Brandon Snyder, 2005 Bowman Draft Picks and Prospects #BDP94

Sometime in the next few days, the Orioles' #1 draft pick from 2005 should make his major league debut. Brandon Snyder won't have nearly the hype of Matt Wieters, Josh Bell, Brian Matusz, Chris Tillman, Jake Arrieta, or Nolan Reimold. (That's a lot of prospects, huh?) Snyder was drafted as a catcher out of high school, and was switched to first base during his six-season minor league apprenticeship. He didn't get to AA until last year, but it was worth the wait - he batted .343 with a .421 on-base percentage and .597 slugging in 58 games at Bowie before being bumped up to AAA Norfolk. While the Tides' Harbor Park is known for being tough on hitters, Brandon still didn't inspire any confidence with a .248/.316/.355 line in AAA last year and a .257/.324/.407 mark in 2010. He's not seen as having enough power to be an everyday first baseman in the majors (he topped out at 13 HR in 2008), but there's no harm in giving the guy a look.

I'll say this...I am happy for Brandon Snyder and I certainly have higher expectations for him than for Billy Rowell, who was drafted #1 a year after him and is still in Frederick. Eesh.

Hayden Penn, 2005 Bowman Draft Picks and Prospects #BDP27

Okay, I'm finished talking about Hayden Penn's bad luck. The dude had an engraved invitation to the Orioles starting rotation this year, which had looked like this in February:

1. Jeremy Guthrie
2. Koji Uehara (A 33-year-old Japanese pitcher who has battled injuries in recent years and worked mostly out of the bullpen)
3. ?
4. ?
5. ?

Hayden is of course out of options, so even if he had been just so-so in the Grapefruit League, chances were good that he would have at least snuck onto the Opening Day roster as a long reliever. Instead, the young righty put up this stat line:

0-3, 17 IP, 27 H, 6 BB, 10.05 ERA. Urgh.

In case you're wondering, that's about what it takes to get beat out by the likes of Mark Hendrickson, Adam Eaton (who seems like the early favorite to be my Most Despised Oriole of 2009), and Alfredo Simon. With the writing on the wall, GM Andy MacPhail was at least able to trade Penn to the Marlins for similarly out-of-options shortstop Robert Andino. Robert is the one-time Marlins shortstop of the future who has obviously been surpassed by Hanley Ramirez; a Mendoza-like batting average will do that to you. But he is a strong defender, and the O's woke up on Wednesday and realized that Cesar Izturis wasn't going to play 162 games this year. So Andino has some value, I suppose.

Thanks for making our starting rotation that much more gruesome, Hayden. Better luck in Florida.