Hello, friends.
There are now 56 days remaining until Orioles Opening Day, which is to say, real baseball will be back exactly eight weeks from today. That’s fun! Or will it be fun? I guess that’s up to the
team that disappointed us last year. Only eleven days remain before WBC-participating pitchers and catchers are in camp.
We are close enough to the start of spring training that it’s getting increasingly weird that the top remaining free agent starting pitcher, Framber Valdez, has not signed. We can only guess what the holdup is. My suspicion is teams are refusing to budge beyond four-year offers, perhaps even three-year offers, and he’s hoping somebody will blink before camps open up.
Teams are probably waiting for him to blink as well. Lately, these sorts of situations have had a tendency to resolve with the player getting a shorter, high-AAV contract that allows for an opt-out by the player after only a year, or maybe two years. That doesn’t mean that’s what will happen with Valdez, but that’s the pattern. Something like a three-year, $100 million contract where he can dip out after this season and look for another guaranteed year or two, now removed from having a qualifying offer attached to signing him and perhaps, in his mind, having proven he’s still a high-end pitcher even though he’s headed for his mid-30s.
Other starting pitchers remain out there as well. Zac Gallen is another free agent who will cost a draft pick to sign. That might be a big problem for a guy who had a 4.86 ERA in 2025. If I was Gallen, I might have taken the QO offered by Arizona in a year and tried again for 2027. Guys like Chris Bassitt and Lucas Giolito are also still out there. You can never have enough starting pitching, and yet all of these people haven’t found teams yet. There are various questions around each player that probably answer why they haven’t gotten the money or years they hoped to get yet.
Unless there’s some injury to an Orioles starting pitcher that we don’t know about – which isn’t impossible – I don’t really think it makes much sense to commit an eight-figure annual salary like Gallen, Bassitt, or Giolito will command in order to shore up the back end of the rotation. Maybe Zach Eflin is going to be a month delayed or something. That’s fine. I’ll take my chances with Tyler Wells for that long and then with Dean Kremer as the #5. Pay the money for Valdez at the top or don’t bother. We got enough of those bad mid-tier signings in the Dan Duquette era.
Orioles stuff you might have missed
With new outlook, Henderson eager for new season with new faces (Orioles.com)
Gunnar Henderson getting himself back into 7+ win territory is as much a part of the 2026 Orioles formula for success as anything else. He’s feeling good for now, which probably doesn’t mean anything but at least is nice to hear.
Orioles are confident top prospect Samuel Basallo can continue developing in the majors (The Baltimore Banner)
And you know they mean it because they already gave him the eight-year extension.
MLB prospects who just missed Keith Law’s top 100 ranking, including Dylan Beavers (The Athletic)
Keith Law remains positive about Beavers even without having put him on the top 100.
Birthdays and Orioles anniversaries
There are a pair of former Orioles with birthdays today. They are: 2013 two-game pitcher Jair Jurrjens, and 1985-88 pitcher John Habyan. Today is Habyan’s 62nd birthday, so an extra happy birthday to him.
Is today your birthday? Happy birthday to you! Your birthday buddies for today include: Revolutionary pamphlet writer Thomas Paine (1737), 25th president William McKinley (1843), playwright Anton Chekhov (1860), Ramones drummer Tommy Ramone (1949), and TV personality Oprah Winfrey (1954).
On this day in history…
In 1845, Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven” was first published in a New York newspaper.
In 1907, Charles Curtis took office as a US Senator from Kansas. In the process, he became the first Native American to hold any Senate seat. (This also happened on the 46th anniversary of Kansas’s admission as a state.)
In 1936, the first Baseball Hall of Fame class was announced. The first five Hall of Famers were: Ty Cobb, Walter Johnson, Christy Mathewson, Babe Ruth, and Honus Wagner.
A random Orioles trivia question
I received a book of Orioles trivia for Christmas. I’ll ask a question in this space each time it’s my turn until I run out of questions or forget. The book has multiple choice answers, but I’m not giving you those because for most questions it would be too easy. Today’s question:
Who was the first opponent that the Orioles played at Memorial Stadium in 1954?
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And that’s the way it is in Birdland on January 29. Have a safe Thursday.
