Matt Albers, 2008 Topps Updates and Highlights #UH62

I've been tapping away in this little corner of the Web since 2008. I've published 2,377 posts, some without any words at all, some with very many words. But I don't think I've ever posted an entry that was just one word long. I've also never posted a card of husky ex-O's reliever Matt Albers, who is now a free agent after the Astros declined a $3 million option on his contract. In his return to Houston, Albers allowed a single run in ten innings in April, then missed the rest of the season with a bum shoulder. Might the Orioles give him a look? I wouldn't count on it, since competition is always stiff in the Baltimore bullpen and he's a 32-year-old middle reliever who doesn't typically strike out a lot of guys. Then again, if you thumb back through my archives, you'll find that I'm a pretty poor prognosticator.

Okay, so I mark off the imaginary "Matt Albers" box on my blog checklist. But it's safe to say that the one-word entry will have to wait for another day.

Alex Cintron, 2008 Topps Updates and Highlights #UH283

A little birdie on the MLB Network told me that Alex Cintron retired today. As somebody who can't feasibly retire until at least 2039, I find the use of that term somewhat funny. The Puerto Rican shortstop is 32, not quite 4 years older than me. He played his first full season in the majors with Arizona in 2003, my senior year of college. I've been steadily employed since 2005, which would make me a seasoned veteran in baseball terms. Ah well, at least I won't be stripped of my purpose in life in a couple of years. We've each got our own dues to pay.

I have to admit that nothing readily comes to mind when I try to recall Cintron's 61 games as an Oriole in 2008. I do remember thinking that of all the O's weak options at short that year, I thought he was the best and should have gotten more playing time than he did. The stats show a pretty empty .286 average (.321 OBP, .361 SLG), with an 81 OPS+ indicating that he was below average by a healthy margin. Of course, a glimpse at his cohorts indicates that he was a damn sight better than the likes of Juan Castro (43 OPS+), Brandon Fahey (57 OPS+), and Freddie Bynum (18 OPS+), at least offensively. I do remember him being kind of clunky with the glove, but you would think that a team fielding Ramon Hernandez at catcher and Kevin Millar and Melvin Mora on the corners wouldn't be so picky about defense.

I had to jump to Alex's 2008 Game Log on Baseball Reference to jog my memory. He had four singles in four at-bats in his first start, a 6-5 win over the Nationals on May 17. He delivered a walkoff single against the Yankees in a wild 11-inning game on May 27, after New York manager Joe Girardi walked two batters to get to him. And I was at Oriole Park for his only home run with the Birds, a June 19 solo shot that gave them a 3-2 lead in a game they would win 7-5 over Houston. I'm a bit embarrassed to admit that I didn't remember that, but it goes to show you how the years and players run together when you're dropping 90-100 games each year.

So enjoy your retirement, Alex. Maybe you can take up woodworking, or book yourself on a few cruises.

Luke Scott, 2008 Topps Updates and Highlights #UH200

As another Orioles season draws to a close, I tip my hat to Luke Scott, the 2010 Most Valuable Oriole as chosen by the local media. He didn't have much competition for the award, but his great season should be recognized. Besides leading the Orioles with 27 home runs, a .535 slugging percentage and a .902 OPS, he also set career highs with 70 runs scored, 29 doubles, 239 total bases, a .284 average, and a .368 on-base percentage. He was also one of the top ten American League hitters in slugging, OPS, OPS+, and at bats per home run (16.5). Not a bad year's work for a guy who entered the season trying to shed the label of a streaky hitter. There should definitely be a spot for him on the 2011 Orioles.

Oscar Salazar, 2008 Topps Updates and Highlights #UH311

One of the hazards of being a baseball fan is the ever-changing roster of your favorite team. As Jerry Seinfeld once observed, we're basically rooting for laundry. In a short amount of time, I really took a liking to Oscar Salazar, one of those journeymen whose labrynthine paths to the major leagues make baseball worth watching. Today, he was traded to the Padres for reliever Cla (pronounced "clay") Meredith. So I'll try to give him a proper sendoff by telling his story.

