The Orioles Acquire Taylor Teagarden

In what feels like about the twentieth Orioles-Rangers trade in the past year, multiple news sources are reporting that the Orioles acquired catcher Taylor Teagarden from the Rangers today in return for minor league pitcher Randy Henry and a player to be named later, which many times means that money will change hands at some point down the road.

Teagarden was the Rangers' 3rd round pick in the 2005 draft and has represented the United States in the 2004 & '08 Olympics. He has played sparingly for the Rangers over the past four seasons, totaling 118 games, and has a .220 average with a .703 OPS to date. He hit a home run in his first MLB at-bat in 2008; even better, it was in the sixth inning and broke up a no-hitter by the Twins' Scott Baker in a game the Rangers went on to win 1-0. That's a pretty awesome way to debut, but unfortunately Taylor hasn't been able to live up to the high expectations that surrounded him early in his career.

I'm still pretty excited about the trade, because Teagarden represents an upgrade to me over the Craig Tatums and Chad Moellers that have filled the O's backup catcher role over the past few seasons. He's still relatively young and I feel like there is some unexplored offensive potential to boot. Matt Wieters, coming off his Gold Glove winning 2011 season, is beyond the point of needing a tutor, and I think it's worth a roll of the dice to see what Taylor can do. I still expect the Orioles to sign another catcher, possibly a minor league free agent, to compete with him, but as of today, I'm a fan of the trade.

Since I don't have an autograph of Teagarden (yet) here is my autograph of Randy Henry, who the O's had to give up to swing the trade.

Randy was the O's 4th round pick in the 2009 draft and has spent the past two seasons with the O's three class A level teams, the short season Aberdeen Ironbirds, lo-A Delmarva Shorebirds, and hi-A Frederick Keys. My first meeting with Henry came during Spring Training this past year at the O's minor league complex in Sarasota. At the time, I wrote:

"Randy Henry was probably the nicest player I've ever come across during my 'graphing exploits. He was talkative and personable and spoke with me like I was his friend, not just some random person getting autographs. He told me how his Spring Training was going and that he had only pitched one inning to that point, but was happy with how it went. I think I have a new favorite O's Minor Leaguer. Good luck this year Randy!"


Thanks to Randy for that memory, and good luck in the Rangers' organization!

To make room on the 40 man roster for Teagarden, the O's designated Pedro Viola for assignment. I can't say that I'm too surprised, as I considered Pedro to be about the 39th/40th player on the 40 man. He pitched very sparingly with the O's over the past two seasons and the results weren't pretty; he had a 10.80 ERA over six games pitched.

Pedro spent most of the past two seasons with the AA Bowie Baysox and he was nice enough to sign a number of autographs for me over his time in Bowie, including my favorite autograph of the 2011 season. I gave him a small stack of these Orioles cards in return and he really seemed to enjoy them. Good luck with your future Pedro.

Makin' Moves

While the Orioles are still trying to decide who their next General Manager/President of Baseball Operations will be, it hasn't stopped them from making a few small moves.

Here's what we know so far...

Bench Third Base Coach Willie Randolph will not be back next year. I don't really know why, but heard something about Willie wanting to be a manager again.

As suspected, both Vladimir Guerrero and Cesar Izturis declared free agency. I don't suspect that either will be back with the club in 2012 but their veteran leadership will be missed. I've heard rumblings that Izturis could become a coach or instructor for the team if he decides to hang up his spikes. And I'll miss having Vlad around since he's always been one of my favorite players, but realistically, he didn't make the 2011 Orioles much better than the 2010 squad.

Jeremy Accardo, Chris Jakubauskas, and Jake Fox were all outrighted to triple A, but all elected to test the free agent waters instead. Of the three, "Jak" is the only one who I think might come back into the fold, possibly signing another minor league deal with the O's, just as he did prior to last season.

And the Astros claimed Craig Tatum off of waivers which almost caused me to tear up. In actuality, I won't miss the extremely un-fan-friendly "Tater" at all. He was one of the toughest autographs on the team and never seemed like a very nice person.


