Thursday Bird Droppings: Where all is still quiet in Birdland

Hello, friends.

There are now 91 days remaining until the next Orioles game.

The classic Christmas song indicates that on the third day of Christmas, one might receive three french hens, two turtledoves, and a partridge in a pear tree. Baseball teams don’t work quite the same way. The Orioles aren’t likely to give us any presents on the third day of Christmas or for any of the next eight days either.

One belated present for Orioles fans may be arriving in January from the Hall of Fame-voting members of the Baseball Writers Association of America. With close to a quarter of the expected total ballots revealed so far, Mike Mussina has been named on 82% of ballots, including a net gain of 11 among returning voters and 5/5 among first-time voters. The threshold for election is 75%.

However, you probably shouldn’t get your hopes up quite yet, because it’s been a pattern for the past several years that late voters and voters who choose to remain anonymous are more likely to succumb to the kind of idiotic thinking that leads a voter to leave off one of the greatest pitchers of his and any era of baseball. It may yet take until 2020 for enough of the dopes to be brought around.

Around the blogO’sphere

Inbox: Who will new O’s coaching staff be? (Orioles.com)
Nobody knows much of anything yet except for what Brandon Hyde said in his introductory press conference, which is that he’ll be looking for player development people.

Checking the analytics flow from front office to clubhouse (Steve Melewski)
“The player is the customer,” said Mike Elias about analytics.

How did Mancini improve at the plate in the second half? (Roch Kubatko)
Mancini had a .655 OPS in the first half and a .792 OPS in the second half. The premise of improvement does check out.

JAWS and the 2019 Hall of Fame ballot: Curt Schilling (Fangraphs)
Mussina isn’t the only former Orioles pitcher on the ballot this season. His chances are looking better than Schilling’s, though.

Birthdays and anniversaries

A pair of former Orioles were born on this day. They are: 2016 late-season addition Michael Bourn, and the late Connie Johnson of the 1956-58 O’s rotations.

Is today your birthday? Happy birthday! Your birthday buddies for today include: astronomer Johannes Kepler (1571), microbiologist Louis Pasteur (1822), and Paramore musician Hayley Williams (1988).

On this day in history...

In 1831, Charles Darwin began a journey on the HMS Beagle, on which he would start to form his theory of evolution.

In 1845, the phrase “manifest destiny” first appeared in print, with editor John O’Sullivan generally credited with having penned the unsigned editorial titled “Annexation,” which said of the Oregon Country that the United States had a right to claim it “by the right of our manifest destiny.”

In 1927, the musical Show Boat opened at the Ziegfeld Theatre on Broadway. This is accepted as the first American musical play. You haven’t been able to see anything in the Ziegfeld since it was demolished in 1966.

In 1935, Ms. Regina Jonas was ordained as a rabbi, the first female rabbi in the history of Judaism. Born in Berlin, Jonas was still in Germany when the Nazis took over and did not survive being sent to Auschwitz in 1944.

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And that’s the way it is in Birdland on December 27 - or at least, unless something happens later, which it probably won’t. Have a safe Thursday.