After he played baseball and football for the University of Illinois, the O's selected Kyle in the 4th round of the 2008 draft. Since '08, he has appeared at every level of the minor leagues in the Orioles farm system, from the short season A Aberdeen Ironbirds to the AAA Norfolk Tides. One thing that jumps out at me is that Kyle has never hit a home-run in professional baseball. He's mainly a speed guy, but most players would have run into at least one bad pitch over 389 minor league games, but power is just clearly not a part of his game.
Since Kyle has spent a few seasons in the O's farm system, I've had multiple chances to get his autograph. The card at the top of the post is staying in my collection, but if anyone out there is also collecting Orioles autographs, the rest of these are available for trade.
I would describe Kyle's Orioles call-up as a surprise since he started the 2011 season with the hi-A Frederick Keys. He signed a few of these cards for me at an early season Keys' meet the team day. After spending most of April with the Keys, he was promoted to the AA Baysox and played 28 games there before jumping to the Tides, where he played 68 games prior to be called up the Orioles.
Since his debut on September 4th, Kyle has played in 13 games with the Orioles, mainly playing left and center field, but also appearing as a pinch runner. To give you an idea about how fast this guy is, the O's inserted him as a pinch runner against the Tigers over the weekend and he went from first to third on a wild pitch. You don't see that very often!
Kyle has made one previous appearance on my blog, way back in April 2010, when I showed a number of autographs I got at a Keys game.
His signature leaves a bit to be desired and has gotten slightly worse over the years. The card at the top of the post was signed sometime in late 2009/early 2010 and looks something like K_ H__big loop__ 21. The rest of these autographs are from this year and Kyle dropped the big loop so we're left with pretty much K H 21. At least the K looks cool, I guess.
Good luck Kyle!
.jpg)
2 comments:
Fat chance of him wearing #21 in the big leagues! Well at least until 2014 or he's traded!
Haha, very true. I wonder if he has changed his signature to reflect the #51 he now wears. Probably not though since most players will sign the number they were wearing in the picture on the card, not the number they currently have on their back.
Post a Comment