I don't expect the O's to make any more moves before they hire their new GM/VP Baseball Ops, and I hope they make a decision soon. Many teams are already swinging trades, extending their own players, and/or making waiver claims, but I don't expect the Orioles to do any of those things without a new top dog in place. If they wait much longer to make a decision, they could fall even further behind to eight ball in the battle to rediscover relevance in 2012.

Orioles Fan Fest Recap

Three days later, I'm finally getting around to writing about my 2011 Orioles Fan Fest experience. At least three other Orioles bloggers have already wrote about it, so I really hope that you weren't waiting for my account of it.

Overall, I had a good time but it seemed like there was a little less to do than in past seasons. I spent most of my day in autograph lines, which is exactly where I wanted to be, so I was happy. And I got everything signed that I had hoped to get, so it was a nice little day. Not many people seemed to have a problem paying the $15 per autograph station since you knew you were guaranteed an autograph of whomever you wanted. It's obviously not as good as free, but it's better than wanting a Matt Wieters autograph and ending up with Robert Andino instead (sorry Dino!).

 

Speaking of Wieters, the highlight of my day was getting his SI cover signed. I carried this issue around in my gameday backpack during the entire 2010 season but didn't see Matt sign at a single O's game. It feels nice to finally have this autographed, and I hope to get it framed sometime soon.

Also signing at Wieter's station were Craig Tatum and Dick Hall. I got Tatum's autograph for Austin and Hall's autograph for Zach of Autographed Cards.

 

Lucky for me, the guy behind me in line didn't want Tatum's autograph, so he got my card signed for me. 

Next up was Zach Britton, Kevin Gregg, Jake Arrieta and Boog Powell. The Arrieta autograph was for Aaron, who collects Orioles Crown autographs and any other O's autographs he can get. The Boog autograph was for Paul, who just won the Earl Weaver autograph contest. The Gregg and Britton autographs were for me.

 

 

I was able to snag a signed O's postcard of Gregg as well as getting my card signed. I have to say that, out of uniform, Kevin looked more like a large banker than a baseball player.

 

Even though I had prepped my card, Gregg's autograph didn't "stick" well. It wasn't the only problem I had with the Orioles provided sharpies. I think next year I will have to bring my own. 

 

 

Zach was promoted to AAA Norfolk before the 2010 Baysox team set came out, so I was happy to finally get this card signed. 

While I was at the Britton-Gregg-Arrieta-Powell autograph station, my dad was nice enough to help me out by going to the Jeremy Accardo-Jason Berken-Willie Randolph-Jim Palmer station. 

The Accardo & Randolph cards are joining my collection, while my dad got Palmer to sign one of the spots in his 1983 O's program and a Berken card that was also for Austin.

My dad was also able to snag an extra signed postcard of Berken & Palmer. Note to Jason- I know that you're pretty accommodating with fans' autograph requests and all, but look at your signature compared to Palmer, who I think has signed a few more items than you over the years. Let's work on our penmanship a little bit.

My last autograph station was for JJ Hardy, Brad Bergesen, Mark Reynolds & Dick Hall. Hall was late showing up and I was one of the first people in line for this one, so I missed him this time around. Luckily, I didn't need him for anyone.

 

 

 

It was my first time getting Hardy's and Reynolds' autographs and they both seemed like decent guys. I especially like Hardy's autograph, even though it looks like it's either missing the JJ or H. I can see one or the other in there but not both.

Bergesen's autograph was for Ryan, the blogger behind "O" No!!! Another Orioles Blog, who I had the pleasure of catching up with for a few minutes. He seemed to have had a good time as well, and has been posting about his Fan Fest experiences for the past few days. He was nice enough to bring me a box of cards with some of my set needs as well as some obscure Orioles cards. Ryan- your thank you box should be on it's way by early next week. 

