Orioles’ spring training coverage

With the Baltimore Orioles now being exactly one week away from their first spring training game, I wanted to touch on what readers can expect from Birds Watcher over the course of Grapefruit League play in terms of game and team coverage. As longtime readers are aware, I write daily game recaps for each game during the season. (And to leap forward for a moment, I have great news for readers: I have no plans to jump over to Europe this summer, so those game recaps won’t at any point come across as non-linear or disjointed!)

However it’s spring training for us as well, and we kind of need to ease our way back into the grind of the season in a sense. So I will have

Courtesy of Brace Hemmelgarn-USA TODAY Sports

game recaps, previews, etc. for many of the spring training games, however I wouldn’t expect them everyday. I suspect that most fans will be more interested in some of the position battles, especially surrounding the starting rotation, more so than they will the actual game results. If there’s ever a time to say that the results of the games don’t mean anything, it’s spring training! (Now having said that, anytime an athlete puts on a uniform, he’s playing to win – regardless of whether it’s a regular season or exhibition game.) Fans of course can also follow my live tweets of the games on my twitter feed, @DomenicVadala.

Throughout spring training you’ll also have the opportunity to hear from our full slate of writers regarding their opinions and view points about what’s going on down in Sarasota, myself included. So here’s a question for O’s fans: who starts the first game next week? I suspect that Buck Showalter isn’t even thinking about an actual rotation as of yet, however speaking for myself I do think that whomever starts the first exhibition game means just a small amount of something. Whomever it is will only pitch two or three innings I would suspect, but it’ll still be interesting to see. My personal prediction is that Ubaldo Jimenez will get the ball next Saturday (March 1st) given that the game will be televised by MASN, and Showalter will probably want to show off the Birds’ newest signee to the hometown fans watching back in Baltimore. Just a prediction – who knows if it’s accurate.