You Say Goodbye, I Say Hello

On Tuesday, the Orioles announced that righty reliever Jim Hoey was added to their 40 man roster, presumably to protect him from the Rule V draft. Jim pitched for the O's in parts of the 2006-07 seasons and has been fighting his way through various injuries since then. I would certainly expect that there will be more additions and subtractions to the O's 40 man over the coming weeks and my guess is that Matt Albers, Armando Gabino, Chorye Spoone, Pedro Viola, Pedro Florimon and Rhyne Hughes are the most likely to be removed, but time will tell. 

The O's also allowed a number of players to become Minor League free agents, including...

 Mike Hinckley

 Chris George

 Joel Guzman

 Scott Moore

and Dennis Sarfate.

Hinckley, George, and Guzman were all signed as Minor League free agents before the 2010 season and never made it to Baltimore.  

Moore and Sarfate both played for the Orioles at times over the past three seasons.  

None of these moves surprised me besides letting Sarfate go. The O's have a pretty deep bullpen and he didn't crack the 2010 Major League roster but he saved 20 games and had a 2.73 ERA for the AAA Tides. 

Adios Baysox

The Bowie Baysox, the AA O's affiliate located somewhat near my house, were unfortunately eliminated from the Eastern League playoff contention on Monday, the final day of their regular season.  They had battled for weeks with the Harrisburg Senators, the Nats AA affiliate, for the second (and last) spot in the Western Division standings, and could have forced a one game play-in game if they had one and the Senators had lost on Monday.  Neither of those things happened and the Senators clinched their playoff spot, so the Baysox season was over.  It's too bad because we only made it to one or two of their games over the past couple months and didn't one last night of fun in at Prince George's County Stadium. 

Well, as a proper send off to the team, here are some of the Baysox autographs I got over the season.  Caleb Joseph up top was my favorite player this season, so I took the time to separate his card. 

This is what their 2010 team set looks like; the Aberdeen Ironbirds set looks very similar.  I really like how many of the cards show the players in their orange uni's!  The Tucker card is an All-Star insert card from 2010 Topps Debut.  Waring led the E.L. with 179 K's, Henson was 2nd with 156.  None of these guys have very nice autographs... 

This is Tanaka & Johnson's first O's affiliate cards.  Car-los Ro-jas! McCrory pitched for the O's in 2008 & 09, but spent most of the season with the Baysox.  Chad's card isn't very flattering.  Cooney didn't like how his little pinkie is up on his '09 Shorebirds card.  Gamboa is a great guy, very friendly, another one of my favorites.  

Joel was one of the hardest autographs to get on the team.  I got all of these signed at one of the meet-the-team days, but did get his Baysox card signed at our last game of the season.  He led the Eastern League with 33 homers, 264 total bases, and was second with 98 RBI.  He's had stints with the Dodgers and Devil Rays in the Majors, but won't be coming to Baltimore this September.

Viola had awful numbers with the AAA Norfolk Tides at the start of the season but his numbers over 23 appearances with the Baysox were good enough for him to get a September call-up with the O's.  I think that Komminsk is probably sick of me getting his autograph, and since I don't have anything left for him to sign, I'll stop now.

Eastern League All-Star Game Pictures

Last Wednesday, Kalina & I drove up to Harrisburg, PA for the 2010 Eastern League All-Star game & Home Run Derby at Metro Bank Park. The Derby was held about an hour or so before the game, and there had been an autograph session held before the Derby, but I wasn't able to get there in time for that. I would've liked to make it in time for the autographs too, especially when I found out they had card sets on sale for both the Eastern & Western division teams, but I had fun anyway. I grew up in nearby Carlisle, PA so we met up with my parents at the game and had a great time.


Our Bowie Baysox were represented by OF Tyler Henson & reliever Pedro Beato. Zach Britton was originally scheduled to appear, and possibly would've been the Western Division's starting pitcher, but was promoted to AAA a few weeks before the game. Eastern League HR co-leader Joel Guzman was also selected to the team as an injury replacement, but had a previous commitment and couldn't attend.


Henson was one of the 8 players that took part in the HR Derby. Here he is hitting one out of the park.


And here's a picture of him on the scoreboard before taking his hacks. He ended up placing third in the Derby, which isn't bad since he only hit 1 HR in the first round. Tyler also played the entire game and went 2-4 with two doubles.

Adam Loewen, former Orioles pitcher, and current Benedict Arnold OF of the New Hampshire Fisher Cats, also took part in the HR Derby. The scoreboard above is incorrect and should have read HR:0 Outs: 1. (The scoreboard operator was having trouble keeping up with the Derby.) If you click on the picture, you can see that Loewen appears to be laughing, and that's because he is. He actually swung and missed at the first pitch thrown to him. It was probably a 60 MPH fastball. Great work Adam! He ended up with zero home runs, which gave me immense satisfaction.

Loewen also appeared in right field for the second half of the game, and had a few bonehead plays, including one which he tried to catch Tyler's deep fly ball and almost Jose Canseco'ed it over the fence. You suck Adam! If you don't know why I dislike him so much, I'd tell you, but it's a post for another day. If anyone asks, I can certainly share the story.

