It’s here. The first Orioles game of the spring training schedule is happening today in Sarasota. The game will be aired on both MASN (TV/streaming) and WBAL (radio) in Baltimore, so if you have access to either of those, you can even follow along. It’ll feel a little warmer with baseball going on somewhere.
This being the Grapefruit League, no questions about anything will be answered today. If someone does well, it doesn’t matter. If someone sucks, it doesn’t matter. Everything over the next month
is just about getting everyone prepared for the real games come Opening Day.
As nice as it will feel to have good results, particularly the closer we get to Opening Day, really all that matters is getting through the camp season without more injuries piling up on top of what was already there when players reported. There’s already bad injury news here on Friday with the Orioles having announced the official diagnosis for Jordan Westburg, revealing an elbow injury that’s cropped up during his oblique rehab.
Here’s the lineup for the opener:
- Gunnar Henderson – SS
- Pete Alonso – 1B
- Samuel Basallo – C
- Tyler O’Neill – RF
- Colton Cowser – CF
- Adley Rutschman – DH
- Heston Kjerstad – LF
- Coby Mayo – 3B
- Jeremiah Jackson – 2B
Trevor Rogers is the starting pitcher for this opening game. Pitchers expected to be used after him are: Keegan Akin, Jose Espada, Rico Garcia, Trey Gibson, Jean Carlos Henriquez, Enoli Paredes, and Grant Wolfram. They will probably not appear in alphabetical order by last name. Dean Kremer is set to start tomorrow. Further than that has not been lined up (or at least not revealed publicly) just yet.
New manager Craig Albernaz has already offered caution not to read too much into any spring lineup. We certainly should not make assumptions about how the team is leaning for regular season lineups based on this first spring game.
My question for you is, how much do you think this lineup will resemble the one we’ll get for Opening Day? I think there’s probably seven out of the nine Opening Day players here. This being the first game of spring, we’ll probably only see them for four or five innings and then it will be time for the reserves. Some of the reserves might even be players you’re excited to get to see a bit in the early games.
