Thursday Bird Droppings: Where the trucks are headed for spring training

Hello, friends.

There are 56 days remaining until the next Orioles game. Calendar math being what it is, that means that Opening Day is exactly eight weeks from today. Pitchers and catchers report to spring training in a mere twelve days. The trucks left from Camden Yards yesterday, bound for Sarasota.

It has now been nine days since Mike Mussina was elected to the Hall of Fame and the Orioles have not made an announcement about retiring his jersey or putting up his statue.

Barring a surprise over the next month or so, it seems like the team is going to be built from competitions among the players who have already been assembled. Most of those are holdovers from last season’s 47-115 season, which, as I really can’t stress enough, means that things are going to suck a lot this year even if they might start to point towards a more exciting eventual future.

One way this challenge may be visible is the fact that it’s the last day of January and the O’s still haven’t announced the promotions and giveaways schedule for the year. Who is even left for them to promote? There are few candidates for bobbleheads or even t-shirts. Any veteran with value might be gone by August. Any veteran without value might be dumped from the roster even sooner.

Manager Brandon Hyde is new. He’s probably not in garden gnome territory yet, although if we’re lucky, maybe he’ll get one in a few more years. Right now they don’t even know which young prospects are going to make their way up to MLB, or when. Maybe the giveaways will just be a lot of different Oriole Bird-themed things. They could do worse.

Around the blogO’sphere

Struggling slugger Chris Davis goes back to his Rangers past for help (Dallas News)
His Rangers past led Texas to think they were better off trading him than keeping him, but there’s no doubt he has to try something different than last season.

A reunion between Adam Jones and the Orioles is looking like a long shot (Baltimore Sun)
Doesn’t take much parsing of the quotes from FanFest to realize that Mike Elias isn’t going to be re-signing Adam Jones. Hopefully he gets an MLB deal somewhere.

Stewart and Hays working to get into outfield competition (School of Roch)
DJ Stewart was honeymooning in Grenada and cut short the plans to get started on his baseball work.

Brocail’s history made him a good fit for O’s (Orioles.com)
Apparently, Andrew Cashner is a big fan of pitching coach Doug Brocail.

Trumbo hoping for injury-free 2019 (Baltimore Baseball)
In an ideal world, the only thing he’ll be hurting in 2019 will be baseballs thrown by opposing pitchers.

After strong Double-A year, Ryan Mountcastle is closer to the majors (Steve Melewski)
Now, they just have to figure out what position he’s going to be able to play.

Birthdays and anniversaries

One lone former Oriole has a birthday today: 1998 two-game reliever Joel Bennett.

Is today your birthday? Happy birthday to you! Your birthday buddies for today include: shogunate founder Tokugawa Ieyasu (1543), preamble to the Constitution writer Gouverneur Morris (1752), composer Franz Schubert (1797), baseball Hall of Famer Ernie Banks (1931), actress Minnie Driver (1970), actress Kerry Washington (1977), and pop star Justin Timberlake (1981).

On this day in history...

In 1606, Gunpowder Plot ringleader Guy Fawkes was executed for his plot against Parliament and King James.

In 1801, John Marshall was appointed as the first Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States.

In 1865, Congress passed the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which, once ratified, abolished slavery in the United States.

In 1915, during World War I, Germany became the first to use poison gas in a large scale, deploying the weapon against the Russians in the Battle of Bolimow. However, due to prevailing winds, the gas blew back on German lines, though lucky for the Germans in the trenches, the cold weather made the gas ineffective.

In 1943, the German Field Marshal Paulus surrendered to the Red Army at the Battle of Stalingrad, effectively (though not yet officially) ending the five month battle.

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And that’s the way it is in Birdland on January 31 - or at least, unless something happens later, which you never know, it might. Have a safe Thursday.