Oriole # 1019- Logan Ondrusek

Whew, a lot of these late season additions to the Orioles roster have given me a run for my money in my attempts to add their autographs to my collection. Which has caused me to fall behind on my debut posts as well. But don't worry, I'm still here, just busy trying to catch up with all the new guys around town.

Logan Ondrusek's signing came completely out of left field, or I suppose more accurately, Japan, where he had been pitching for the past two seasons after spending parts of his first five seasons pitching for the Reds. In a very unexpected and Dan Duquetteish transaction, the Orioles signed him to a Major League deal on July 29th and designated Chaz Roe for assignment. This was right at the trade deadline as other teams were making bigger and better moves, so I think most of the Orioles fan base was beyond puzzled by this addition to the roster.

Logan made his Orioles debut the day after being added to the roster and proceeded to pitch in seven games for the Orioles over two stints with the team. Over 6.1 IP, he allowed 9 hits, 7 earned runs which worked out to a 9.95 ERA. Needless to say, things didn't go well. He was designated for assignment on August 26th and ultimately passed through waivers and ended the season at AA Bowie.

Shortly after Logan was added to the team, I was able to trade for this signed Reds card of his through a friend on SportsCollectors.Net. So it served as a nice placeholder in my collection. However, my dad quickly churned out some Old Man Cards of Ondrusek, and it was preference to save this post until I got them signed. And that's where my attempts to get these cards signed get interesting. 

During his first stint with the Orioles, from July 30-August 11, the team only had three weekday home games which I was unable to attend. Luckily, he got optioned to the AA Bowie Baysox, which is the closest affiliate to me, so I planned to go to a game there on Friday August 19th, but something came up and I couldn't make it. So I decided to go the following Saturday, 8/29. But by that point, the Orioles had recalled him from Bowie and designated him for assignment, so he was in DFA limbo when I attended that game. The Baysox final home game of 2016 was Thursday 9/1 and the day before that it was announced that he had cleared waivers and would head back to Bowie. I went to the game with my family and we waited for Logan who was one of the last players out of the clubhouse with only about five minutes to go before first pitch. Luckily, he was a nice guy and came over to sign for us as you can tell by the cards in this post. And that's my drawn out story about how Logan's signed and personalized Old Man Cards came to my collection. I hope you enjoyed it!

2016 Spring Training- Before I Even Got There...

As some of you may remember from last year, I did not make it to Spring Training due to having a six month old son, but my parents continued their yearly tradition of heading down to Sarasota to avoid the cold winter weather of the Northeast. Well, this year, while I did make it down for a few days, their trip was a bit longer than mine, and my dad spent some of the time ahead of my arrival snagging some autographs. By the time I got to Sarasota, he had already gotten 21 autographs in one day! He helped me out a ton last year, and this year, he provided an awesome start to my autograph-seeking adventure.















My dad was able to get all of these OMCs (Old Man Cards) signed and some personalized for me before I even set foot in Florida! (I just realized that I forgot to scan the three Audry Perez autos that he got, but I will show them off with the next batch.)

These were my first autographs of Chris Lee, Andy Oliver, Francisco Pena, and Andrew Triggs, so these personalized OMCs are heading directly for the collection if/when they make their Orioles debuts. Triggs is already out of the organization after the Orioles released him to make room for Pedro Alvarez and the A's added him to their team, so it seems unlikely that he will pitch for the O's at least in the near future. So Triggs is the commemorative Alex Gonzalez/Alex Hassan OMC autograph of the player who was out of the organization before Spring Training ended. Which is too bad since he signed a card for my son as well, but that's life! The other three guys could show up in Baltimore at some point in the near future.

I've been lucky in the past to get autographs of Jason Garcia, Chaz Roe, and Mike Wright in the past, so the non-personalized cards are available for trade. And thankfully Chaz didn't spell my name Rayn this time around.

Thanks for your help old man!

Hopefully, I will be showing off some more autographs sometime later this week. But two posts in a week is certainly a good starting point.

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!

Another Look at Oriole #1000 Candidates

NORFOLK TIDES ROSTER

Pitchers (click column headers to sort)