 

 

Last up, the Aberdeen Ironbirds, the short season A affiliate of the O's, were giving away a signed 8x10 of your choice if you could name every Oriole pictured on their autographed 8x10s. I conveniently didn't tell them that the Orioles, and their autographs, were kind of my thing, so Kalina ended up with this nice Chris Hoiles autograph.

 

All-in-all I had a great time and added a bunch of nice new autographs to my collection. I was happy to help a few fellow bloggers fill some autograph holes in their collections too. Thanks need to go out to my parents and Kalina for tagging along and doing some waiting around as I scurried around the convention center. Now I can't wait for the season to start!

Orioles Fanfest, Thank You Justin & Set Needs- Updated Twice

Orioles Fanfest autograph vouchers went on sale this past Saturday morning at 10am. Since it used to be free, I'm not happy that you now have to pay $15 to get an autograph at each station, but it's nice to know that you are guaranteed to get an autograph of who you want. It was definitely a crapshoot in past seasons. Only 250 vouchers were available for each station, so I thought they would sell out fast. Luckily, I got vouchers for the four stations that I wanted, and surprisingly, there are still vouchers available for 13 of the 15 stations as of this afternoon. So much for them going fast.

My goal was to get an autograph of all the new Orioles who will be in attendance and to finally get my Matt Wieters SI signed. Assuming that everyone who is scheduled to be there actually shows up, I should achieve my goal. Matt Wieters, Kevin Gregg, Jeremy Accardo, Mark Reynolds, JJ Hardy, and Willie Randolph are among the signers who I should be able to add to my collection. For whatever reason, Derrek Lee isn't scheduled to attend, but at least I already have his autograph.

Since each station has 3-4 players/alumni scheduled to sign, I will be passing by a few players who I don't need for my collection. If anyone out there is interested, I can get you an autograph of any of the following players:
Jake Arrieta- Aaron
Troy Patton- Paul
Boog Powell- Paul
Jason Berken- Austin
Brad Bergesen- Ryan
Dick Hall (x2)- Zach- 1
Craig Tatum- Austin

Updated again with spots filled - Still have 1 Hall spot left

I just request that the item your item be small (card/postcard/3x5), that you include a SASE, and that you get it to me by January 29th.


Justin, of Justin's World  fame, deserves a major THANK YOU for sending me a huge package of 2009 Topps cards, and some cards for Kalina and my player collections. Thanks to him, I'm now only 12 cards away from finishing the set. Very cool stuff! If you've never seen his site, Justin collects Cubs, Colts & Grizzlies cards. Just watch out for that Grumpy Blogger!


Also thanks to Justin, I got up the motivation to update my set needs page. It's always linked at the top of the left-hand sidebar, or you can just click the link there. I pretty much have collected Topps' base & Updates sets as well as Topps Heritage over the past few years.  There are a few sets that I am very close to completing, like 08 Topps (1 card left!), so if anyone can help me out, I woudl really appreciate it!

Orioles Autograph Year in Reivew- The Bad Signers

Rolling on with my 2010 O's Autograph Review, today I'm going to cover the worst signers on the team. If I had it my way, no one would fall into this category, but unfortunately, these guys do.

Nick Markakis continues to be, in my opinion, the toughest autograph on the Orioles. The one and only autograph I got from him all season was way back at Fanfest, and I didn't see him signing any other time all season long. At one game, a fellow collector told me that he had signed the previous day, but since I didn't see it, I can't believe it. This dude NEVER signs at games, not even during Spring Training.

Not surprisingly, I also ranked Nick as a bad signer last season. 

Falling in the c'mon man category of bad signers is backup catcher, Craig Tatum. I mean, it's not like he was busy more than one or two days a week. I once had him walk by me, while he was apparently doing nothing, with only a few other people nearby and asked if he could sign. His answer "no". That's all he said. Luckily, I got his autograph in a few trades and got a few cards signed at a private signing.

