee that the 1000th Oriole will debut this year. In recent years, there have generally been somewhere around 20-25 new players appear in a game for the team each year, so nine more debuts would be just the 14th new player in 2015, so I would say that it's a lock that #1000 happens this year.

While it's certainly possible that Oriole #1000 will be a player that the team brings in from another organization, I'm going to examine some of the players in the farm system right now that could make their debut as that unique number.

Some of the most likely candidates are those players who are on the Orioles 40 man roster but haven't yet played in a game for the O's.

This group includes pitchers Tim Berry, Oliver Drake, Eddie Gamboa, Tyler Wilson, and Mike Wright, and infielder Rey Navarro.

Of this group, Berry and Gamboa have both spent a couple days on the 25 man roster, but did not appear in a game during their short stints with the team. (Gamboa's was just up this week when Wesley Wright went down with an injury, and Berry was up a few days last summer.) Buck also seemed very impressed with Wilson's work during Spring Training, and he gave him a few late spring road starts.

While those six are likely to play for the O's at some point over this summer, all together they still leave us short of #1000. While looking at the 29 players on AAA Norfolk's roster, Steve Johnson, T.J. McFarland, Steve Clevenger, Christian Walker, Nolan Reimold, and Henry Urrutia have already spent some time with the Orioles, so it won't be any of them. And all of the 40 man roster players listed at the top of this post are on the Tides roster except for Tim Berry, who is with AA Bowie right now. I will look at the remaining 18 Tides and examine their chances to be Oriole #1000 in my next post.

Once again, thanks so much to my dad for obtaining a lot of these autographs for me on his Spring Training trip!

Long Overdue Autographs from Orioles Fanfest

Since I will start with the Orioles debut posts with Opening Day on Monday, I figured that I should write a post about my long overdue Fanfest autographs.

Over two months ago, I was able to make it to Orioles Fanfest for a few quick hours. Prior to my son's birth this was pretty much an all day event for my entire family, at times to my wife's chagrin. But this year, she stayed home with the little guy while my parents and I went to the Baltimore Convention Center. Not surprisingly, I was able to add a few autographs to my collection.

My main focus at the yearly Fanfest event is to get some autographs of the new players in the organization. Due to the O's offseason inactivity in 2014-15, there weren't any new players in the house that day.

Luckily, there were still a few autographs that I needed, headlined by Alejandro De Aza, who I was never able to get to sign for me during his time with the team in the latter half of the 2014 season. 

Fortunately, Christian Walker was signing at the same station, and with my dad's OMC card being his first Orioles card, I was able to scratch his name off of my list in one fell swoop.

Also signing at the same station, and I'm sure the main draw of the three for most of the fans was the Orioles very popular manager, Buck Showalter. Since I already had a Buck autograph in my collection, I decided to have him personalize this card to my son Jack.

Finally, my dad stuck with the Jack theme and had JJ Hardy sign and personalize this card on his spring training trip. Even though it isn't from Fanfest, it seemed appropriate to include it here. Something tells me that these aren't the last two "Jack" autographs that we will get in 2015, assuming we have time to snag some autographs before games!

Happy (almost) Opening Day!

Oriole # 986- Christian Walker

The most recent Orioles debut surprised me somewhat, mainly due to how late it was happening in the season. Christian Walker was just called up to the O's after they clinched the AL East on Tuesday night. He had to be added to the 40 man roster and his service clock is starting now, so you know that the team must see something that they like in him. It also is fairly directly tied to Chris Davis's positive adderall test and suspension and the need for another first baseman on the roster. 

Christian had been working at the Orioles instructional league program in Sarasota for just this type of reason. Every year the O's send a group of 10-15ish minor league position players and pitchers to Sarasota to stay fresh in case any needs come up with the big league club after the minor league season ends at the beginning of September.

This Shorebirds signed card is the only autograph I have of his right now, but it works just fine for my collection, at least until I try to get one of my dad's custom O's cards signed. Christian has been included in a few minor league team sets over the years (2012 Ironbirds, 2013 Shorebirds, 2014 Baysox & Eastern League All-star set) and he seems to be a good signer. I saw him sign for multiple people at both Norfolk Tides games that I attended this year, but didn't have any unsigned cards of his at that point. Much to my dismay at this point. But one autograph is better than none!

Christian was drafted by the Orioles in the 4th round of the 2012 draft after a successful college career with the South Carolina Gamecocks. He made his professional debut with the short season A ball Ironbirds, and spent time at every ensuing level of the O's farm system. In 2013, he progressed from the lo A Shorebirds, to the hi A Keys, all the way to the AA Baysox in a single season. (Generally, jumping two levels in a single season is a good sign.) 2014 saw Christian start the year in Bowie before moving to AAA Norfolk mid-summer. He hit a combined 26 home-runs with 96 RBI this year, and yes, that was good enough to earn the call to Baltimore.

He made his major league and Orioles debut last night, September 17, and went 1-3 with a double in the game. He did enough to be the recipient of Adam Jones' post-game pie, and it was a very cool moment for the rookie. I have a feeling that we will be seeing more of Christian in the coming seasons in Baltimore. Good luck to him.

A Day At Bowie

As I mentioned in yesterday's post about my sadly lacking experiences in 2014 with autographs at Orioles Park, I haven't done much better with the Orioles minor league affiliates. I believe that I have attended two AA Bowie Baysox games thus far this year, but only had time to get autographs at the first game, as I arrived late to the second one.

The good news is that the 2014 Baysox team as a whole seemed to be very good at signing for the fans. I didn't have cards for most of the players, but I was able to pretty much get all of the cards that I did have signed. The only player on the team who seems like he might be a little tough is Eduardo Rodriguez, but I don't currently have any of his cards to be signed so that's fine by me.

One-time MLBer Juan Morillo, prospect Christian Walker, Matt Bischoff, and Kyeong Kang were all nice enough to sign for me.

#6 Prospect Tim Berry was also nice enough to sign. Someone his card got scanned seperately.


Thanks to all of the Baysox who were nice enough to sign for me! I hope to make it back to some more games soon!