One of the oddities of spring training is when you get a split squad and two different sets of Orioles are playing at once. That’s what’s happening here on Saturday, with one set of Orioles staying in Sarasota to play some Twins, and another set of Orioles traveling to the Braves spring home to play a game there.
Tough luck if you want to watch on TV or streaming. Although this game was initially listed for a MASN broadcast, it isn’t now. I don’t know why they changed their plans. The Sarasota game is Orioles
radio only. If you have access to the Braves feed on MLB.tv, you can watch the road guys in action. That game has a Braves radio feed as well.
Home Orioles starting lineup
- Heston Kjerstad – RF
- Adley Rutschman – C
- Pete Alonso – 1B
- Taylor Ward – DH
- Blaze Alexander – CF
- Coby Mayo – 3B
- Leody Taveras – RF
- Thairo Estrada – 2B
- Wehiwa Aloy – SS
Cade Povich is the starting pitcher for the home Orioles today.
It is not worth getting worked up too much about spring training lineups and this is doubly true on a split squad day where the team is required to send a minimum number of MLB players along on its road game. Still, there are a couple of interesting things.
One, Alexander playing center field. It seems like “maybe this fast middle-infielder can handle center field” is one of those perpetual thoughts that is seldom tried. Remember how often we heard it about Jorge Mateo, for instance. He started a total of 14 games in center field for the Orioles. It wasn’t an ongoing thing. We’ll see if Alexander playing there becomes a thing or if it’s just a weird one-off for this split squad day.
Two, Aloy is in the starting lineup. It’s not typical to see a player who isn’t even a non-roster invite make a start – Aloy’s appearances are “borrowed from minor league camp.” Easier to make it work on a split squad day, especially when the expected starting shortstop, Gunnar Henderson, is away with Team USA for the World Baseball Classic, not that Team USA’s manager seems to have the savvy to recognize Henderson as a starting lineup-caliber player there.
Road Orioles starting lineup
- Dylan Beavers – CF
- Ryan Mountcastle – 1B
- Samuel Basallo – C
- Bryan Ramos – 3B
- Reed Trimble – RF
- Weston Wilson – LF
- Sam Huff – DH
- Willy Vasquez – 2B
- José Barrero – SS
Luis De León is the starting pitcher for the road team. It’s too bad there’s not a local broadcast for one of the team’s top pitching prospects in action. On the other hand, there’s not much to see with the rest of this.
Probably it means nothing, but I do have a slight eyebrow raised at Colton Cowser not being in either of these starting lineups. If he doesn’t play tomorrow either, that might be a thing to keep an eye on.
I follow Orioles news very closely and I could not tell you one thing about Willy Vasquez or José Barrero.
I don’t know whether Vance Honeycutt is available for either of these teams to try to continue his perfect and homer-heavy sporadic spring at-bat streak.
