Sunday Bird Droppings: Where the Orioles played two

Happy Sunday, Camden Chatters! I trust you all enjoyed springing ahead this morning? I won’t say that I loved it, but I do like that extra hour of light in the evening.

If you didn’t spend your Saturday paying attention to baseball, the Orioles played two games yesterday. The first was on the road against the Rays, where they scored an outlandish 17 runs and also made an outlandish six errors. I know! Three of them were from Martin Cervenka, but at least he also hit a home run.

In the nightcap, the Orioles were at home against the Yankees where they lost 6-1. The big news out of that one was the return of relief pitcher Richard Bleier, who missed a large part of last season with injury. So far so good on Bleier, healthwise. The only run scored by the Orioles was on a solo homer from someone named J.C. Escarra. No you haven’t heard of him, don’t lie!

Today the Orioles are home against the Phillies at 1:05. I don’t expect Bryce Harper, who made his Phillies debut yesterday, to make the trip. I have MLB news alerts set up on my phone and yesterday it seemed to think I wanted to know every detail about his debut. I did not. He made his walk up music the theme from Fresh Prince of Belair. That was literally one of the news alerts.

Anyway, the game. You’ll be able to listen to the game locally on 105.7.

Links

Baltimore Orioles add Dwight Smith Jr for international bonus money - Call to the Pen
The new leadership of the Orioles has seemingly determined that there isn't much use in holding onto their international bonus allowance.

Richie Martin, Drew Jackson impress Orioles as Rule 5 choices - BaltimoreBaseball.com
There's a lot of talk about this year's rule 5 draft choices. I guess we gotta talk about something!

Updates on Davis, Cobb, Wynns, Trumbo and more - School of Roch
Chris Davis had a clean MRI and Mark Trumbo is still running bases and doing drills. So I guess they both still plan on playing baseball.

Reliever Richard Bleier has healthy debut in loss to Yankees - Baltimore Sun
Both Bleier and Brandon Hyde sound happy about how things turned out. Good enough for me!

Is today your birthday? Happy birthday! You have two Orioles birthday buddies. The first is Tike Redman, who turns 42 today. Tike appeared in 40 games for the 2007 Orioles, and he wasn’t a slouch with the bat. He OPS’d .803 with two home runs and nine doubles in just 139 plate appearances. Unfortunately those would be his last games as a major leaguer.

It’s also the birthday of closer Mike Timlin, who turns 53 years old today. Timlin is probably best known for his time with the Blue Jays and Red Sox, but he appeared in 99 games for the Birds from 1999-2000. Signed by a free agent before the 1999 season, Timlin was traded to the Cardinals at the 2000 deadline. He left the Orioles as part of the infamous 2000 Syd Thrift fire sale.