A loss of talent
It's the time of year players find themselves out of work. The good ones stay in baseball for a little longer, others head to life's next chapter.
One thing I’ve always loved about baseball is the agate type. On the one hand, there are enough numbers to keep any statistics freak happy, and that’s always been the case. Just look at the back of any baseball card and you’ll see several columns of stats, unlike your classic cards of the other sports. (Just imagine the fate of a lineman in football who rarely touches the ball intentionally, thus no stats.)
But as we begin to fire up that Hot Stove, it’s time for the other side of agate type, that of players being allowed to pursue free agency. In the case of our local Orioles, there were five major leaguers and five minor leaguers let go. On the former list, two of the most intriguing names were guys who cost various levels of prospects to acquire: pitcher Jack Flaherty, who cost the Orioles three farmhands in his deadline-deal trade with the Cardinals, and pitcher Shintaro Fujinami, who came from the A’s and added another to the toll. It’s also worth checking out to see if the Yankees want Aaron Hicks back since the Orioles seemed to straighten him out for a time. (At least he got to play in the postseason this year, right?)
On the minor league side, among others the Orioles said goodbye to Joey Krehbiel and his 67 total appearances as an Oriole from 2021-23, but the guy I remember was Daz Cameron. No, he never progressed beyond deep minor-league “just in case” depth for the O’s, but in 2017 he was the primary return for my Tigers in the JV trade with the Astros. Three seasons of .201 hitting with a miserable .597 OPS later, the Tigers placed him on the waiver wire after last season and the Norfolk Tides were waiting. Also, the Orioles’ brief reunion with their onetime Rule 5 success T.J. McFarland ended without him getting a sniff of the bigs.
As for my Tigers, among their cuts were the familiar names of hurlers Matthew Boyd and Jose Cisnero, but that was it for the big leaguers. (Technically, Miguel Cabrera became a free agent as well, but I’m sure people would be pissed off if he did another retirement tour. I think that’s reserved for rock stars like Ozzy Osbourne and KISS.) As for everyone else, it’s not hard to imagine they can replace the collective 29 2/3 innings at the big league level among the pitchers and one pinch-running appearance among the players. The Mud Hens may be gutted, though.
As I said, most of these minor league free agents will cycle through to another organization looking for AAA depth, while some will be left out in the cold and may try their luck overseas or at independent league ball next summer. There are guys who will keep putting on the uniform, even in far-flung nations like Taiwan, Korea, Japan, Mexico, Italy, Germay, and the Netherlands, until no one wants them anymore, while others may move on to coaching. (As I showed last week, quite a few former Shorebirds have taken coaching jobs all over.)
But most will move on with their lives, joining the hundreds of others who gave it a shot but were released before ever living their major league dream. Every so often I’ll check out Baseball America’s compilation of minor league moves and see a name or two I recognize from their SAL or Carolina League days as our opponents as well as guys who were Shorebirds but whose wings were clipped in Aberdeen or Bowie. The stories are legion of guys who were considered “can’t miss” but somehow fell short.
So let me tell you what I’m gonna do in the next couple weeks. I need to revise my Shorebird of the Week Hall of Fame in much the same way I did the tracker and just put up the active and new players. Since Thanksgiving is early this year (there’s a week between it and the first week of December) I think I’ll pass on a turkey day post and come back with something different on the 30th. The next week will be the SotWHoF induction, and then I’ll work on some other amusing stuff.
And don’t forget: you can also Buy Me a Coffee, since I have a page there now.