Two Orioles' minor league teams clinched playoff berths today.
The Orioles entry in the Dominican Summer League is headed to the playoffs and clinched its division with a record of 45-24. The DSL Orioles have the third best record in that 33-team league. In the DSL, six teams make the playoffs, the five division winners and a wild card team. Two teams get opening-round byes and the first two rounds are best of three series with the championship series a best of five-game set.
The O's DSL...
There are several players that need to step up their games and show what they can do in what is left of this Orioles season. One player I put in that category is outfielder Nolan Reimold.
Reimold is finally getting to start just about every day in left field and he needs to start looking more like the player the Orioles saw in 2009 than what he has shown the past two years.
In 2009 in 104 games, Reimold hit .279 with 15 homers, 45 RBIs and an .831 OPS in 358 at bats. He was the American...
Here is a question I get a lot from fans about the baseball draft. What makes a good draft? How many of the Orioles' draft picks can be expected to make the major leagues?
My experience has been that very few players make it and very, very few become stars. But I went to a great source with that question the other night on my radio show on 105.7 FM the Fan in Baltimore when I asked Jim Callis of Baseball America that question.
What makes a good draft?
"If you look at the percentages of the...
It's one to thing to lose a game, but yet another to look bad and greatly contribute to your own demise. The Orioles did that today at Oakland.
Buck Showalter talks to Jim Hunter about the Orioles' loss in Oakland
A few things went wrong in their 6-5 loss at Oakland:
* After taking a 2-0 lead in the top of the first, Alfredo Simon and his defense gave it right back as Oakland scored three in the last of the first. That rally included Nolan Reimold misplaying the ball on a line to drive...
If the Orioles lose today and fail to win another series after taking the first game of the set, the fans' frustration level will just ratchet up again.
It would make me want to be a caller, not the host, on my radio show tonight and vent a little. You can call in and do that tonight on Baltimore Baseball Tonight postgame from 10 p.m. to midnight on 105.7 FM the Fan in Baltimore.
A couple of more quick notes from the minors:
The Orioles squad in the Gulf Coast League is closing in on its...
Outfielder Trent Mummey of the Single-A Frederick Keys had an MRI on his injured hamstring that has kept him out since June 8 and he has not recovered well enough to return this year with just a few weeks left in the minor league season.
The 22-year-old Mummey was the club's fourth-round draft pick last year out of Auburn and will wind up having played just 29 games this season.
He hit .291 to start the year in 14 games with Single-A Delmarva with two homers and 12 RBIs. After moving to...
I wanted to let you in on a few other quotes and notes about Nicky Delmonico from my interview with him yesterday.
He is the Orioles' sixth-round pick from Farragut High in Knoxville, Tenn. that signed just before Monday's deadline, accepting a $1.525 signing bonus from the O's and giving up his scholarship to play college ball and join his brother at Georgia.
Giving up that size of a bonus, clearly the Orioles deemed Delmonico as a first-round talent, and he got more money than did 10...
After Tuesday night's loss at Oakland, the Orioles play the A's this afternoon and a win would give them their first series win in nearly two months and their first road series win in more than three months.
The Orioles' last win in any series was when they took two of three from the Reds at home June 24-26. Since then, they have lost 11 series and tied one.
During that stretch, the Orioles have won the first game of the series three times, but they lost every other game in those three...
Brian Matusz will be back on a major league mound for the first time in six weeks tonight when he pitches at Oakland. In his last start, June 30 at home against St. Louis, he gave up eight runs over 3 1/3 innings.
Let's hope the Orioles kept Matusz in the minors long enough to get his game together. I wonder if they did. I was kind of expecting to see Matusz stay with Triple-A Norfolk until the Tides season ended in early September.
Had the Orioles chose, they could have had Matusz make four...
After the Orioles drafted Nicky Delmonico in the sixth round in June, they knew it would be difficult to sign him. The now 19-year-old from Farragut High in Knoxville, Tenn., had a strong college commitment to Georgia.
But late last night, Delmonico came to terms with the Orioles - and the signing bonus of $1.525 million is first-round money. He was signed to a 2012 contract.
