Oriole #1006- Mark Trumbo

As I mentioned in yesterday's post about Joey Rickard's debut, three players made their Orioles debut on Opening Day 2016. Again, my tie-breaker system involves using the numbered fielding positions to order the debuts, and Rickard's debut in left field (7), came just ahead of Trumbo's debut in right field (9). So Joey is Oriole #1005, and Mark becomes Oriole #1006. 

Mark's Orioles debut was quite memorable, as he went 4-5 with 4 singles as well as a stolen base. He becomes just the fourth Oriole to record four hits in his Baltimore debut following Sam Horn, Ronny Paulino, and Chris Parmelee. But honestly, the stolen base might be more noteworthy for him considering he only had 20 previous steals over 690 MLB games. 

The Orioles acquired Mark (and reliever C.J. Riefenhauser) in a trade with the Mariners this past December in exchange for local Baltimore product and hometown favorite, Steve Clevenger. Even though Steve was a great guy and easy to root for, I honestly thought it was a great transaction since the Orioles were relatively deep at catcher, and thin in the outfield. Trumbo has some legitimate power as well and has hit over 30 HR twice in his six MLB seasons.

He has bounced around a bit, and was originally drafted by the Angels, before being traded to the Diamondbacks, and later the Mariners. He came in second in the 2011 AL Rookie of the Year voting behind winner Jeremy Hellickson, and was an All-Star for the Halos in 2012.

Mark signed both of these Old Man Cards for me during my Spring Training trip. I saw him sign multiple times over the course of the trip and was lucky to have gotten his autograph twice as he was mobbed by fans both times I got his autograph. I actually mentioned that I had his first Orioles card, and he specifically picked it out of the crowd and signed it for me. He took a minute to look it over and I asked him what he thought and he said it was a nice card. He asked if I made it and I was happy to give the credit to my dad for his help.

Potential 2015 Orioles- Catchers: Ryan Lavarnway, J.P. Arencibia, & Brian Ward

Having some new autographs to write about really has reinvigorated my interest in writing and talking about autographs. Thanks again for the autograph fuel old man! The approach of baseball's regular season certainly doesn't hurt either, it's almost time for another playoff push, O's fans!

Since I'm focusing on players who could be making their Orioles debuts this season, today I'm going to examine the catchers. With Matt Wieters starting the season on the disabled list, there will be an opening for at least one additional catcher on the roster.

It seems like Caleb Joseph will be the starter while Wieters is out, and the backup catcher slot is one of the tightest contests going on in Sarasota.

My money is on Ryan Lavarnway being the backup on Opening Day. Buck puts some major emphasis on catching defense and I think Lavarnway is pulling away from the pack.

The guy likely trailing Lavarnway seems to be J.P. Arencibia, which again seems to boil down to a defense thing. 

I sent this card with my dad on his trip because it shows Arencibia attempting to tag out Nolan Reimold at home plate when they were members of opposing teams. Pretty cool that they are both in Orioles camp this year.

Two other guys are on the fringes of the competition, "The Pride of Pigtown" Steve Clevenger who can absolutely hit at the Major League level but has allowed 9 steals this spring. 

And career minor leaguer, Brian Ward, who seems to be the best defensive option of the group but is also the least experienced. You can't rule anything out, but since he was sent to the minor league camp a few weeks ago, he would seem to be the longest of the long shots. 

Back to Spring Training- Major Leaguers

Since I've made it through all of the posts detailing the players who have already debuted for the Orioles thus far in 2014, and there are no other debuts on the horizon, I'm moving back to showing off the autographs I got on my Spring Training trip.

These next few posts will likely be picture dumps, but let's face it, I know that most of us prefer to look at pictures rather than read a bunch of words. As is the case with some men's magazines, most of you are here to look at pictures, not read. You've just chosen to look at signed baseball cards instead of women. But who am I to judge? I'm the one putting the pictures here.

Today's focus is on the autographs I got on my trip that are all of players currently on the Orioles roster. Over the next few days, I will cover minor leaguers, coaches, and the other miscellaneous autographs.

You will probably notice a number of signed cards that show players wearing orange uniforms. If you are new to my site, I collect signed orange uniform cards in addition to my main collection.

I was very happy to get Zach to sign this mini. They aren't so fun to carry around with a bunch of regular sized cards. I definitely dropped this bad boy more than once while trying to get other autographs.

 I've had some pretty bad luck with Wei-Yin over the years, so was surprised that he signed.

On the other hand, Steve Clevenger might be the best signing, coolest player the O's have had in a while. Pigtown is well represented by this guy.

I'm including Machado here because he would be on the team if he wasn't hurt. This was one of the first autographs I got at my first game, so I got off to a good start. I actually saw him sign one other time but he got absolutely swarmed.

My streak of only getting Nick's autograph at Fanfest and/or Spring Training continues.

It wasn't long ago that I had no signed Bud Norris Orioles cards. Now I'm up to three. I'd much rather have too many than not enough.

I was fairly surprised that Schoop made the O's Opening Day roster, and it mainly was related to Machado's injury but he also beat out at least Jemile Weeks for the backup infielder spot on the roster.

Jonathan has always seemed like a good guy, and he is very easy to root for; I hope that this is a start to a long Orioles career for him!

Rest of the FanFest Autographs

Wow, look at me go. It's my 5th post of the month (my most since last August), and I'm showing off the rest of my Orioles Fanfest autographs, within three weeks of obtaining them. I'm on a freaking roll here. Maybe I'll get this blog back up to full steam one of these days. But for now, I'm pretty pleased to just be moving along at a medium pace.

FYI- This is probably the most scans that I've ever had in a single post. At times in the past, I would have split this into a few different segments, but I'd rather just knock them all out at once. So that's how I'm gonna do it.

Also, my scanner got a little weird while scanning some of the postcards, but whatever. It has a mind of it's own.

This first group of cards are joining my collection. Mainly for the orange uniforms, but I was really happy to finish off the Davis/McLouth celebration card too. McLouth signed it for me during Spring Training last year, so it got carried around for quite some time before it got signed. And, I can't seem to bring myself to tradeaway any of my Wieters' autographs.

 

 

These cards are all extras that I got signed and are available for trade. If you see something you like, let me know and maybe we can work something out!

 

These postcards are available for trade too...

I got this group signed for some other collectors, so they are already spoken for, but I wanted to show them off anyway, if for no other reason than to prove that I got them signed. Or something like that. 

Finally, Liam Hendriks get his own grouping in the "we-hardly-knew-you category". Liam was DFA'ed to make room on the roster for the exciting free agent signing of Ubaldo Jimenez. But the Blue Jays selected him off of waivers from the O's, so the likelihood of his appearing in a game for the Orioles, at least in the near future, took a major hit, so these Orioles autographs become somewhat of an unneeded item. No complaints here though as Jimenez is certainly an upgrade.