Thursday Bird Droppings: Waiting for lockout talks to start up again

Hello, friends.

So, what now? The season is officially on hold. It feels like it’s only a matter of time before MLB sets another self-imposed deadline for its self-imposed lockout and more canceled games are announced when that deadline does not produce any meaningful movement from the owners on the key issues in the negotiation of a new CBA.

I periodically get e-mails that promote assorted odds of some baseball-related prop bets. Most of the time I ignore them, but I got one offering odds for when this season will begin. Lacking any insight myself on when all of this will end, it was interesting to see where some oddsmakers think the season will begin.

The current over/under line on number of games to be played in the 2022 regular season is 120.5. That’s basically imagining a season that doesn’t begin until mid-May, so we’ve got a lot of lockout still to come if these folks have the right sense of when the season will actually begin.

That’s why the best odds for a month for the season to begin are 7/4 for May. June comes in at 2/1, with July or later at 5/2. More pessimistic still is “no season at all” with 5/1 odds. The longest shot of all is things coming together in time for the season beginning in April; that’s 11/2. These odds are from BetOnline. Other places might set these prop odds differently.

For now, there’s about a month of minor league spring training that will be going on mostly away from the notice of even really engaged fans. Beat writers aren’t down in Florida scouring the back fields. We’re not getting daily updates on who’s getting work in, who’s dealing with an injury. Games aren’t being covered in any way. Yet nearly all of the prospects who matter are involved. Hopefully it’s going well!

As a now-standard reminder, all 40-man players are locked out, so this minor league camp will be happening without high-ranked pitching prospect D.L. Hall or lower-ranked ones like Kyle Bradish and Kevin Smith. Fringy guys whose stars have fallen like Yusniel Diaz and Rylan Bannon are also bereft of a chance to change the narrative about themselves.

Opening Day for the Triple-A Norfolk Tides is a month and two days away. It’s a month and five days until the Bowie, Aberdeen, and Delmarva affiliates play their first games. It sure seems like short of a miracle, the minor league seasons will get rolling weeks before the MLB one does. I guess I’ll be paying a little money to watch minor league broadcasts this year.

Around the blogO’sphere

An adjusted schedule and anticipating a frantic rush to set roster (School of Roch)
A typical spring training plays out over six weeks. Roch is already thinking about how whenever the lockout ends, there’s probably going to be less time than that to sort out the roster for Opening Day.

Managing prospect expectations (FanGraphs)
FG’s Kevin Goldstein wrote an important idea that should put a brake on a lot of prospect hype. The odds that they all work out just aren’t high. One specific example from this article is that it’s a coin flip as to whether both Adley Rutschman and Grayson Rodriguez both become above-average players - and for any two players lower-ranked than that, the chances are even lower.

What’s next for Orioles and Major League Baseball (Baltimore Baseball)
Rich Dubroff puts his stakes in the ground for the idea that the lockout will be settled some time in the next 2-4 weeks. That would leave us with a season starting anywhere from mid April to May 1. Bummer, man.

Oriole of the Day: Logan Gillaspie’s underlying numbers show why Baltimore protected right-hander (The Baltimore Sun)
Gillaspie’s addition to the Orioles 40-man roster was a surprise for me back in November. In his daily roster series, The Sun’s Nathan Ruiz gets to the appeal of Gillaspie: He struck out a lot of dudes and didn’t walk many, though his ERA certainly wasn’t great.

Birthdays and Orioles anniversaries

There are a number of former Orioles who were born on this day. They are: 2020 three-gamer Dilson Herrera, 2019 one-gamer José Rondón, 2001-05 reliever Jorge Julio, 1998 nine-gamer Bobby Muñoz, 1991 two-gamer Francisco de la Rosa, and 1973-75 pitcher Jesse Jefferson.

Is today your birthday? Happy birthday to you! Your birthday buddies for today include: railroad engineer George Pullman (1831), telephone inventor Alexander Graham Bell (1847), infamous schemer Charles Ponzi (1882), rapper Tone Loc (1966), and singer Camila Cabello (1997).

On this day in history...

In 1776, Continental Marines stormed Nassau and seized British gunpowder. Today’s United States Marine Corps considers this raid the first amphibious landing in its history.

In 1820, the Missouri Compromise passed Congress. It provided that Missouri would be admitted as a slave state with Maine joining as a free state, and that any further northern states made out of the Louisiana Purchase territory would be free states. This compromise survived until 1854’s Kansas-Nebraska Act reopened the question of slavery in what became the state of Kansas.

In 1931, The Star-Spangled Banner was adopted as the national anthem of the USA.

In 1951, a song was recorded that’s considered by some to be the first official rock and roll record: “Rocket 88” was put to vinyl at a Memphis recording session, as performed by “Jackie Benston and his Delta Cats,” though in fact the Delta Cats were “Ike Turner and his Kings of Rhythm.”

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And that’s the way it is in Birdland on March 3. Have a safe Thursday.