By the way, the Orioles signed all three players yesterday - Dylan Bundy, Jason Esposito and Delmonico - to 2012...
During a season in which the Orioles have had a lot of bad days, Monday was not among them. And I'm not talking about the win at Oakland.
I'm talking about scouting director Joe Jordan signing what I had been calling the "big three." He got Dylan Bundy, Jason Esposito and Nicky Delmonico.
The pressure was on Jordan and his staff to get the deals done. Fans are fed up with this season and felt the Orioles could not afford to let any good young talent in the draft get away. At a time when...
Orioles scouting director Joe Jordan just finished a telephone press conference with Baltimore reporters. Here is the entire transcript.
Q: How excited are you to get all this done?
"Really, when we got to today and especially this afternoon, the one I was most concerned about was (Nick) Delmonico. I really felt good that (Jason) Esposito would come to us and I felt like we would do enough to get (Dylan) Bundy signed.
"Delmonico was a little bit of a wild card. It was an amazing day. We...
The Orioles have come to contract terms with their sixth-round pick, high school third baseman Nick Delmonico from Knoxville, Tenn.
The word comes from Delmonico himself. He just said on Twitter:
"Thank you God for Leading me... I will always be a Georgia Bulldog but now I'm a Baltimore Oriole! #GodBless."
Delmonico was drafted with the 185th overall pick out of Farragut High in Knoxville and he turned 19 on July 12.
The Orioles have now signed 21 of their selections and now look to add...
The Orioles have come to terms with their second-round draft pick, Vanderbilt third baseman Jason Esposito. They selected him with the 64th overall selection.
Esposito is a 6-foot-2, 205-pound right-handed hitter that turned 21 on July 19. This year in college he hit .341 with nine homers and 59 RBIs in 65 games. He had an on-base percentage of .405 and slugging percentage of .534. Esposito hit .376 in Southeastern Conference games.
He started every game in three seasons with Vanderbilt and...
The Orioles have signed their first-round draft pick, high school pitcher Dylan Bundy. They selected him with the fourth pick in the June draft.
The word came out just about right at the midnight deadline.
This means the Orioles signed all their picks over the first 11 rounds of the draft as today they got second-round pick Jason Esposito and sixth-rounder Nicky Delmonico. This is the first time the Orioles signed all the picks in the first 11 rounds since 2005, Joe Jordan's first season as...
As of just after 6 p.m., there was still no word on the Orioles' remaining three top draft pick targets. The Orioles still hope to sign first-round pick Dylan Bundy tonight along with second-rounder Jason Esposito and Nick Delmonico, taken in round six.
Bundy seems a very safe bet to sign at this point, but right now, there is no clear indication either way about the other pair. My guess, and it remains just a guess, is that they get all three. I think Delmonico would probably be the most...
It appears that Orioles minor league pitcher Clayton Schrader, who was having a real strong season, could miss the rest of this year.
Schrader has been on the Single-A Frederick disabled list since Aug. 2, due to elbow discomfort. He has a flexor mass strain. He has not resumed throwing to this point and there may not be enough time for him to get back in games before the 2011 season ends.
The right-hander, the Orioles' 10th-round pick last year, is 1-1 with three saves and ERA of 1.13 for...
As always, things could change in a minute, but from what I have heard, it doesn't sound like the Orioles will have any draft news with any signings over the next hour or two.
All the fun could go into tonight.
One source described the O's "as hopeful still, but not totally convinced" they would get all three of their remaining targets in Dylan Bundy, Jason Esposito and Nick Delmonico.
Meanwhile, while we all wait, here is some interesting audio from an earlier interview with scouting...
Baseball America's Jim Callis, the man who seems to break the news on most top draft picks when they sign and provides their bonus information, thinks the Orioles are likely to sign their three remaining draft targets.
The O's are said to be still negotiating with top pick Dylan Bundy, second-round pick Jason Esposito and sixth-rounder Nick Delmonico.
"I think they are going to get all three done. It's just that MLB is having the teams play this slower than ever," Callis said.
"Dylan...