Tuesday Bird Droppings: Where the Orioles are back in action

Hello, friends.

There are now 23 days remaining until Orioles Opening Day. That is Joey Rickard days to go until there’s real baseball, although to be quite honest with you, I’m not rooting for Rickard to be a part of the Opening Day festivities this year. In earlier eras of Orioles history, the number belonged to Chris Hoiles and Tippy Martinez, among others.

The spring training schedule resumes today after an off day yesterday, with the Orioles taking a trip to Twins camp. If you subscribe to the right MLB products, you’ll be able to listen to the Twins broadcast of the game, but it will not be on TV or radio anywhere in Baltimore.

Do the Orioles have another real signing in them before the regular season gets under way? I'm not counting Danny Valencia as a real signing just yet, with apologies to Valencia. But the duo of Lance Lynn and Alex Cobb remain unsigned and there's even enough lingering interest in Neil Walker (not a pitcher) to get stories fluffed up about how the Orioles have been connected to him even though probably nothing is going to happen.

Around the blogO’sphere

Be ready early: Orioles' April schedule is brutal (Steve Melewski)
One way or another, we’re going to find out what kind of team the Orioles are pretty quickly in the upcoming season.

Spring training primer: Ynoa's falling stock; Araujo's rising; Mountcastle's mashing (Baltimore Baseball)
Are we really going to do this thing where the Orioles keep two Rule 5 pitchers on the roster as well as Anthony Santander? They’re sounding like they might, although there’s a long way to go to Opening Day.

Orioles are using light market to protect against injury catastrophe. Where else are they thin? (Baltimore Sun)
Mark Trumbo is basically the only expected regular player from whom an injury would not seriously leave the Orioles in a lurch, in my estimation.

Random thoughts and quotes as the Orioles enjoy a day off (School of Roch)
Other Orioles said really nice things about Andrew Cashner’s action in a simulated game. One of those things I hate about spring training is having to act like simulated games matter.

Crystal ball: Year 1 post-Angelos (Camden Depot)
Over at the Depot, Jon Shepherd looks into what might be coming in a future where Peter Angelos isn’t the owner of the Orioles any more. Don’t read this in a dark room. It’s scary.

So you want to have a good bullpen (Fangraphs)
It turns out that there’s little correlation, across all of MLB, between a team having a quality bullpen one year and a quality bullpen the next year. That the Orioles have occasionally thwarted this is good for them.

Birthdays and anniversaries

There are a couple of former Orioles with birthdays today. They are: always-knew-he’d-win-the-Cy-elsewhere pitcher Jake Arrieta and 1990-93 pitcher Anthony Telford. I believe I was in attendance for Telford’s MLB debut in which he pitched seven shutout innings against the Athletics.

Is today your birthday? Happy birthday! Your birthday buddies for today include: painter/sculptor Michelangelo (1475), author/playwright Cyrano de Bergerac (1619), poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806), author Gabriel Garcia Marquez (1927), baseball Hall of Famer Willie Stargell (1940), movie man Rob Reiner (1947), and basketballer Shaquille O’Neal (1972).

On this day in history...

In 1204, the French under King Philip II captured Chateau Gaillard after a six-month siege, wresting control of Normandy from King John of England. This defeat is thought to have later spurred on the barons that rebelled against John and forced the signing of the Magna Carta.

In 1857, the Supreme Court issued its decision in Dred Scott v. Sandford which concluded the following: People of African descent (slaves or otherwise) could not be American citizens; that Congress could not ban slavery in any territories created after the writing of the Consitution (invalidating the Missouri Compromise, signed into law on this day in 1820); and that the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment prevented the federal government from freeing slaves. This is generally accepted to be the worst decision ever issued by the Supreme Court.

In 1869, Dmitri Mendeleev presented a periodic table of the elements - the first of its kind - to the Russian Chemical Society.

In 1975, a national TV program showed the contents of the Zapruder film of JFK’s assassination, in motion, to an audience for the first time.

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And that’s the way it is in Birdland on March 6 - or at least, until something happens later. Have a safe Tuesday.