Good Morning Birdland,
The Orioles aren’t involved in any major rumors right now. Of course, that may change. The team doesn’t usually let much slip, so they could always make a splash out of absolutely nowhere. We shall see.
The big baseball news of the day surrounds the Hall of Fame, where another class of inductees has been announced. Did you know the announcement was coming? I certainly didn’t. As usual, MLB does next-to-nothing to reassert its place in the cultural consciousness. They announce season-end
awards in a scattershot manner, long after any non-diehards care. Their draft is crammed in alongside the chaos of All-Star week. Free agency and offseason trades take four months to complete. And the Hall of Fame class gets announced on a seemingly random Tuesday in January, when most people aren’t really paying attention.
Maybe this is truly the best that MLB and baseball can do. As gets said regularly, baseball, more than other sports, is regional. Fans love their team, and probably know a lot about their division rivals, but anything outside of that is fuzzy. The piece meal approach to national broadcasts doesn’t help. In 2026, there will be exclusive games or events on each of FS1, TBS, ESPN, Apple TV, Peacock, and Netflix in addition to NBC and FOX. People just aren’t go to pay for all of those things. So it gets harder for any one player, outside of Shohei Ohtani and Aaron Judge, to be recognizable to casual fans. That will eventually trickle down to Hall of Fame voting, where seemingly anonymous faces will be getting honored one day. But that is a deeper conversation for another day.
The 2026 class of the Baseball Hall of Fame will be Jeff Kent, Carlos Beltrán, and Andruw Jones. Kent was elected last month by the Contemporary Baseball Era Committee. Beltrán and Jones earned their way in the traditional way, garnering more than 75% of the vote from the Baseball Wrtiers’ Association of America.
The players that finished behind Beltrán and Jones in the voting were Chase Utley (59.1%), Andy Pettitte (48.5%), Félix Hernández (46.1%), and Alex Rodriguez (40%). Two former Orioles earning votes were Francisco Rodríguez (50 votes, 11.8%) and Nick Markakis (1 vote, 0.2%). Because he did not reach the 5% threshold, Markakis will drop off of the ballot in 2027.
Voters have drawn a line of demarcation when it comes to cheating.
Steroids continue to be an issue for them. Pettitte and Rodriguez are yet to pass even 50% and seem unlikely to get anywhere close to 75%. Manny Ramírez got 38.8% of the vote in his 10th and final season of eligibility. And Ryan Braun, who had an incredible peak (MVP, five-time Silver Slugger, over 200 homers in six seasons), won’t even get a second season on the ballot.
But Beltrán, who is reported to have been a central figure of the Astros sign-stealing scandal in 2017, gets in after four years. You can argue that sign stealing has always been part of the game, the Astros were just putting a modern spin on it, but it was egregious enough that the entire sport was furious about it, for a little while anyway. The league fined the Astros, suspended coaches and managers for their role, and it cost Beltrán the Mets manager job at the time. Several years removed from it now, it feels like the sport has moved on entirely.
Links
Orioles Sign Hans Crouse To Minor League Deal | MLB Trade Rumors
Unless the Orioles made big league additions to their bullpen, it feels like some random we have never heard of could make the Opening Day roster. Crouse could be the guy. He has big league experience, and was once a top pitching prospect. Let’s see if the Orioles pitching lab can work some magic with him between now and Opening Day.
Crouse latest depth signing, some spring training names and storylines | Roch Kubatko
Roch touches on the state of the roster, which does not currently include a typical utility player. That may be intentional as the Orioles also still have Coby Mayo and Ryan Mountcastle. If they plan to carry both, they aren’t going to have room for a utility option.
Cardinals Showing Interest In Austin Hays | MLB Trade Rumors
That would be a neat landing spot for Hays. The Cardinals are resetting a bit, but it’s a good baseball town and an organization that usually knows what they are doing. Maybe he could rebuild his career a bit.
Orioles birthdays
Is it your birthday? Happy birthday!
- Keith Shepherd turns 58 today. He pitched in 13 games for the Orioles in 1996, his final season of MLB action.
- Bob Reynolds turns 79. The righty was a steady part of the O’s bullpen from 1972 through ‘75, posting a 2.43 ERA over 196 total innings.
- The late Johnny Oates (b. 1946, d. 2004) was born on this day. He appeared in two seasons with the Orioles (1970, ‘72) as a backup catcher, and then went on to bounce around the league for a decade. After his playing career ended, he went into coaching, which included a return to the Orioles organization. He rose from their Triple-A team in Rochester in 1988 to become the big league first base coach in 1989. After Frank Robinson was fired as Baltimore manager in 1991, Oates was promoted to the role, sticking around through the 1994 campaign. The team posthumously inducted him into their Hall of Fame in 2010.
This day in O’s history
January 21 has been a slow day in Orioles history, according to Baseball Reference. Maybe that will change today! Until then, here are some happening s from beyond Birdland:
1911 – The first Monte Carlo Rally takes place.
1954 – The first nuclear-powered submarine, dubbed USS Nautilus, is launched in Groton, Connecticut.
1976 – Commercial service of Concorde airliners begins with the London-Bahrain and Paris-Rio routes
1981 – Production of the DeLorean sports car begins in Dunmurry, Northern Ireland.