#	Name	Pos	Bat	Thw	Ht	Wt	DOB	Status	MLB 40-man
36	Pedro Beato	P	R	R	6' 6"	230	10-27-1986	Active	No
25	Michael Bowden	P	R	R	6' 3"	215	09-09-1986	Active	No
38	Cesar Cabral	P	L	L	6' 3"	250	02-11-1989	Active	No
15	Zach Davies	P	R	R	6' 0"	150	02-07-1993	Active	No
	Dane De La Rosa	P	R	R	6' 7"	245	02-01-1983	7-day DL	No
59	Oliver Drake	P	R	R	6' 4"	215	01-13-1987	Active	Yes
37	Eddie Gamboa	P	R	R	6' 1"	215	12-21-1984	Active	Yes
40	Steve Johnson	P	R	R	6' 1"	220	08-31-1987	Active	No
43	Chris Jones	P	L	L	6' 2"	205	09-19-1988	Active	No
46	Pat McCoy	P	L	L	6' 3"	220	08-03-1988	Active	No
66	T.J. McFarland	P	L	L	6' 3"	219	06-08-1989	Active	Yes
30	Hector Daniel Rodriguez	P	L	L	5' 11"	195	12-11-1984	7-day DL	No
33	Chaz Roe	P	R	R	6' 5"	190	10-09-1986	Active	No
34	Tyler Wilson	P	R	R	6' 2"	185	09-25-1989	Active	Yes
28	Mike Wright	P	R	R	6' 6"	215	01-03-1990	Active	Yes

52	Zach Booker	C	R	R	6' 0"	220	04-24-1985	7-day DL	No
45	Steve Clevenger	C	L	R	5' 10"	210	04-05-1986	Active	Yes
24	Audry Perez	C	R	R	5' 10"	220	12-23-1988	Active	No

13	Michael Almanzar	3B	R	R	6' 3"	190	12-02-1990	Active	No
11	Paul Janish	SS	R	R	6' 2"	200	10-12-1982	Active	No
2	Rey Navarro	SS	S	R	5' 10"	185	12-22-1989	7-day DL	Yes
12	Jayson Nix	2B	R	R	5' 11"	195	08-26-1982	Active	No
41	Chris Parmelee	IF	L	L	6' 1"	220	02-24-1988	Active	No
1	Garabez Rosa	SS	R	R	6' 2"	166	10-12-1989	Active	No
22	Christian Walker	1B	R	R	6' 0"	220	03-28-1991	Active	Yes

10	Dariel Alvarez	RF	R	R	6' 2"	180	11-07-1988	Active	No
5	Julio Borbon	CF	L	L	6' 0"	195	02-20-1986	Active	No
14	Nolan Reimold	RF	R	R	6' 4"	205	10-12-1983	Active	No
51	Henry Urrutia	LF	L	R	6' 3"	200	02-13-1987	Active	Yes

There's the current 2015 roster of the Orioles' AAA affiliate Norfolk Tides. It's a relatively safe assumption to make that these are the most likely candidates to make the jump up to the big league team in the near future, thus being the most likely to be Oriole #1000. Obviously, the Orioles could always make a trade and that special debut could be a player that isn't currently in the organization, and/or the O's have occasionally called up a player directly from the AA Bowie Baysox since they are located closer to Baltimore and certainly have some talent on their roster as well. 

I wrote about the highlighted players on Tuesday, so I won't rehash what I wrote about them. Today's post will focus on the remaining 18 members of the Tides, and their chances to be Oriole #1000. 

I would put this group of Dariel Alvarez, Paul Janish, Jayson Nix, & Chris Parmelee among the most likely of the remaining 18 Tides to play for the Orioles this year. Alvarez is a solid prospect who will almost positively be an Oriole at some point, when is really the only quesiton. The other three guys are MLB veterans who play solid defense and were some of the last spring training cuts so they seem to be just a DL move away from Baltimore. 

My second tier of possible candidates for Oriole #1000 includes Julio Borbon, Michael Bowden, Zach Davies, Pat McCoy, Audry Perez, Chaz Roe, & Garabez Rosa. I feel like anyone from this group could make it to Baltimore or none of them could. Probably the most likely is Davies, another prospect, who was rewarded with a few late March Spring Training road starts. Borbon, Roe, & Rosa played a good bit for the O's during Spring Training which could bode well for them. Bowden was signed near the end of spring training, and have over 100 MLB games under his belt, and the team picked up McCoy off of waivers from the Tigers last year, so the O's obviously see something in both of them. And Perez is a catcher, and let's be honest, you never know when you'll need a catcher. 

My "who knows" group includes two guys who were out of the Orioles system but were resigned over the winter, Michael Almanzar and Pedro Beato. I'm also including Cesar Cabral and Dane De La Rosa in this group since they've had some MLB experience. 

And finally the three remaining players I will put in my "I just don't see it" category. Zach Booker is a bullpen catcher and is on the roster pretty much only to warm up pitchers, Chris Jones has been in the Orioles organization since 2013 and hasn't been mentioned in any call-up scenarios I've ever heard, and Hector Daniel Rodriguez seems to be a career Mexican League/AAA guy.  

So there's my two cents on the Tides roster and how likely each player is to make it to Baltimore. What do you think? Do you care? I'm pretty sure that I might be the only one out here who is even aware of the pending milestone, well until I started writing about it and sharing it at least.