Dec 16th 2008 12:45PM by Matt Watson (author feed)
The Orioles announced the signing of Cesar Izturis to a two-year, $6 million contract today, formalizing an agreement reached last week during the Winter Meetings. Izturis is a Gold-Glove-caliber fielder who often struggles to get on base (he’s a career .260 hitter with a .299 OBP), but fortunately for him, the bar hasn’t been set very high.

The Orioles had five different players start at least 25 games at shortstop in 2008. What’s even worse, the position was a complete black hole — collectively speaking, Baltimore’s shortstops hit just .218 with a pathetic .259 OBP and .276 SLG last year.

Izturis definitely has his faults (namely, the inability to draw walks) but he puts the ball in play, rarely strikes out and can steal a few bases. Given what Baltimore is used to from the position, he’ll look like a Silver Slugger, all while providing a nice upgrade in the field. For the price and the relatively short commitment, this was an absolute no-brainer for Baltimore. It won’t make them relevant in the AL East, but at least they’re no longer going backward.

Dec 16th 2008 3:15PM by Andrew Johnson (author feed)

Mark Teixeira, merely the best free agent left on the market, is set to choose a team before Christmas. It’s probably fitting then that there are four calling birds (and maybe a fifth looming giant) in pursuit of his services.

Teixeira is the ideal Scott Boras client. First and foremost, he’s a tremendous ballplayer, but he’s also calm and collected with the press, a family man, and, most critically for Boras’ purposes, seemingly completely willing to go to the highest bidder.

Let’s assume for a second that Teixeira isn’t a Boras-bot sent from the future to lighten up some billionaire owner’s wallet. Let’s assume that big Tex will consider a wide variety of factors as he makes the most important decision of his baseball-playing life.

Which team, then, should he sign on the dotted line with?Continue Reading

Dec 9th 2008 12:09PM by Matt Snyder (author feed)
The Jake Peavy sweepstakes just got a ton more interesting. The inclusion of the World Champs always spices things up, you know. That’s right, the Philadelphia Phillies are now involved in talks with the Cubs … and the Padres … and the Orioles. The scene is now set for a blockbuster deal which would see upwards of seven or eight players switching addresses. Phil Rogers of the reports his findings from a meeting with Padres GM Kevin Towers.Towers told reporters on Monday that the Cubs were the only team he is continuing to talk to about Peavy and that making a Peavy trade was his full focus at the winter meetings. He then went out and proved it by working to facilitate a potentially four-team trade that would send Mark DeRosa to Philadelphia and Felix Pie to Baltimore and bring back pitchers Garrett Olson, J.A. Happ (the Northwestern product) and Sean Marshall for the Padres.

The key for that deal to work is for the Phillies or Orioles to take Jason Marquis, with the Cubs agreeing to eat some of his salary.I believe this would be a great deal for both the Cubs and Phillies.Continue Reading

Dec 9th 2008 1:20PM by Tom Fornelli (author feed)
Like a lot of baseball fans, when I was a kid growing up I collected baseball cards. Every time I went to the store with my parents or ran to the local convenience store, I always made sure to get myself at least one pack of cards. By the time I had reached the end of my collecting days I had two giant bins full of cards in my basement, and countless books filled with the valuable cards.

Still, in my life there was one card I always wanted that I could never get my hands on. I remember the first time I saw it at my friend Billy’s house when we got home from the local White Hen Pantry. Billy opened his pack of cards up and was flipping through them when he stopped on one and yelled “I got one!” I went over to see what he was talking about and sure enough, there it was. The 1989 Fleer card of Baltimore Orioles second baseman Bill Ripken, and there, written on the bottom of his bat were those two infamous words (Hint: They rhyme with Duck Race).

It’s one of the most famous baseball cards to ever be printed, and for years there were a lot of different stories as to why Ripken had written those words on his bat. At the time Ripken came out and said that it must have been a prank pulled by one of his teammates, but as it turns out that’s a lie. I know this because for the first time since that card came out twenty years ago, Ripken finally decided to tell CNBC’s Darren Rovell the truth behind the obscenity.Continue Reading

Dec 9th 2008 3:52PM by Pat Lackey (author feed)
Clearly, reports that the Reds were going to open the winter meetings with a splash by trading for Jermaine Dye were premature. Still, Walt Jocketty has been active this week and on the second day of the activity in Vegas it looks like he pulled the trigger on a trade, even if it’s not the deal everyone was talking about two days ago. Instead, they’ve sent resident crazy-person Ryan Freel to Baltimore in exchange for Ramon Hernandez.

Lest you think this rumor is just more smoke coming out of Vegas, Ken Rosenthal’s got it confirmed while Walt Jocketty told Cincinnati reporters, “I’ll tell you all about it later,” when asked about the move. According to John Fay, it looks like the only thing holding this up is the approval of the commissioner’s office because it involves more than $1 million.

Looking at this quickly from both team’s perspectives, the Reds are picking up a catcher that they hope is going to have a little more pop that Paul Bako and Javier Valentin did last year, though Hernandez has been pretty bad the last two years with the O’s. Baltimore, meanwhile, has no use for Hernandez because the best prospect in baseball right now, Matt Wieters, is probably ready for prime time after obliterating just about every level of pitching he saw last year. In Freel they pick up a utility guy who’s aging, but who can probably be useful at getting on base if he’s healthy. Of course, he hasn’t really been healthy in two years, so that’s a big question mark.

