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Showing posts from March, 2024

Spring Training 2024

Ten years ago, my daughter Eileen and I went to Spring Training to catch a couple Grapefruit League games in Florida. This spring, Donna and I headed south to Sarasota to see the Orioles, who have returned to postseason relevance after a four-year rebuild that saw them lose 100 or more games for three straight years. During the rebuild, under the direction of General Manager Mike Elias, they traded away their veteran players for prospects. In addition, those eye-poppingly bad seasons netted them high draft positions, and with a new focus on analytics and new approaches to drafting and player development, their farm system has been transformed into what is considered the best in all of baseball. Young players such as Adley Rutschman, Gunnar Henderson, and Jordon Westburg already contributed to last season's remarkable 101-win season, and many more are on the cusp of joining, and hopefully impacting, the Major League team’s success. I wanted to see these young studs up close. But