Orioles Spring Training Phenom- Joey Rickard

The Orioles selected Joey Rickard from the Tampa Bay Rays during the Rule V draft during the Winter Meetings this past December. Most of you probably already know that the O's have a propensity for making picks in that supplemental draft, and that they do their best to keep the players they drafted. In recent years, the team has added Ryan Flaherty, T.J. McFarland, and Jason Garcia to the organization via the Rule V draft.

Joey has made the Orioles decision to keep him even easier, as he has dominated Grapefruit League pitching to the tune of a .385 batting average in addition to five stolen bases. He has also frequently batted out of the lead off spot, and is a relatively prototypical lead off hitter, which is a role that the Orioles struggled to fill in recent seasons. In fact, Rickard has had such a great Spring that the Orioles are apparently even discussing letting Hyun-Soo Kim out of his contract to return to Korea.

We will see you in Baltimore a week from today Joey! Congrats on making the club!

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!

Spring Training Autographs- Minor Leaguers

Now that I've been back from my Spring Training trip for well over a month and the regular season is nearly three weeks old, I think it's about time that I make it through all of the autographs I got in Spring Training. So here is another post that is heavy on pictures and light on words.

Don't act like you mind. 

I'm gonna start off with some players who have actually played for the Orioles at some point over the years. 

Jack Cust was a late Spring signing who headed directly to minor league camp and never had much of a shot to make the O's. He was attempting a comeback but I think might have retired after being cut.

T.J. spent the 2013 season in the O's bullpen as a Rule V pick from the Indians but is back in the minors attempting to stretch out and become a starter down the road. 

Henry also spent some time in Baltimore last year but was edged out of the OF competition during Spring Training. 

This group of players were all at the O's camp during Spring but didn't make the team. 

You've most likely already seen signed custom Orioles OMC cards of most of they players here and I don't have much more to say about them.

 Stupid chrome cards. I even "prepped" this one. Obviously not well. 

I have to give Quintin props, he is a good signer.

 Two consecutive players with B.B. initials whose signatures largely consist of two large B's. Just an observation.

Kelvin's stock in the organization seems to have dropped pretty quickly. He signed a Major League deal, but has since been outrighted off the roster and is sporting an 11.37 ERA through six appearances with the AAA Tides. 

Now that's a proper chrome card signature. 

Could this be the year that Caleb makes the jump to the Majors? At least he's already progressed to AAA after a bunch of years at AA.

Johnny is another good signer, and I like to give respect where it's due. 

Xavier didn't seem like much of a fan of signing, but I still got him a few times. 

I heard from some other collectors that Eduardo was tough but I've never had problems with him. 

Jemile was sooo close to making the O's roster, but David Lough avoided a DL trip. 

The players below all signed for me on my one morning spent at minor league camp.

For whatever reason, Kalina has already decided that Ronald is the player she is going to root for at Bowie this year. 

Chih-Hsien is also with Bowie. 

That's a nice orange uni. 

And these two guys are already out of the organization.

Thanks again for taking the time to sign Alfredo!

Scott, we hardly knew ya!

Spring Training Autographs- Old Man Cards

I've said it before, and I know that I'll say it again, but I really appreciate the time and effort that my dad puts in to create his awesome Old Man Cards. I know that he enjoys doing it, but it's quite a time-consuming process and it makes having these signed cards in my collection mean that much more to me. Thanks dad!

Today, I'm going to start with a player who will almost certainly never appear in a game for the Orioles after he didn't make the 25 man roster out of Spring Training and opted out of his contract. For all the stories, I have heard about Alfredo Aceves over the years, I had no idea what to expect from him on the autograph front. Turns out that he was about the most approachable player I've dealt with on the O's in Spring Training, short of Pat Neshek, but he's nearly incomparable in his fan friendliness. 

Alfredo pulled out of the player lot one day, and parked on the side of the street, and got out of his car to sign autographs. Neshek was the only other player I've ever seen do that. And when I thanked Alfredo for signing, he said thank you for giving me the opportunity to do it. Pretty awesome. So I'm sad that things didn't work out for him and the O's, but I will definitely remain a fan of his after our interaction in Sarasota. If only more players acted that way, at least from time to time!

You might recognize some of these other OMCs, as I had many of these personalized in addition to these unpersonalized versions. But you might notice some subtle differences in the design, as my dad stepped up his game and added the year and some other bells and whistles on some of the cards.

There is a dated version...

And another with the year kind of highlighted. 

I just now realized that Ivan and Eddie kind of look like each other.

With Johnny Monell, he even did a few versions of his cards.

I was anticipating that Suk-Min might sign in Korean, and while I'm not exactly sure what he signature says, I believe it is his last name and number.

Thanks again for your help Dad! I look forward to our yearly Spring Training trips!