TODAY: The O’s have announced the signing.
YESTERDAY: The Orioles have agreed to a minor league contract with outfielder Eric Young Jr. and invited him to Major League Spring Training, Roch Kubatko of MASNsports.com reports (via Twitter).
Young, now 33 years old, spent the 2017-18 seasons with the Angels but, after a solid run in 2017, saw his offensive output crater in 2018. Overall, he hit a combined .233/.293/.361 with five homers, nine doubles, a pair of triples and 17 steals through 242 plate appearances with the Halos. Young paced the National League with 46 stolen bases back in 2013 as a member of the Rockies, and he doesn’t look to have lost much of a step, as his sprint speed of 29.0 feet per second (via Statcast) still ranked in the 91st percentile of big leaguers.
Baltimore currently projects to have Trey Mancini, Cedric Mullins and DJ Stewart line up as the primary outfielders, with Mark Trumbo, Joey Rickard, Austin Hays, Anthony Santander and Rule 5 pick Drew Jackson all potentially factoring into the mix as well. Young, though, would bring an element of speed to the O’s that is largely lacking outside of Mullins and infielder Jonathan Villar, so perhaps that’ll hold some appeal to the Orioles’ new leadership as Young vies for a bench job this spring.
You won’t find a nicer, classier guy. Best of luck to EYJ. Hope he gets plenty of MLB time.
Agreed!
I believe this is the first signing for Baltimore this offseason…
They signed starting pitcher Nate Karns a couple of days ago.
This is their fifth minor league contract. Karns has gotten the only major league deal:
https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2019-mlb-free-agent-tracker/team-3
Having Villar or Mullins alone is typically 10x the speed the orioles typically have on the roster.
Richie Martin will also make the team. The 3 of them together is the fastest orioles team we’ve seen in decades.
Fastest to 100 L’s?
Would be hard to top last years pace. Depending on when/if we deal away all our talent. Cobb, Buddy, Givens, Bleier. All four of them could conceivably be traded. If that happens it’ll be extra ugly and I could honestly see us match the whatever year it was in the 2000’s tigers. But I think they’ll stick around long enough for us to win too many games to make that happen.
More like Eric OLD Jr.!
don’t quit your day job there, princess
Slight correction Young led the nl in stolen bases playing for the Rockies and Mets that year. I believe he started everyday in LF for the Mets that year.
It’s a good thing minor league contracts are so interesting because they are dominating the MLB off-season news so far.
Remember him on the Mets, solid utility guy
Some people have a better skill at staying in the league than the actual skill of playing in the league.
That is well said.
Can he still play 2B? Maybe that’s the plan for him?
Nah, Villar is the starting 2nd baseman and they are loaded on infielders whereas the roster is short on major league outfielders.
Villar not officially starting second baseman but is the presumptive favorite.
Villar is our 2b or possibly SS. He’s significantly better at 2b so I cannot imagine that’s not where he ends up unless they don’t think Richie Martin is ready to play SS in the bigs. He’ll 100% be the guy at one of those two spots. Realistically he’s the only infielder we have who can be expected to produce over 2 WAR. Posssibly Mancini if we move him back to 1B as well.
Villar makes a lot more sense at 2B to me too, but that’s not always been the consensus. I don’t love Mancini in LF either (don’t hate him as much as most) but until someone takes that spot and forces him to 1B/DH he’ll see at bats there.
Or the Orioles find a way to get Chris Davis off first base so Mancini can play his true position.
Could Davis move to third and not be absolutely worse than he is?
No he can’t
The orioles have a whole groupie of 4th and 5th outfielders. Not one of those guys could crack the starting lineup on about 15 teams. They should sign Adam Jones.
We are the worst team in baseball. Saying none of our guys could start on half the teams in baseball would be a complement. There’s no reason for us to bring Jones back at all. He could serve as a mentor I guess but he’d have to play LF for us because we already have Trumbo penciled in RF. I really don’t care if he’s back or not because Mullins is our CF and Jones is no longer capable out there anyway. We’ll have Diaz, Hays, and Stewart all readily available at some point this year too so unless Jones can’t find himself a deal elsewhere I don’t think it’ll be baltimore.
If Mancini is the starting leftfielder for the Orioles this season, it is no exaggeration to say that somebody needs to be fired. It is impossible that none of the available candidates offers less than Mancini, who should be first base, DH, or nothing.
Mancini is our best internal candidate for 1B long term. There’s no reason to stick him in LF again. He can’t run and he can’t throw, we already knew that. IF trumbo and Davis were productive it might make a difference but Davis is terrible. Play DJ stewart in the OF until Diaz and Hays are ready to go. Have mancini man 1B and let Trumbo play RF/DH and Davis can alternate between 1B and DH if he recaptures any of his old form. If not release him and move on. Davis really isn’t blocking any younger player right now if he’s at DH but he soon will when Mountcastle/Diaz/Hays are ready, There’s no reason to keep him if he’s 2018 Davis, the money is already thrown in the trash. We’ll at least get a look at Sisco/Wynns, Stewart, Martin/Jackson, and Mullins in the first half of 2019 to see what we have.
What’s going on with Adam Jones
He has a sprint speed of 29.0 ft/s, this is how that compares to some of the fastest Orioles: Mullins (29.3), Wilkerson (29.0), Peterson (28.4). Surprisingly, Villar is shown as 27.7, but he manages to average about 40 steals in a full season.
Raw speed will steal you some bags but as you can see from that it’s not the only thing. Plenty of fast guys out there who don’t get a proper jump nor recognize the right time to go.
Villar is fun to watch on the bags, I hope he can give Mullins a few tips on getting a proper jump (2-for-5 in stolen bases in 2018). I’d like to see Mullins compete with Villar for most stolen bases on the team this year.
EYJ is a very solid player and a good guy. Nice signing
Few … I’m glad for the Orioles franchise, that takes the sting out of losing Machado.
Thoughts and prayers
Dude gives the bubble gum a work out
dude won the NL SB title back in 2013 because Everth Cabrera got caught juicing, also f-ed up Tim Hudson’s ankle that same year.
Villar’s kind of under-rated; not a bad player at all. And Boom-Boom has no more business in LF than I do as head of the Vatican State; that said, there’s worst 1B-men than Boom-Boom.
Elias has been somewhat slow-moving, with ownership being partly to blame. You can’t rebuild scouting/ minor league systems beginning in December; everybody good has already got a job by then.
The O’s are probably best served by biting the bullet, and pre-paying those ridiculous deferrals they owe Davis and Cobb (about 60M, if memory serves), and adding that to this year’s payroll expenditure. That doesn’t leave a lot of room, but it doesn’t kamikaze future efforts, as those deferrals do now.
It’s a great, proud franchise. Like Bob Costas, I grew up with a dad who told me to watch the O’s; “THEY know how to play the game”. Kinda sad to see.
As an Os fan I’ll check back in a few years and see where they are unless they get new owners then I’ll be excited