The Orioles are looking for a starting pitcher, ESPN.com’s Buster Olney tweets. Executive VP of baseball operations Dan Duquette spent much of the offseason acquiring candidates for the rotation, but it remains light on MLB experience.
Joe Blanton, Gavin Floyd and Freddy Garcia are among the potentially available starters for the Orioles to consider. They also appear to have had interest in Cardinals right-hander Kyle McClellan for some time. John Lannan may no longer be available given Chien-Ming Wang’s hamstring injury.
Wei-Ying Chen, Jason Hammel, Zach Britton, Jake Arrieta, Brian Matusz, Brad Bergesen, Chris Tillman, Dana Eveland, Tsuyoshi Wada and Armando Galarraga entered the spring with a shot at obtaining a spot in Baltimore’s rotation.
And Tommy Hunter
Add Tommy Hunter to the list of candidates who entered Spring with a chance for the rotation.
Yankees got Pettite to come back earlier. Why don’t the O’s look into Moose?
Um why?
Lets just roll with Hammel, Hunter, Chen, Arrieta, Matusz with Britton next man up.
I’m confused. The Orioles figure to improve this year, but they are nowhere near contending, so why not roll with what you have and find out more about these guys over a full season? The difference between an Eveland/Galarraga and a Blanton/Floyd is going to be what, 3-4 wins?
I’m going to guess they know the guys they have a garbage. And trotting out guys who work 4-5 innings a start completely destroys the bullpen (see last September) which in turn hurts the other starters, which in turn hurts the future.
The real question is, why trade the one pitcher on the team who did complete 6+ innings a start in Guthrie for not really a whole lot, and then 2 months later look into acquiring Joe Blanton, who is roughly the same pitcher (not great, 6/7 inning 3/4 run a game guy), I believe a year older, making more money, and coming of major arm surgery?
because we’re the Baltimore Orioles.
If this is true I just don’t understand what the team is doing. It makes absolutely no sense. They should be trading starters away, not acquiring more of them, especially the mediocrities mentioned in this article.
Gavin Floyd and McClellan are both valuable pieces.
Oh Boy, I see everybody is out with this rumor, so maybe there’s something to it. To those who are concerned about how many wins a new face would bring to the Organization that really shouldn’t be the point. This fan base is 100% comatose. New Blood is needed, something fresh, something new, something to give us hope! So in that spirit I wholeheartedly support Blanton or Floyd coming to town! Also, as Roch stated early, Tommy Hunter is a candidate, I just hope there’s enough time to get him untracked this spring. Lastly, just say no to Freddy Garcia.
PS Chris Tillman really needs to stop tinkering and adjusting. He simply needs to go out there, pick a lane and just do it! He’s driving me nuts with his flashes of brilliance and then follows up with a luke warm performance.
PPS It’s our bullpen that concerns me the most, it truly does.
That kind of logic leads to 14 years of losing Lefty.
The ONLY factor should be adding wins. Wins now and Wins in the future.
Not awaking the fan base or anything else.
Kinda surprised. Our bullpen concerns me the least. Our rotation and lineup concerns me the most this year. We have done absolutely nothing to make our lineup better, and last year our offense was incredibly inconsistent throughout the year.
I don’t see Hardy hitting 30 hrs again. I think if there is any injury to our infield we have no offensive replacement. I don’t see Mark Reynolds who lost 20 pounds, hitting 37 HRS again. Combine all of that with the fact that last year we were middle of the league in runs scored, and really only reached that point because of a very strong end to the season.
Even further, we were barely 4th in the Al East in runs scored (one more than Tampa Bay). Basically our rotation has to be Tampa Bay good for us to compete but even then our hitting has to be better and its just not.
While I don’t dispute the Orioles might be looking to add quality depth to their rotation arms, I really have to question a writer who would think they’d be able to or even willing to acquire Freddy Garcia from the Yankees. Basically nobody in the AL East deals with each other, let alone moving a half-decent starting pitcher to a potential rival. Blanton, Floyd, and McClellan make sense but Garcia leaving pinstripes for Oriole Park is silly. I’d wonder if Cashman would even answer Duquette’s trade calls and vice versa.
How ’bout this: Pettitte, Garcia, Hughes, Pineda and Nova COMBINED make only $200k more than Blanton.
Pettitte and Garcia near the very end of their careers, Hughes, Nova, and Pineda near the very beginning. I don’t really get your point. This is the reason teams want young talent and the reason much older players still have teams that will take a gamble on them.
Blanton was a middle of his career overpay.
Nova is near the very end of his Career? Please Explain!
Brain fart, it has since been fixed.
Severe unforseen injury.
Hughes just hit arbitration, Nova and Pineda aren’t at arbitration yet, Pettitte just came out of retirement, and Garcia had ONE good year following a few disasters. Of course none of them are making the same kind of money a free-agent pitcher would sign for.
I don’t want Garcia, I don’t want Blanton, and I only want Floyd if we still get the 2013 option if we trade for him. I’m not sure why we would need (or want) Garcia or Blanton. Floyd is very good and is a Baltimore native, so that makes sense from both a baseball and a marketing perspective. If the White Sox are really going to blow it up, then that’s wonderful but what exactly do we have that we would be willing to part with for Floyd that Chicago wants? It’s not like our farm system is very deep and the O’s are not going to trade Machado or Schoop for Floyd.
The Orioles need an ace. They’ve got depth but no one that can really be that solid anchor in the rotation every 5 days. Guthrie was a makeshift ace and even that turned out pretty badly. They should have paid for a CJ Wilson or a Darvish if they wanted to contend (or pretend like they wanted to)
Should have gotten Edwin Jackson. Ace potential still, but even at career levels would eat 200 ip effectively for 3 seasons.
What else is new?
Let’s just give a chance to Matusz, Arrieta, Britton and Tillman to have a full year with the club and not sending them to the minors back and forth, they are still very young and I still believe if they get the chance, they can be good, anyway we are not going anywhere this year, so why not give them a chance instead of bringing in old guys that are not gonna make a big difference. I believe it took a little time to Floyd to become the pitcher he is now, but the White Sox gave him the chance.
They’ve got depth at the moment, but you have to figure that they’ve got to let go a pretty solid ball player who has some upside go, considering how many out-of-option players they’ve collected. I think a trde might be in the offing, and, this strategy of acquiring so many decent bubble guys was all about filling the roster as well as setting up a Spring trade.
They’ve got depth at the moment, but you have to figure that they’ve got to let go a pretty solid ball player who has some upside go, considering how many out-of-option players they’ve collected. I think a trde might be in the offing, and, this strategy of acquiring so many decent bubble guys was all about filling the roster as well as setting up a Spring trade.