Sunday Bird Droppings: Five months until Opening Day

Hello, friends.

Five months from today, the Orioles will be playing their next game that counts in the standings. That’s a long way from now. One way you know this is five months ago was also a long time ago: The O’s entered May 30 with a 20-29 record and no real inkling the season was going to turn out to be a lot of fun. Then, it did!

The big question is what will happen in these next five months? Or really more like, what will happen in the three months plus a week or so between the end of the World Series and the start of spring training.

Signings? Trades? It would be nice for the Orioles to have a nice offseason, although being the offseason champions guarantees you nothing. A year ago that was probably the Blue Jays. What did they get? Zero more postseason wins than the Orioles did, is what it got them, despite having the home field advantage in the wild card round. All that you can really do is assemble what you think is a good team and hope for the best.

If you do it well, you could end up with a coldly efficient team like the 106-win Astros, who got themselves a bye and then swept two straight series before getting to the World Series. Or you could end up with a crazy bunch of characters like the Phillies, who back into the postseason, then turn into, if I can summarize a tweeter whose name I’ve forgotten, “a bunch of guys who jumped the fence to the construction site and found keys in the bulldozer.”

Two games into the World Series, it’s tied. The Phillies zaniness got them a Game 1 win, then the Astros brutally good pitching staff dominated them in Game 2. One way or another, it seems like it should be a good series. Nothing will advance today, though, as it’s a travel day, with the teams heading from Houston to Philadelphia for Monday’s Game 3. Enjoy whatever inferior sport can capture your attention today.

Around the blogO’sphere

How much are the Orioles willing to spend? (Orioles.com)
This question, along with its sibling “Who might the Orioles be willing to trade?”, is going to be a crucial one for what kind of moves the team could make.

Big market/small market dichotomy looms over Orioles’ rebuild (Baltimore Baseball)
It’s the biggest question for the medium-term future of the team. What is the sustainable level of payroll that the ownership - be it the Angelos family or someone else - will be willing to invest in the MLB team on a yearly basis?

Ryan Minor diagnosed with colon cancer (School of Roch)
Some sad news about a former Oriole, and former Orioles farm manager, over the weekend. Stage 4 is a bad diagnosis to get.

Birthdays and Orioles anniversaries

There is one lone former Oriole who was born on this day. Happy 44th birthday to 2000-06 outfielder Luis Matos, who accumulated 4.5 bWAR with the team in 494 games spread across those seven seasons.

Is today your birthday? Happy birthday to you! Your birthday buddies for today include: St. Paul’s Cathedral architect Christopher Wren (1632), 2nd president John Adams (1735), five-star admiral William Halsey Jr. (1882), and actor Henry Winkler (1945).

On this day in history...

In 1938, the infamous radio adaptation of H.G. Wells’s War of the Worlds, which led some panicked listeners to believe a Martian invasion was in fact taking place, aired.

In 1944, Anne Frank was deported from Auschwitz to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, where she died of disease the next year.

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And that’s the way it is in Birdland on October 30. Have a safe Sunday.