Jon Meoli

6 days ago | thebaltimorebanner.com | Jon Meoli

Orioles manager Brandon Hyde is right in saying it’s difficult but necessary for his young stars — a group that accounts for most of the team’s lineup on a nightly basis — to move on from a tough game or a tough week and mentally set themselves up to be as good as everyone knows they are. That mindset above everything else might be the path for them to get back to their best baseball and perhaps will allow the stop-start nature of this team’s performance of late to smooth out a little bit.

1 week ago | thebaltimorebanner.com | Jon Meoli

It still feels to me like a matter of when, not if, this Orioles team turns things around. And when, or if, that happens, we can expect them to say they always knew they were a good team and believed they were far better than the version we’ve seen in these first two weeks. It will be strongly implied, if not outright said, that no one else believed in them. They will be right, and they will also be full of it. Let’s not kid ourselves.

2 weeks ago | thebaltimorebanner.com | Jon Meoli

It’s April, but it sure doesn’t feel like it where these Orioles are concerned. For a variety of reasons, some fair and some less so, this early-season period where you’d expect the Orioles to still be ironing out roles for players, managing workloads at the start of a six-month grind and figuring out who they are as a team is not being regarded with much grace. It doesn’t help that they’ve either been really good and won or played terribly and lost, without much in between.

2 weeks ago | baseballamerica.com | Jon Meoli

Fruit had two three-inning outings in major league camp. First he struck out five in three scoreless innings on March 11 against the Yankees, and then he notched four strikeouts while allowing one run on March 17 against the Red Sox. His four-seam fastball was up to 100.3 mph in the first outing, averaging nearly 98, and he missed bats with that pitch as well as his sweeper and cutter. Like many of the fastest risers in the Orioles’ system, Fruit comes without pedigree but with plenty of stuff.

3 weeks ago | thebaltimorebanner.com | Jon Meoli

You’ve probably gleaned by watching all the Gunnar Henderson home run highlights that Triple-A Norfolk’s season is well underway, and come Friday, the rest of the full-season affiliates will start up, too. The break-camp rosters, which feature all the full-season prospects’ destinations to start the season, are out now and feature plenty of notable names from recent drafts.