Moondoggie

It seems even Dan Duquette realized there was a lot of crap floating around the upper levels of the Orioles' farm system.

Do the Orioles consider him a reliever? He had always been a rotation prospect coming through the minors (Sickel said two years ago his upside was a No. 2 starter). I would think that at 22 the Orioles would look at him as a future rotation option first.

A couple of interesting things I came across. John Sickels wrote this in spring 2015 in his Baseball Prospect Retrospective: The Globe and Mail filed this story from spring training that year: Miguel Castro is hard to miss at Blue Jays spring training

I was thinking the other day after the last guy that teams must call up Dan before they do anything else because they know he loves to make these kinds of deals.

Me either. In fact, once Bundy was up for good I wasn't too excited about anybody. Seems like there are a couple of guys in the lower minors and hopefully Harvey can get healthy.

I don't know how good any of these guys are or ever will be, but Dan sure has been busy bringing in new arms. If only a few of them ever amount to anything, that's a positive. And maybe this is an indication of just how poor the pitching prospects in the upper minors were.

Ortiz did fail a drug test in 2003 (although we didn't know about it for another six years). A-Rod wasn't testing positive. Palmeiro shook his finger. So not failing drug tests doesn't mean much. The labs who make this stuff are always a step ahead. It's difficult not to suspect something is up the way he's hitting this year.

I mentioned Donnie Baseball. And it was Teddy Ballgame! Nooooooo! Joey Bats is Bautista's nickname! You can't steal a nickname from that arrogant whiney little jerk of a baby.

I hate the nickname "Joey Baseball."It's too obvious a ripoff of Manziel (whose "Johnny Football" moniker makes me cringe as well and you see how he turned out). And even then it wasn't original because "Donnie Baseball" is managing the Marlins. And he was a Yankee. However, if Rickard keeps this up, I might go with "Joey Rockstar." I sometimes have my own nicknames for the players as I'm watching the games. I was calling Schoop "Schoopy" long before I found out they actually called him that, so I was pleased when I found out that's what they call him. I've been calling Kim "Kimmy" so I don't have to pronounce his name.