Thursday Bird Droppings: For Orioles-related news, it’s the AFL or bust

Hello, friends.

We are guaranteed to have more baseball tonight, and we are guaranteed to have more baseball tomorrow as well. After that, things are less clear. Following yesterday’s results, Houston has the Red Sox on the ropes as the series returns to Texas, while Atlanta has got the Dodgers in a 3-1 hole with Game 5 of the NLCS coming tonight at 8:08 Eastern in Los Angeles.

If the Braves win tonight and the Astros win tomorrow, that will be that for the LCS round. There will be no Saturday baseball, or Sunday baseball either. Monday has been a scheduled off day regardless, with the start of the World Series set for Tuesday night.

In Birdland, we are left watching the better teams play for the championship, knowing there’s not much chance of the Orioles trying too hard to become one of those teams for next season. Even if they somehow did, we’re probably a month away from there being any news. That’s how it goes in October. There’s just not much going on.

For the truly starved for anything remotely Orioles-related, there were O’s minor leaguers in action in the Arizona Fall League yesterday. The Mesa Solar Sox team that has the O’s prospects on it won its game, 11-9, with infielder Greg Cullen from the Tommy Milone trade hitting a three-run home run and drawing a walk in five plate appearances. Outfielder Yusniel Diaz also played in the game. Diaz took an 0-5.

It’s the early days of the league so far, so this is all small sample size stuff. The Solar Sox play again tonight at 8:35. The nature of the AFL is that players usually only are in action every other game, so tonight’s lineup may not have Diaz or Cullen but will probably have outfield prospect and hopeful future Eutaw Street resident Kyle Stowers out there trying to hit some jacks.

Around the blogO’sphere

Never too soon to talk about a few free agent pitchers (Steve Melewski)
Got to say that the pattern of behavior in the free agent market by Mike Elias since his arrival with the Orioles does not lend much support for this headline.

The Orioles depended on minor league free agent pitchers in 2021. Here’s why they shouldn’t repeat that in 2022. (The Baltimore Sun)
The Sun’s Nathan Ruiz makes the case against heavily relying on Spenser Watkins and pitchers of that ilk. The simple reason is that those guys were bad, individually and collectively.

Orioles have infield prospects but they’re likely to start 2022 with a familiar cast (Baltimore Baseball)
Rich Dubroff seems to be predicting an infield of Ramon Urias, Jorge Mateo, and Kelvin Gutierrez. This will not sell many season tickets, but if we’re lucky, will unearth a player who belongs on the next good Orioles team.

Catching up on the Orioles’ plans behind the plate (School of Roch)
Adley Rutschman is coming, but until then, there will be placeholders who may not currently be in the Orioles organization.

Birthdays and Orioles anniversaries

Of all the players to ever play for the Orioles, only one was born on this day. That’s 1960 eight-game catcher Valmy Thomas, who passed away in 2010 at age 84.

Is today your birthday? Happy birthday to you! Your birthday buddies for today include: Ming dynasty founder Zhu Yuanzhang (1328), poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772), dynamite inventor and Nobel Prize founder Alfred Nobel (1833), trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie (1917), baseball Hall of Famer Whitey Ford (1928), author Ursula K. Le Guin (1929), actress Carrie Fisher (1956), famous famous person Kim Kardashian (1980), and rapper Doja Cat (1995).

On this day in history...

In 1520, Ferdinand Magellan’s expedition passed through a strait near the southern tip of South America to navigate from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific. It’s been named after Magellan ever since. In the present day, a couple thousand ships per year pass through the strait.

In 1600, Tokugawa Ieyasu vanquished the opposition in the Battle of Sekigahara to become shogun of Japan. His successors reigned in Japan until 1868.

In 1805, Lord Horatio Nelson led the British Navy to victory over a combined French and Spanish fleet in the Battle of Trafalgar. Nelson was mortally wounded in the battle, in which the British captured 21 ships while losing none themselves.

In 1966, 144 people in Aberfan, Wales, were killed when the spoil tip of a nearby colliery collapsed and buried the village in slurry. In the path of the disaster was a school; 116 of the dead were children.

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And that’s the way it is in Birdland on October 21. Have a safe Thursday.