I picked up Kevin's autograph both at Fanfest and at Spring Training, so I was optimistic about getting his signature a few more times over the course of the year. Unfortunately, that wasn't the case, and I can't remember seeing him sign once at Oriole Park this season. I know he was the veteran "ace" of the staff, but most starting pitchers will sign occasionally between starts since they have some down time. 

David Hernandez has always been a pretty tough signature, at least dating back to the '08 season when he was with the Baysox, and he continued down that path over this past season. I picked him up at a private signing, but can't remember seeing him sign around the park much, if at all. Sundays are the best day to get autographs from the Orioles relief pitchers, since there is no BP and they warm up on the field, but David would almost always just walk back into the clubhouse after warming up.

Last season, I ranked him as a hit or miss signer since he didn't sign often, but when he did, he signed for a number of fans. 

Sometime closer, Alfredo Simon was another tough autograph to pick up. I was able to get his autograph during Spring Training, but only after persistently calling out his name as he was walking down the right field line. He could only ignore so many times, you know?   I got his signature one other time this season, but again, it was at a private signing. 

Last year, I listed him in the inconclusive/undetermined category since he only spent a few days with the O's before going down with a season-ending injury.

Unfortunately, I once again have to include my favorite Oriole on the list of bad signers. I got his autograph only once this season, and that was at a private signing at a local AT&T Store. He didn't sign in Spring Training, I didn't see him sign once at Oriole Park, and I missed him at Fanfest. All season long, I had my copy of his SI cover in my game backpack, hoping that I might luck out and get it signed, but it looks like that will be a project for next season. 

Since Matt normally catches six days a week, I can kind of understand why he doesn't sign often.  But I wish that I would occasionally see him sign at the Yard on one of his off days.  As I mentioned, he also fell in the bad signer category last season.  

The Orioles Won a Series...At Home...And It Was a Come-From-Behind Win!

So the Orioles won an amazing game today. Definitely their best victory of the year. Hands down. Two guys received much deserved shaving cream pies...

This guy, who gave the Orioles a one run lead with his grand slam in the bottom of the 8th inning. I think LUUUUUUUKE is starting to heat up, which is slightly obvious now that he has homered in back to back games.

And this guy, who was just called up from AAA Norfolk yesterday, but seems to have provided a much needed spark to the team. He homered and threw out the would-be tying run at the plate to end the game. I was skeptical that bringing up Corey would make a difference, but honestly, we haven't won two games in a row very often this season, so I'm practically in love with him right now.

And there had to be someone to catch Patterson's throw and block the plate to stop that tying runner from scoring. Who was it? My boy, Matt Wieters. The throw was slightly off-line but Wiety had the plate blocked and delivered an amazing sweeping tag to put this game into the books. He had entered the game as a pinch-hitter for Craig "French-Fried Per-" Tatum and I'm not positive that Tatum would've made that play. That was a play for a big guy, someone like Wiety to make.


Will Ohman delivered both shaving cream pies, and the one that Patterson received was especially spectacular. Will had shaving cream in two towels and applied one to each of Corey's cheeks for a ridiculous, exaggerated white mustache look. And Corey was the consummate professional, continuing his interview with Amber Theoharis for another couple minutes with the shaving cream relatively intact.

O what a day to be an Orioles fan. It sucks most of the time, but today it is pure bliss.

New Players On the Orioles Opening Day Roster

And I'm not talking about guys like Garrett Atkins, Kevin Millwood or Mike Gonzalez who I have been counting in my total number of Orioles players since they were signed. Barring a tragic injury or untimely death, we all knew that they would be making the team out of Spring Training, so I have included them in my total number of Orioles players since the day they signed with the club.
Is it right to include guys like that in my total? Yes, I think it's fine; it could be slightly misleading at most, but this is my site so we play by my rules.



