Oriole #996- Chaz Roe

Unlike the previous four players who made their Orioles debuts (Rey Navarro, Mike Wright, Tyler Wilson, & Oliver Drake), Chaz Roe has been around the block a time or two. He actually has limited MLB experience, which includes 21 games with the Diamondbacks in 2013, as well as 3 appearances with the Yankees last year, but he was selected way back in the first round of the 2005 draft by the Rockies. He has pitched in the farm systems for five different teams and spent some time in the independent American Association over the past 11 years.

Chaz made his Orioles debut on May 24th against the Marlins and pitched two scoreless innings without allowing a baserunner and striking out two. He's made it into two more games since his O's debut, he walked two over 1.1 innings against the Astros on Tuesday, and gave up a hit and struck out one against the White Sox in the first game of today's doubleheader. So covering three appearances over 5 innings, he has given up just one hit, two walks and struck out three. Not too shabby.

Thanks to my dad's time spent getting autographs on his spring training trip and work making his Old Man Cards, I have probably the only signed Chaz Roe Orioles card in the world. Thanks Dad! And I'm 100% positive I have the only one personalized to Rayn!

I included Chaz in the group of Norfolk Tides players whom I considered that "anyone from this group could make it to Baltimore or none of them could" when evaluating candidates for Oriole #1000 just over a month ago. Looks like I was at least partially correct.

And good luck Chaz, keep mowing down those hitters!

Oriole #995- Oliver Drake

Wow, with four players making their Orioles debut last week, it's really pushing the pace of my posts. Considering there's no way I have time to write four in a week right now, maybe slow down a little bit with the new players, whaddya think O's? But then again, at this rate, we will see Oriole #1000 in just a few short weeks!

In this past Saturday's game against the Marlins, Oliver Drake became the third Orioles pitched within a week to make their MLB debut for the team, following Mike Wright, and Tyler Wilson. And it was another stellar showing once again!

Drake entered in the ninth inning of a scoreless game (no additional pressure for an MLB debut, right?) and pitched three scoreless innings giving up just two hits and striking out two. He pitched again in the eighth inning on Monday's game, with the O's staked to a 4-3 lead, and was dominant yet again, as he struck out two of the three Astros he faced and didn't allow anyone to get on base. 

Oliver took the long and winding road to the major leagues, as he was drafted by the O's in the 43rd round of the 2008 draft out of the Naval Academy. He pitched at every level of the O's farm system, including Bluefield, which hasn't even been an Orioles affiliate since 2010, but he continued to rise through the system. The O's actually added him to their 40 man roster way back in 2011 to protect him from the Rule V draft, but subsequent injuries and roster crunches led to his being removed before pitching for the team at that point. 

He was actually a minor league free agent following the 2014 season, but he agreed to a major league deal that once again saw him added to the 40-man roster. It was a deal that made since for both sides since Drake knew that being on the 40-man made a call-up much more likely and the O's obviously liked something they saw in him. 

He was largely a starter over his first four years in the O's system, but was converted to a reliever in 2013 and his results seemed to improve at that point. In fact, as the AAA Norfolk Tides closer this season, he had 8 saves and a 0.96 ERA with 30 strikeouts over 18.2 innings in 16 appearances. Those are the kind of numbers that dignify a promotion!

Good luck with the Orioles Oliver! I have a feeling that you might stick around in Baltimore if you continue to pitch the way you have been so far!

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!

Possible 2015 Orioles Debuts- Pitchers

In today's post, I'm going to highlight the pitchers who could potentially be making their Orioles debuts in 2015, once again starting with those who I feel like are most likely to pitch in Baltimore through the least likely.

Logan has two major plus signs in his favor to making the club out of Spring Training; he is a rule V pick who has to be offered back to the Mets if he doesn't make the team, and he has pitched very well this spring. My gut says he is on the Orioles 25 man roster next Monday.