Two full days of rumors and we get Ramon Hernandez for Ryan Freel. Yep, this is what the winter meetings is all about.

Dec 9th 2008 4:30PM by Andrew Johnson (author feed)

Angels center fielder Torii Hunter was here at the Bellagio to talk about his latest charity endeavor, the Torii Hunter Project. He was even cracking jokes. “People are going to start thinking I’m a good guy,” he said. “I’m a bad guy on the field … I’ll eat your children.”

Will any “bad men” be joining or (re-joining) Hunter in Anaheim? The Angels appear poised to make a big run at either CC Sabathia or Mark Teixeira in the coming weeks and Hunter talked about both players.Continue Reading

Dec 9th 2008 8:10PM by Andrew Johnson (author feed)

Though it had been widely reported for the better part 24 hours, the Orioles officially announced the trade of catcher Ramon Hernandez to the Reds Tuesday. Hernandez is, more or less, your average starting major league backstop — nothing to scoff at these days.

But he had to go for one very good, very big reason: Matt Wieters.

Wieters is nothing less than Baseball America’s 2008 Minor League Player of the Year, an excellent catcher and an even more outstanding hitter.

Orioles president Andy MacPhail,pictured, said the Hernandez deal was almost entirely about clearing a spot for Wieters to play regularly. “It had been our goal to introduce Matt on to the major league scene in the ‘09 season,” he said. “As a franchise we realized our future was probably with [him].”

Ya think? Wieters posted an absurd .355/.460/.625 line across two levels in his first full season as a professional this year. And for the privilege of opening a spot in the majors for a weapon like Wieters, MacPhail also got three players, including Ryan Freel, who is injury-prone but also versatile, particularly as they look for a platoon mate for left fielder Luke Scott, and prospect Brandon Waring, who has real pop (40 home runs in 188 games as a pro).

MacPhail was careful to temper expectations, saying that Wieters was not guaranteed to be the Opening Day catcher and that the Orioles would probably add a veteran backstop later this winter. But Matt Wieters is coming — and soon.

Dec 8th 2008 11:20PM by Andrew Johnson (author feed)

Three managers of AL East teams spoke with the media this afternoon/evening (for a more extended look at the Rays, try this), and with very little happening on the first day in Las Vegas, it’s a good time to look at baseball’s most imposing division.

The standard for excellence in the other divisions in baseball is roughly 90-92 wins. That’s not the case in the East, where 95 wins are almost always required to guarantee a spot in the postseason.

For a team like the Orioles, that can be awfully intimidating. While the Yankees have their hand in virtually every free-agent pie, Baltimore is relegated to building slowly, to nurturing the farm system and hoping its young players pay off big in the near future.

“It’s a great time to be an up and coming prospect in our organization,” said manager Dave Trembley. But even with a collection of impressive young talent — names like Matt Wieters, Brian Matusz, Chris Tillman, Nolan Reimold — the O’s are facing long odds and Trembley has no pie-in-the-sky aspirations, merely repeating the mantra “we have to get better.”

Well, yeah, but the rub is just how much better they actually have to get.Continue Reading

Dec 2nd 2008 8:00PM by Andrew Johnson (author feed)
Andy MacPhail has put the Orioles, a franchise that has been a baseball backwater for more than a decade, back on the right track in the roughly 18 months that he’s had control of player operations. He’s nurtured the farm system and jettisoned players who were taking the organization nowhere like Miguel Tejada and Erik Bedard.

He’s building toward something in Baltimore, much in the same way the Rays laid the groundwork for last season’s success years in advance. In short, so far, so good.

The trick now is for MacPhail to keep the good ship Oriole pointed in the right direction by holding onto the players who will be useful when the team can realistically expect to win — either in 2010 or 2011 and continuing to cut deadweight from the major league roster. To that end, his top priority this offseason is not signing a free agent like Mark Teixeira or A.J. Burnett, but rather signing right fielder Nick Markakis to a long-term contract extension.

Locking him up isn’t going to be easy, though, now that negotiations have stalled and won’t be revisited until early next year.Continue Reading

Dec 1st 2008 2:45PM by Matt Snyder (author feed)
Jake Peavy is the type of pitcher who can change the complexion of an entire franchise. He won the Cy Young award in 2007 as a 26-year-old with the San Diego Padres after compiling an obscene stat line. He went 19-6 with a 2.54 ERA, 1.06 WHIP, and struck out 240 batters in only 223 1/3 innings. He suffered through an injury-riddled 2008 campaign, but still managed to put up an ERA nearly one entire run better than the league average.

Obviously, when Padres general manager Kevin Towers decided to start over with his team by moving his hottest commodity for prospects, Peavy was the guy. Towers has supposedly been in trade talks ever since, though the specific teams and the number of whom are interested seems to fluctuate on a daily basis. This is the Hot Stove league at its very best and worst at the same time. It can be exciting or annoying, depending upon your point of view.

The two main suitors for Peavy seem to be the Cubs and Braves. Let’s take a look at where we’ve been and the chances of a deal moving forward.Continue Reading