The three guys that made the team that I didn't expect to see in Baltimore are Will Ohman, Craig Tatum and the newly acquired Julio Lugo. The fact that David Hernandez and Jason Berken made the Opening Day roster were also a bit of a surprise but from my autograph standpoint, I have been able to get them to sign multiple times in person. I do not have an autograph of Ohman or Lugo so they are going to be my primary focus at the beginning of the season. I have been able to obtain a signed card and Orioles player card of Tatum through trades, but would like to get his autograph in person as well. Once Ohman, Tatum and Lugo officially appear in a game wearing the Orange and Black, I will add them to the running total of players that have appeared in a game for the Birds. Right now that number sits at 873, but it will likely soon be 876.

I'm ready for some Orioles baseball!

I'm Celebrating, Just Like Craig Tatum

Craig Tatum got the news from Dave Trembley yesterday that he is going to make the first Opening Day roster of his young career. Congrats to him; I hope that he can develop into a viable Major League backup to Wiety and can work towards building confidence with the mostly young pitching staff.

And I'm happy because for the first time since I started my blog a year ago, I averaged one post a day for an entire month. As I mentioned when I was celebrating my blog-iversary last week, I normally average just over 5 posts a week, so posting 31 times in 31 days is an accomplishment for me. I'm not going to fool myself into thinking that I will continue to average a post a day in April, and I have no idea how some bloggers average 2 or more a day. You guys are dedicated! I know that hosting my first contest was the main reason that I posted so often.


With Tatum making the Orioles 25-man roster, it means that Chad Moeller will either have to accept another Minor League assignment and spend some more time with the Tides, or he will ask for his release. I guess that Andy MacPhail is trying to find a spot for him on another team's 25-man, but it seems unlikely at this point. Good luck with whatever your future may hold Chad! You were always a good signer, and that was important to me at least.

Minor League Members of the O's 40 Man Roster- Craig Tatum

While technically you could argue that Craig shouldn't be considered a Minor Leaguer since he made his Major League debut with the Reds last season, he has never played for the O's so for my purposes, I am considering him a Minor League guy. The Orioles claimed him off of waivers from the Reds on November 20, 2009 and he will be trying to make the O's as their backup catcher for the 2010 season.

Craig grew up in Hattiesburg, Mississippi and was a standout pitcher and batter during his years at Hattiesburg High School which earned him the title of the Mississippi Gatorade Player of the Year. He attended Mississippi State and earned second team All-SEC honors as a sophomore which led to the Reds selecting him in the third round of the 2004 amateur draft.

Interestingly enough, Craig earned his first promotion to the Reds on 7/19/09 when my favorite player ever (no, I'm just kidding, I wasn't a fan) Ra-moan Hernandez injured his knee and went on the DL. He appeared in 26 total games for the Reds and hit only .162.

One negative about Craig is that he played high school baseball with Jonathan Papelbon and still trains with him in the off-season.

A Brief Pre-Thanksgiving Suggestion for the Orioles

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone! I hope that you all eat so much turkey that your posts are tainted with Tryptophan. But seriously, have a great holiday with your family and friends.

I figured it was important to suggest a former backup catcher for the O's since they are signing the likes of Michel Hernandez and Craig Tatum. So I present Gustavo Molina.

Gustavo Molina 2007

While Gustavo isn't an actual member of the Molina catching family, he certainly should be since he is a catcher with that lucky last name. He caught seven games for the Orioles in September of 2007. Six of those seven games were Orioles losses. Nuff said. Or is it? The only complete game he caught was the game they won. Eh, I don't think it means anything.

He spent the 2009 season with the Nationals' AAA club, the Syracuse Chiefs. I sent Gustavo an Orioles card TTM but haven't yet received it back. I would like it to replace this White Sox card so I might try to track him down again next season. And I find it very strange that a backup/third string catcher has a card that features him in an Orioles uniform while a pitcher like Jamie Walker who spent three seasons here never had one.

Oh, and I just have to finish with this...Kalina Molina! (My girlfriend's first name rhymes with Molina, so we also joke she should marry a Molina to get a rhyming name.)

Happy Thanksgiving!