Orioles Non-Tenders

Earlier this week, the Orioles did not offer contracts (non-tendered) to three of their arbitration eligible players; Luke Scott, Jo-Jo Reyes, and Willie Eyre. 

I hear that the O's would like to bring Luke back, but didn't want to have to pay whatever the amount (with a raise) would have been over the $6.4 million he made last season. I recently heard that up to ten teams are interested in him though, so I'm skeptical that he will be an Oriole in 2012. 

Reyes had a 6.16 ERA during his nine games late in the season, after the O's claimed him off of waivers from the Jays in early August, so I wasn't surprised to see him on this list.

However, Eyre's non-tendering confuses me. Just last week, the Orioles designated him for assignment when they acquired Dana Eveland from the Dodgers. I thought that when a player who didn't have any options was designated, he became a free agent. But I guess not? Can anyone explain this one to me?

Orioles Winter Meeting Moves

The Orioles didn't make a big splash at the winter meetings; in fact they barely made a ripple, but I have to say that the few moves they made does make the team a little better off for the 2012 season.

The O's "big move" was acquiring LHP Dana Eveland from the Dodgers for minor leaguers Jarrett Martin and Tyler Henson.

Eveland has bounced around the Majors over the seven seasons he has spent in the big leagues. He made his MLB debut with the Brewers in 2005 and has since pitched for the Diamondbacks, A's, Blue Jays, Pirates, and Dodgers. At this point in his career, Dana is best known for the 2008-09 seasons he spent in Oakland and 42 of his 100 career appearances were with the A's. In limited September 2011 action with the Dodgers, he pitched well (3-2 record with a 3.03 ERA over five starts) so I hope that he can keep that positive momentum going into 2012.

Martin is a lefty pitcher who went 5-12 with the lo-A Delmarva Shorebirds in 2011 and was drafted by the O's in the 18th round of the 2009 draft. I don't believe I ever saw Martin pitch since he only spent two seasons in the Orioles organization and played for Bluefield and Delmarva, which are the two furthest affiliates from where I live. I don't have any autographs of his so you get a double dose of Henson.

Henson was a 5th round pick in the 2006 draft and spent the entire 2011 season with the AAA Norfolk Tides. He spent part of Spring Training in 2011 with the Orioles but finished the year with a relatively disappointing stat line in his first AAA action. Tyler has played at every level of the Orioles farm system over the past six seasons, and I enjoyed watching him play for the hi-A Frederick Keys and AA Bowie Baysox during the 2009-2010 seasons. He was one of Kalina's favorite minor leaguers, so she might need some time to recover from this trade.

If you are a twitterer, both Martin (@JarretMartin) and Henson (@hendog4) have accounts so you can follow them if you are into that kind of thing.

To clear room for Eveland on the 40 man roster, the O's designated reliever Willie Eyre for assignment. Eyre pitched well for the Birds in 2011, (2-2, 3.44 ERA in 19 games) and I thought he did well enough to be brought back for the 2012 season, but what do I know?

In other Orioles news, they announced that infielder Greg Miclat is the player to be named later in the Taylor Teagarden trade with the Rangers that was announced last week. Greg was the Orioles 5th round pick in the 2008 draft and had been steadily rising through the farm system. He spent the entire 2011 season with the Baysox and was probably the Orioles system's best base-stealer, as he swiped 50 bases in 53 attempts last year alone. Giving up Randy Henry and Miclat seems like a steep price for backup catcher, but again, I'm obviously not the one calling the shots and the team needed someone to fill-in for Wieters.

The Rule 5 draft wrapped up the 2011 Winter Meetings and the Orioles selected three players, one in each round of the draft. In the Major League phase, the team picked Ryan Flaherty from the Cubs, who had spent last year with the AAA Iowa Cubs and will compete for the 3B/utility infielder spot in spring training. In the AAA phase, the O's plucked LHP Andrew Loomis from the Phillies system, and in the AA phase they selected 3B Matt Sweeney from the Rays. Sweeney had been part of the Angels-Rays Scott Kazmir trade a few years back and is from Maryland. The O's were one of only two teams to make a selection in the AA phase and had none of their players selected in any phase of the draft, so take that for whatever it's worth.

I hope that some of you made it all the way down one of my longer posts in recent memory. Can you imagine how much I would have written if the team had signed Pujols?!?