Wesley Wright is a LOOGY (lefty one out guy) who the Orioles signed as a free agent this past off-season for $1.7 million. As I wrote about Everth Cabrera, the O's aren't the type of team to spend $2 million on a pitcher to send them to AAA. So even if Wright doesn't make the team on Opening Day, I would expect to see him in Baltimore at some point. His making the team might be related to Brian Matusz's possibly being traded.

Like Verrett, Garcia is another Rule V pick, so I know that the Orioles would love to keep him in the organization, but he has a few factors working against him. He's been injured for part of the spring, and he has never pitched above single A, whereas Verrett has had success at AAA. Garcia supposedly has the more electric arm of the two, but I don't see how the O's could keep two Rule V pitchers.

Roe, De La Rosa, and Drake have all been sent to the minor league camp already, so are extreme long shots to make the team. Roe was sent out most recently, and could become a bullpen piece at some point this summer. De La Rosa was injured for much of the Spring but has had some Major League success in the past so I don't know what to make of his chances. And the Orioles re-signed Drake to a major league deal this past winter after he had pitched at every level of the team's farm system over the past seven seasons, so there is obviously something they like about him.

As always, a big thanks to my dad for getting all of these autographs on his Spring Training trip, and making all of these awesome OMCs to boot!

2012 FanFest Pictures

My family and I all took a bunch of pictures at Fanfest. Not too surprisingly, mine were mostly of the players at the autograph stations. Sorry that some of the pictures are blurry but my dad's camera was having problems getting it's focus on.


If only we had a kid with us, we could've gotten free autographs at the kids only station of (l to r) Zach Phillips, Chris Davis, Ryan Flaherty, and Pedro Strop. I'm still trying to add signed O's postcards of Phillips and Strop to my collection, so maybe I should have seen if I card borrow a kid from someone else; anyone have one I could rent for next year?

Here is a picture from yet another station that I didn't have a ticket for. While waiting in line for the 3:20 signing to begin, (l to r) Chris Tillman, Chris Hoiles, and Matt Wieters were still signing for fans from the previous group.

And for my last picture of players whose autographs I didn't get, here are Rick Krivda (l), and Zach Britton leaving the station prior to my next group signing.

Now HERE are some players whose station I went through; (l to r) Jai Miller, Taylor Teagarden, Troy Patton, and JJ Hardy.

A few minutes before the above picture was taken, I got to see Miller and Patton introducing themselves to one another. It was a unique thing to see since frequently teammates know each other prior to being in public. And it's because of this that I know Jai's name is pronounced "Jay", not "Jeye" as I had thought.

And here is some proof that I actually went through the line. First up is me and Miller...

and Teagarden...

and Patton...

Here is my dad helping me out with Brady.

And Kalina with Matt Wieters (lucky Kalina!)

 I tried to get a picture of Kalina and Matt Antonelli but only one of them was looking. Guess which one?

Lastly are a few pictures from the previous station I went through. Below are Oliver Drake (l) and Dana Eveland.

And HOFer Jim Palmer. It's pretty cool that he still attends FanFest, but he didn't seem overly personable this year.

Tomorrow will be my last FanFest post, as I still have a few trades and purchases to show off.

My 2012 FanFest Autographs

So I spent about four hours at Orioles FanFest at the Baltimore Convention Center on Saturday and was able to get autographs from almost everyone I wanted, thanks to some major help from Kalina and my parents. I think that everyone in my group had a pretty good time, I know that I sure did! Thanks for your help guys!

Since I added so many autographs to the collection, this will be an information short and scan heavy post.

Probably the coolest autograph that we got all day was this Markakis struck foul ball that my dad snagged at a game late last season.

And he also got Kakes to sign this orange uniform card for me!

I also added signed items of many of the new Orioles to my collection. Since I like to have signed cards as well as postcards of the players, I got both whenever possible. 

A few other players had their first Orioles postcards available...

My dad was able to get a few cards personalized to me...

I was able to add a few more autographs of my favorite Oriole...

And I was able to add some trade stock too... the following are all available for trade (minus the Patton minor league card which was obtained for a fellow collector)

 

   

I will share some stories, trade items, and pictures tomorrow.