Monday Bird Droppings: Where MLB still wants baseball in the usual places

Hello, friends.

In the alternate universe where everything is the same as this one except there was no coronavirus and also no other postponements, the Orioles would have played 34 games by now. Today would be the first day of a three-game series against the Blue Jays in Toronto.

There’s been some earlier reporting about wild plans for Arizona-only or Florida/Arizona-only MLB seasons. The latest is that there is increasing optimism among MLB planners that they’ll be able to have some kind of schedule in each team’s regular home, though it would be likely to start out in empty stadiums.

One of the latest ideas is that teams would mostly play their same division in each league, so the Orioles would get a lot of AL East and NL East. An unbalanced schedule that has the O’s playing mostly those teams would be even worse than the typical year’s schedule - though I guess that’d still be better than no baseball. And hey, even better odds for the 2021 #1 pick, right?

We are left, in the meantime, with what we have been left with for the last month-plus, where the only Orioles you can experience are things that already happened or things that are being simulated.

The simulated Orioles of Baseball Reference’s Out of the Park Baseball league have finally found their way into last place in the AL East. In yesterday’s sim game, they lost to the surprising first place White Sox, 6-2, despite Austin Hays hitting his eighth homer of the year. The O’s are 14-20, last by percentage points, though there are still four teams across the sim league with fewer wins.

I’ll be advancing Camden Chat’s OOTP simulation this afternoon. The big question for the crowd right now is what to do with our roster as sim Hunter Harvey has shoulder tendinitis. Weigh in here and help me out.

If you missed it over the weekend, Dwight Smith Jr.’s run in the MLB Players League came to an end in the quarterfinals on Friday night. As MLB The Show’s player statistics are influenced by real life, Smith’s Orioles roster was a barren wasteland of talent relative to most other teams. He did an incredible job getting as far as he did.

Around the blogO’sphere

Orioles star Trey Mancini wants to advocate for colon cancer awareness. His platform could help save lives. (Baltimore Sun)
Just in case you hadn’t had a recent reminder that Trey Mancini is the best.

The draft could be the first event of a 2020 MLB season (Steve Melewski)
The latest idea is that the draft will take place on June 10, the same day it would have started anyway. The idea of a five round draft is still a possibility.

There’s no crying in baseball, but it’s OK to miss it (Baltimore Baseball)
I feel this headline. A reader wrote in to Baltimore Baseball about what he’s missing most so far.

Powell “just trying to stay healthy and not do anything stupid” (School of Roch)
That is, as I believe they say, a “big mood.”

Birthdays and Orioles anniversaries

There are a pair of former Orioles who were born on this day. They are: 2018 reliever and Maryland’s own Ryan Meisinger, and 1995 six-game reliever Joe Borowski.

Is today your birthday? Happy birthday to you! Your birthday buddies for today include: piano inventor Bartolomeo Cristofori (1655), trumpeter Maynard Ferguson (1928), actress Audrey Hepburn (1929), The Pogues bassist Darryl Hunt (1950), sportscaster Erin Andrews (1978), owner of a fictional space camp Lance Bass (1979), and golfer Rory McIlroy (1989).

On this day in history...

In 1471, the Yorkists of Edward IV dealt a crushing defeat to the Lancastrians in the Battle of Tewkesbury, putting the Wars of the Roses on hold until Edward himself died suddenly twelve years later.

In 1814, Napoleon arrived on Elba to begin his exile. He did not remain there for very long.

In 1942, during World War II, aircraft from the USS Yorktown launched an attack on the Japanese Navy in the Coral Sea. Crucial to history over the five-day battle is that the Americans were able to damage two Japanese carriers enough to keep them out of the next month’s Battle of Midway

In 1970, four students were killed by National Guardsmen who opened fire on an unarmed crowd at Kent State University in Kent, Ohio.

In 1998, the Unabomber, Theodore Kaczynski, was sentenced. He received four life sentences plus thirty years, after having made a plea bargain to avoid the death penalty.

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And that’s the way it is in Birdland on May 4. Have a safe Monday.