Hello, friends.
There are now just four days remaining until Orioles Opening Day. It’s coming on Thursday! As of yesterday, the team has wrapped up its exhibition schedule in Florida, with a home-and-home pair of exhibitions in Baltimore (today) and Washington (tomorrow) still to come before everything starts getting finalized for the regular season. Today’s 1:35 afternoon game will be televised on MASN.
In yesterday’s Grapefruit League finale, the Orioles beat the Phillies, 10-8. Jhonkensy Noel hit a grand slam in the game, which is nice for him but is not going to make much difference in his roster chances. Several pitchers who will not be on the Opening Day roster were in action in the game and gave up runs. One guy who will be on the roster had a scoreless inning: Tyler Wells struck out three guys.
The Orioles made some news yesterday that still has me surprised. Dean Kremer was optioned to minor league camp. This was essentially the obvious move ever since the team signed Chris Bassitt, yet it still surprised me because I couldn’t believe they would actually do it. Kremer has been a remarkably consistent guy across the last three years – seriously, his three ERAs are within 0.09 of one another. They weren’t good ERAs, but they are good enough that he has earned a spot in a major league rotation. Just, you know, the back, not the middle or even the front.
Kremer might still get that spot. The Orioles could still be intending to go with a six-man rotation. The thing is that with the early off days on March 27 and April 2, they don’t even really need a fifth starter more than once over the first week-plus of game action. Perhaps they’ll try to bring up Kremer when they want to transition to six, and in the meantime he’s keeping his innings built up in Triple-A Norfolk. We’ll see what they end up doing. Somebody could get hurt before they try to go to six guys. Or they might have a different plan entirely.
Another angle to is it that Kremer has generally stunk in April, with last year’s 7.04 ERA being representative of what he’s done in his career. If it is possible to absorb the rocky April in the minors and then get him up to MLB after that’s out of his system for the year, that’s a plus for the fortunes of the 2026 Orioles. Your guess is as good as mine whether Kremer could come up to MLB in May and avoid his career-long April struggles. Maybe he’s just going to stink in the first month he’s facing MLB hitters, whatever month that ends up being.
The Orioles also delivered a variety of injury updates that could have had a potential impact on the Opening Day roster. Manager Craig Albernaz told reporters before yesterday’s game that the knee soreness for Dylan Beavers shouldn’t have him out for the start of the season. On the other hand, Heston Kjerstad, who was unlikely to make the Opening Day roster anyway, is getting an MRI done on his hamstring. It seems that injured reliever Andrew Kittredge is trying to keep his injured list stint to the minimum. We’ll see how that works out.
Although spring training is over, the Orioles have not cut down the roster to close to the 26-man limit just yet. There are 42 players remaining in camp, two of whom are certainly ticketed for the IL. The team has probably already made the choices, it’s just a question of when they will reveal them. Or if Mike Elias does another end of spring training waiver wire/cash considerations surprise. It’s happened before.
Orioles stuff you might have missed
Keegan Akin suffers hip injury, muddling bullpen picture (The Baltimore Sun)
One more bit of injury news from yesterday that could shake up the Opening Day roster. If Akin can’t go, will Elias decide it’s Anthony Nunez time? That’s what I’d do, but I don’t think he’s going to ask me.
Takeaways from Elias’s end-of-spring comments about Mountcastle, Eflin, and more (The Baltimore Banner)
“We believe in his stick,” said Elias of Ryan Mountcastle, particularly when it comes to hitting left-handed pitching.
Opening Day rotation appears set as Kremer optioned to minors (Orioles.com)
The Orioles still haven’t announced the order in which their starters will go after Trevor Rogers. Beat writer Jake Rill takes his best guess here. What do you think?
Albernaz on Eflin: “He’s checked every box” (School of Roch)
The fact that Zach Eflin has looked healthy and seemed to be pitching well through spring training, including in his most recent outing a couple of days ago, seems to be the thing that sealed Kremer being sent to the minors. If Eflin was two weeks behind schedule, Kremer is on the team. But he’s seemed to be in good shape, so that’s how it is.
Birthdays and Orioles anniversaries
Today in 1981, Earl Weaver was suspended after removing the Orioles from the field during a spring training game and forfeiting the remainder of the game in protest that he was not provided a correct batting order after the opponent, the Royals, made a number of substitutions. I’ll go ahead and guess he was right about it.
There are a few former Orioles who were born on this day. They are: 2018 catcher Andrew Susac, 2013 outfielder Mike Morse, and 1957 super utility man Billy Goodman.
Is today your birthday? Happy birthday to you! Your birthday buddies for today include: Declaration of Independence signer and Marylander Charles Carroll (1723), actor Chico Marx (1887), Broadway composer Stephen Sondheim (1930), Broadway composer Andrew Lloyd Webber (1948), and actor Keegan-Michael Key (1971).
On this day in history…
In 1765, the Parliament of Britain passed the Stamp Act, levying taxes directly on the North American colonies. Over time they were rather famously unhappy about this.
In 1871, North Carolina’s governor, William Woods Holden, was impeached and removed from office. He was the first governor of a state to be removed from office in this way. If the Wikipedia article about this is accurate, there have been a total of six more governors removed from then to now.
In 1963, the debut album for The Beatles, titled Please Please Me, was released.
In 1972, the Equal Rights Amendment, which proposed to enshrine that equality of rights shall not be denied on account of sex, was sent to the states for ratification. This effort has to date proved unsuccessful, though many states, including Maryland, include such a clause in their state constitutions.
A random Orioles trivia question
I received a random book of Orioles trivia questions for Christmas. I’ll ask a question in this space each time it’s my turn until I run out of questions or forget. There are 100 questions and because I’ve skipped stupid ones, we are already on 65. Here’s today’s question:
How many Gold Glove winners did the Orioles have in 1996? Bonus: Name the players.
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And that’s the way it is in Birdland on March 22. Have a safe Sunday.
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