Baltimore Orioles Spring Training: Six Bold Predictions

Feb 25, 2015; Sarasota, FL, USA; Baltimore Orioles stretch during spring training workouts at

Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Reinhold Matay-USA TODAY Sports

Now that the Baltimore Orioles spring training season is advancing to actually playing games, let me make some bold predictions about the next month – with implications extending into the beginning of the season.

It really is a new era for the Orioles. Having done this writing now for a number of years, there has not been a previous season where the team is in possession of quite such an abundance of riches – meaning, of very good players and choices throughout the roster and lineup.

So often in the past, though the O’s had more than a few good players, the gaps in the lineup were obviously going to be filled by less than excellent possibilities. Some may say that this situation greets the Orioles again with the corner outfielders in the wake of the losses of Nelson Cruz and Nick Markakis. Though I grant that as a reasonable concern on the surface, when explored in greater depth, those losses are less injurious to success than is immediately apparent. I am really looking forward to a great year from the combined efforts of Steve Pearce, Alejandro De Aza, Delmon Young, Travis Snider, David Lough, and perhaps even others like Henry Urrutia and Dariel Alvarez.

Perhaps that statement of optimism on the outfield situation could count as a bold prediction, and maybe it should. But again, I so expect it that I don’t actually construe it as that terribly bold.

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And considering the pitching – when is the last time the Orioles came into a season with five starters with outstanding statistics from the year before … even having multiple sites listing the starting pitching of the Baltimore Orioles as a strength of the team and the best in the AL East?  Beyond that, how in the world are the Birds going to choose between all of the very good relief pitching options available to them, even with Andrew Miller being gone?

Do I sound like a starry-eyed homer who can see nothing wrong with his own beloved team? If all you had to go on was this page and a lack of history reading my critical analyses, I’d understand that. So click on through this and you’ll see that I do expect a few things to go wrong among these six bold predictions …

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