Hello, friends.
There are now 130 days remaining until Orioles Opening Day 2026.
The Orioles coaching staff for next season continues to come together. O’s reporters, including MASN’s Roch Kubatko, revealed two more names for Craig Albernaz’s 2026 staff yesterday. The latest newcomers are Miguel Cairo, a 17-year MLB veteran who was most recently interim manager with the Nationals, and Joe Singley, a recent catching coach with the Marlins.
Cairo, who is 51, will serve as major league infield coach, while
Singley, 28, has the title of major league field coordinator and catching coach. As with any of the other hires, it doesn’t matter how impressive their resumes look or feel. The tale will be told based on whether Orioles players flourish or not under them. Singley being able to help develop Samuel Basallo as a catcher is going to be important to the 2026 Orioles and beyond, and Cairo being able to clean up the infield defense should also be crucial. He’s certainly got the credibility of a long playing career to back up whatever he has to say.
For now, coaching staff hires are all there really is to talk about. The opening up of trade and free agent season did not come with a flurry of substantial moves being made. That’s typical for an MLB offseason, where nothing really gets done, or at least there’s not much to show for anything that is being done in terms of external moves, until after Thanksgiving. If the Orioles take care of their coach business by then and move towards addressing player needs, that will be good.
They’re already doing the background work on player needs, of course. The team has probably had initial, basic conversations with agents of players they could, in time, try to sign. They’ve likely done their own work on analyzing those players and what they think those guys should be worth. They’ve probably made those assessments about potential trade targets as well, and perhaps made inquiries about who could be available, or who might become available if the price is right.
All of this stuff is invisible because the Orioles front office doesn’t regularly leak its business, either trade or free agent discussions. You can be pretty sure if you do hear such a rumor that it is probably coming from elsewhere, and often that means it should be taken with a grain of salt.
Orioles stuff you might have missed
Mike Elias set a high bar for the Orioles offseason. This time it feels different. (The Baltimore Banner)
Jon Meoli observes that Elias has never sounded like this before going into an offseason. Is he actually going to behave differently and more aggressively in shoring up the team’s weaknesses?
20 relievers who could be fits for Baltimore in 2026 (The Baltimore Sun)
If Elias really is going to be as aggressive as he is acting like in recent remarks, that’s probably going to end up with signing two players on this list. Who are your hoped-for relievers?
Birthdays and Orioles anniversaries
Today in 2018, the Orioles made the choice and hired Mike Elias to be the team’s general manager. Two of the seasons between then and now were good.
One current Oriole has a birthday today. Happy 26th and hopefully a smooth recovery from his elbow bone chip surgery to Grayson Rodriguez. There are a few former Orioles who were also born on this day: 2007-08 reliever Fernando Cabrera, 2010 backup infielder Julio Lugo, and 1963 pitcher Buster Narum.
Is today your birthday? Happy birthday to you! Your birthday buddies for today include: author Chinua Achebe (1930), actress Maggie Gyllenhaal (1977), and comedian Pete Davidson (1993).
On this day in history…
In 1855, explorer David Livingstone became the first European to sight the waterfall on the Zambezi River. Today, what’s known as Victoria Falls marks the border between Zambia and Zimbabwe.
In 1907, Oklahoma became the 46th state in the union.
In 1974, a radio broadcast dubbed the Arecibo message was sent from a telescope in Puerto Rico into a cluster of stars out in space. In about 25,000 years, the message, which provides very rudimentary information about humans and Earth, might be receivable in cluster M13.
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And that’s the way it is in Birdland on November 16. Have a safe Sunday.