Here's Tyler standing on second base after his Loewen assisted double.

Pedro Beato appeared in the 9th inning and threw a single pitch to close out the 10-3 win for the Western Division. Now that's what I call efficient!

Great Job Tyler & Pedro! It was awesome to see our local guys in the All-Star Game. I hope the All-Star Game comes to Bowie soon, but I'm guessing they might need to upgrade Prince George's Stadium before they can bring it home.

A Highly Successful Bowie Baysox Meet the Team Day

The Baysox had their first of three scheduled Meet the Team days last Sunday, April 25. I always like these since they are the perfect time to get your picture taken with the players.

Kalina took my picture with...

Zach Britton

Brandon Waring

Caleb Jospeh

Wilfrido Perez

And Ryohei Tanaka

Here are all the cards that I was able to get signed (with Kalina's help). These events are great for getting a ton of autographs and are great to get the guys who are typically tough signers.


Like Joel Guzman, who prefers to avoid fans if possible. He was nice enough and didn't seem to mind signing. I was expecting him to be surly but he was cool enough.


All of the other Baysox players and coaches are normally good about signing.

Adams mentioned to Kalina that he does not like the picture on the card to the left.

Pedro's autograph didn't turn out great but I have a bunch of his signed cards so it's all good.

Rojas also used a thin sharpie but it works well on this card.



The Figueroa boys were at the same table. Kalina definitely got a picture with the two of them that she likes quite a bit.

I think she also got a picture with Tyler, who wasn't making this funny "fielding-a-ball-face" in their photo.

I think I have about 20 Komminsk autographs at this point. But since he was just sitting there...

It would be nice if Steve had any other cards that I could find. These are cool and all, but they're the only ones I have.

One-time O Jim Hoey was very cool, and even mentioned that sometimes a sharpie will smear on his UD card. Good looking out Jim!

Moe is always very nice and even tossed me a ball from the dugout during the game.

Kennie, who is the Baysox pitching coach this year, didn't sign at the official event but I caught up to him on the field. The pitching coach and that day's started never sign at the Meet the Team days since they are prepping for the game.


Zach and Wilfrido were nice enough to not only pose for pictures with me, but to sign my cards as well.

If any of you ever have the chance to get to any teams' Meet the Team events, I highly suggest that you do so. They are awesome for getting autographs or pictures. If that's not your thing, it's a great way to speak to the players for a few minutes too.

A Good Autograph Weekend and the Return of the Orioles Alumni Autograph Series

I had a pretty good autograph weekend; I would actually call it great if the freaking O's had managed to win a game. I haven't had a chance to get anything scanned yet but I spent time getting autographs at both the Baysox-Flying Squirrels game on Saturday and the O's-Blue Jays game yesterday.

At Saturday's Bowie Baysox game, I got a total of 14 Baysox players to sign 17 cards for me, and I especially enjoyed talking to new backup catcher, Phillip Britton and new reliever Armando Gabino.

I brought a Hawaii Winter League card of Britton that he hadn't seen for a while and he went on and on about it. He seems like a really nice, talkative guy and I'm looking forward to watching him on the Baysox this season.

I had a cool experience with Gabino in Spring Training, when I had a Twins minor league card of his that I don't think that he had seen for a few years. He showed it to a few other players in the dugout in Sarasota and seemed like a nice guy. In Bowie, Armando again seemed like a cool person and was talking to everyone as he went down the line signing. Earlier on Saturday, I had picked up 2 of his 2010 Topps Finest cards to get signed. He mentioned that he hadn't seen the card before, so I offered one of them to him and he was very appreciative of it. In retrospect, I probably could have asked for a ball or something, but I'm glad that he liked the card. I saw him pull it out of his pocket and look at it at least twice once he went to the bullpen area. And I now have a favorite member of the 2010 Baysox, you're the man Armando!

Luckily, the Baysox are one of my team's that know how to win, and they pulled out a back and forth game with an 8th inning three run homer from Joel Guzman, who seems like he will be a tough signer, and a rocky yet successful save from a favorite of this blog, Wilfrido Perez.


Sunday's continue to be the best time to get autographs of the members of the Orioles bullpen and I got 10 different autographs from members of the 25 man roster. I got my first autograph of Will Ohman, my first Orioles cards signed of Cla Meredith, Mike Gonzalez, and Brian Matusz and was also able to get my first in-person Miguel Tejada autograph. Pretty exciting stuff and I will be posting the scans and pictures over the next week or so.


Tonight also marks the return of the Orioles Alumni Autograph Series to Camden Yards. If you don't know or don't remember, former O's will be signing autographs at the MASN tent on Eutaw Street before every Monday and Thursday home game. JACKPOT! I just hope they are able to bring in some different players than last year, but I won't complain about getting some guaranteed autographs any day! No list of signers have been posted yet, but I hope to get an idea of who is signing sometime soon.