Way to Go O's

Baltimore is in full spoiler celebratory mode as the O's continue to win series over American League playoff contenders. They've now won three in a row against the Rays, Angels, and Red Sox who are all vying for the A.L. Wild Card spot. Out of those three teams, I would be fine with anyone making it except for the Sawx. And their team seems to feel the same way as they're playing to a 5-16 record so far in some crucial September games.

My original intent was to show an autographed Red Sox card of a player who had also played for the O's, but I try to avoid having signed Yankees or Red Sox cards taint my collection whenever possible, and don't have any to share. Then my thought was to share a card of Mark Reynolds, who homered twice last night to help power the O's to a win. But you've already seen all my autographs of him too.

So I settled on sharing autographs of the four Orioles pitchers who appeared in the game last night and held the Red Sox in check.

Tommy Hunter started last night's game and gave up all four of the Red Sox runs over 6.2 innings. Overall, it was a solid performance against a potentially explosive offense.

Tommy signed and personalized this card for me prior to Sunday's Orioles-Angels game. His autograph is awesome and this is probably the longest signature + inscription combination I've ever received from a player inside a stadium. Nice work Tommy!

 

Clay Rapada came on in relief of Hunter, who appeared to tweak a leg/groin muscle in the 7th inning but was nearing 100 pitches and likely would have been pulled following the inning anyway. The timing might have been fortuitous though since Rapada is almost certain to get lefties out and he mowed down Adrian Gonzalez and David Ortiz on only 10 pitches. It was good enough to earn Rapada his second win of the season since the O's took the lead in the top of the eighth.

 

Next up was Willie Eyre who needed only three pitches to get two outs to close out the eighth inning and earned a hold for the effort. Now that's what I call being efficient with your pitches!

Willie also signed this card for me prior to Sunday's game. For some reason, I forgot to ask him to personalize it for me, but it's still my first in-person autograph of his, so it will be inserted into the collection. 

 

Jim Johnson, whose current closer status is the worst kept secret in Birdland, came on in the ninth inning to mow the Sawx down in order on only nine pitches. 

And there you have it, the O's first four game series win in Boston since 2003. I always enjoy when we can get rid of silly losing streaks like that; the Birds seem to have some sort of "haven't beaten team X over a certain number of games/series for many years" record against most opponents and they all irk me. 

To recap, three Orioles relievers pitched 2.1 innings of no-hit baseball to close out the game and only needed a combined 22 pitches to get 7 outs. BOOM! That's some effective relief pitching!

I couldn't close out this post without noting how it appears that the Tides stole/borrowed their picture of Rapada for his 2011 Tides team set card. 

 

This is the picture the O's used for Clay's inclusion in the 2011 team postcard set. It appears to have been taken a split second before the picture on the Tides card. The Tides card has the Orioles logos shopped out, but you can tell that it's from the same sequence of pictures. 

I doubt that anyone else cares about something like that, but I don't remember an Orioles minor league team ever doing that before and figured I would share.

Oriole #906- Willie Eyre

There have been five Orioles debuts since August 3rd, when Jo-Jo Reyes became the 905th player to wear the orange and black in a game. Don't worry, I haven't forgotten about them, I've just been preoccupied with request week and the overall sad state of the current team.

 

Willie Eyre became Oriole #906 when he pitched in the August 12th loss against the Tigers. To date, he has pitched in 10 games with the O's, and is 1-1 with a 4.15 ERA and a 2/1 strikeout to walk ratio; all of his appearances have come as a middle reliever. Honestly those numbers don't sound amazing but he has been a stabilizing force out of the pen over the past month.

Willie was drafted by the Twins in 1999 and steadily rose through their farm system before making his MLB debut with the club in early 2006. He became a free agent following that season and spent the next four years in the Rangers' organization, pitching in the Majors for them in 2007 & '09. Prior to the 2011 campaign, he signed with the A's but was never called up to their big league team and exercised his opt-out clause on July 31. Four days later he signed with the Orioles and spent a week with the AAA Norfolk Tides before getting called back to The Show.

Two other interesting things about Willie...

His full name is William Mays Eyre, so it seems like he was predestined to become a baseball player, although I'm guessing his parents envisioned him as a hittter.

His brother Scott pitched in 617 Major League games over 13 seasons from 1997-2009 for the White Sox, Blue Jays, Giants, Cubs and Phillies.

I traded for this autograph on SCN and still hope to get an in-person autograph from Willie before the end of the season, but the clocking is ticking. His autograph is interesting and kind of has a high and low lasso type of thing going on.