Instructional League

[weams]

https://www.masnsports.com/school-of-roch/2020/10/more-on-instructional-league-bullpen-and-a-hall-of-famers-birthday.html

Quote

Games will be played with teams from other camps beginning on Monday. Thus far, the Orioles have been arranging intrasquad matchups, which started this week, similar to the activity this summer at the alternate site in Bowie.

The Pirates and Rays will provide the opposition as two of the three closest teams to the Ed Smith Stadium complex. The Pirates are based in Bradenton and the Rays in Port Charlotte.

The Braves moved into their new facility in North Port, a shorter drive than Port Charlotte, but they aren’t on the schedule.

The Rays are the first opponent on Monday, followed by the Pirates and then the Rays again in alternating fashion.

“It’s like seven or eight days of games,” said director of player development Matt Blood. “We have a couple split squads in there, so it’s two seven-inning games that are going on at the same time on some of those days. I think ultimately it might come out to nine or 10 total games against other teams.”

The Ed Smith complex is back in operation after the March 12 shutdown that lasted through the summer. No interruptions in workouts in the instructional league.

“It’s been going really well,” Blood said. “We’ve got a really nice group of players, the staff’s got great energy, we’ve had a nice schedule lined up. It’s been working pretty well through all the protocols we have now with intake and everything. It’s been really productive so far. I’ve been pleased.

“We test three times a week and we have a lot of pretty intense safety protocols that we’re following here at the fields, but then also back at the hotel we’re basically in a bubble situation where we just go from field to hotel and back. Nowhere else. And nobody else is in the hotel except us. We have the whole hotel.

“Keeping your fingers crossed, but also being very proactive and careful about everything. We’re taking it seriously and it’s going pretty well so far.”

The staff creates six schedules each day for six groups of players, and the workouts aren’t identical to those at the secondary camp site, since the Orioles ended their season on Sept. 27.

“Development is development, but this camp, we’re not having to worry about covering or servicing the major league roster, so we’re not necessarily preparing for a game the next day that matters,” Blood said. “We’ve got a little more freedom and flexibility to spread the day out, and we’ve got a lot more space, facility-wise, with more fields and a lot more bullpens and cages and all that stuff. We have much longer days, a lot more work on skill acquisition. Just a lot more going on and we’re able to get a little more creative.”

Short-season Single-A Aberdeen manager Kevin Bradshaw is the camp coordinator and is on the field to handle a heavy coaching workload. Director of pitching Chris Holt also is in Sarasota.

Others on the staff tasked with offering instruction in hitting, pitching, development and fundamentals include Tim Gibbons, Ryan Fuller, Anthony Villa, Josh Bunselmeyer, Matt Packer, Tim DeJean, Collin Woody, Christian Frias, Kyle Moore, Dave Schmidt, Josh Conway, Andy Sadoski and Robbie Aviles.

There are five development coaches responsible for video duties, and four strength-and-conditioning coaches. It’s a socially distanced full house.

 

[hoosiers]

Typical Roch - "You hate homers?  Orioles relievers allowed fewer than one per game after leading the league in homers surrendered with 126 in 2019."  

The 2019 Os played 162 games with no complete games per Baseball Reference.  That means the 2019 relievers also allowed fewer than one HR per game - 126 HRs in 162 games.

If there was improvement in 2020 from 2019 in HRs allowed by the relievers, one wouldn't know it from what Roch provided.  

Said it before, will say it again, Roch is thoroughly mediocre at what he does.  Os fans deserve better.

[Frobby]

9 minutes ago, hoosiers said:

Typical Roch - "You hate homers?  Orioles relievers allowed fewer than one per game after leading the league in homers surrendered with 126 in 2019."  

The 2019 Os played 162 games with no complete games per Baseball Reference.  That means the 2019 relievers also allowed fewer than one HR per game - 126 HRs in 162 games.

If there was improvement in 2020 from 2019 in HRs allowed by the relievers, one wouldn't know it from what Roch provided.  

Said it before, will say it again, Roch is thoroughly mediocre at what he does.  Os fans deserve better.

I think he means fewer than one homer per 9 IP.    0.93, to be exact. That compares to 1.73 HR/9 for our bullpen last year.   Agree he could have expressed it better.   

[hoosiers]

If Roch thinks it and Frobby writes it, I would be much happier with the end product.