Like former O's teammates Melvin Mora and Cesar Izturis, Oscar was born in Venezuela. He signed with the Athletics as an amateur free agent in 1994, when he was just sixteen years old. He hit consistently well in their organization (including .300 with 13 homers in his first crack at AA), but they let him go to Detroit on waivers in January of 2002. He spent a grand total of a week and a half on the Tigers' major league roster, collecting four hits in 21 at-bats. Soon, teams were passing him around like currency; between April 2002 and June 2004, he went from the Tigers to the Mets to the Angels to the Royals to the Indians, never getting so much as a sniff at another big league promotion. When Cleveland released him after two months of a .221 average at AA Akron, it looked like the 26-year-old had reached a dead end. He spent all of 2005 playing for the Cancun Langosteros of the Mexican League, and I can't find any record of him playing pro ball anywhere the following year.

In 2007, the Birds took a flier on Salazar, and stashed him at AA Bowie. The veteran showed an impressive power stroke, hitting 39 doubles and 22 homers for the Baysox. It was enough to convince Baltimore to keep him around in 2008. Playing his first full season ever at AAA, Oscar crushed 42 doubles and batted .316. In June, he spent two weeks with the big league club, his first MLB action in six years. When rosters expanded in September, the floundering O's brought him back and his bat caught fire. In total, he hit .284 with 5 home runs and 15 RBI in only 81 at-bats. Still, the rebuilding Orioles didn't appear to have any room in their plans for a 31-year-old hitter with no natural defensive position.

So Salazar passed through waivers at the end of Spring Training this year and just kept on hitting. Fifty games into his season at Norfolk, the Venezuelan native was hitting .372 with 28 extra-base hits when Izturis' trip to the disabled list created another opportunity for his countryman. Oscar continued to rake, even with irregular playing time. As things stand today, he's batting .419 with a pair of longballs in 31 trips to the plate. He proved invaluable during a recent interleague road trip, delivering three crucial pinch hits in a four-game span. His pinch-hit, three-run homer on June 30 sparked the team's historic 10-run comeback against the Red Sox. For the first time in seemingly forever, Baltimore had a reliable bat on the bench (anyone remember the days of Alberto Castillo, Chris Gomez, and Freddie Bynum?).

But with several other corner infield/designated hitter types on the roster, Oscar knew that his days in orange and black were probably numbered. With Izturis coming off of the disabled list the Friday before the All-Star Break, Salazar was reportedly nervously ducking his head into Dave Trembley's office frequently throughout the day. When David Hernandez was optioned to the minors instead, the veteran slugger finally exhaled and brought his son into the manager's office to meet the boss. But it was a brief reprieve; with all of the shuffling of the pitching staff settling down, and no trades imminent for any regulars, the O's dealt the persistent Salazar to San Diego for a major league talent, rather than risk losing him to a waiver claim.

At this point in his career, Oscar Salazar seems suited for the National League. He certainly deserves an actual shot to stick on a major league roster. After all, he's waited fifteen years for it.

George Sherrill, 2008 Topps Updates and Highlights #

How was your Saturday? Improbably enough, mine included an audition for a MASN Orioles commercial. Several weeks ago, I was contacted by someone at MASN. Apparently, they were planning an ad campaign focusing on regular fans sharing their memorable Orioles (and Nationals, ehh) moments. I'd participated in a discussion thread at Camden Chat on just that very topic, and they liked my response enough to bring me in for the audition. So at noon today, I dolled myself up in my new "Baltimore" road jersey and my Angry Bird hat and drove up to Fall Road to the studio. I got a bit flustered because I had trouble finding the building (poor signage), which made me a few minutes late. But it turned out that they weren't ready for me yet, so I had a chance to sit in the waiting room and gather myself.

When I got there, there was an older man in Nationals gear ahead of me. We talked baseball for a bit. His memorable moment was Ron Belliard's walkoff home run against George Sherrill, which I remembered all too well. It was another crushing loss during the O's inexplicable streak of Sunday defeats, and I was watching it on TV at our hotel in Ocean City. Not the best start to vacation. While we waited, the woman who had signed us in passed out our checks. I was thrilled with the promise of $150 just for showing up and talking about the Orioles; I would have done it for free. (I can safely say that now that I have the check!) Shortly after I arrived, another young guy with an orange Orioles warmup jersey bustled in. He sat next to me and I happened to mention that I'd been contacted after posting on Camden Chat. It turned out that this guy, whose name was Joe, was a fellow Camden Chatter! With that as an icebreaker, we passed the time chatting about the O's and football. After about an hour, I got called in to face the casting tribunal.

My jersey got some attention right away, as one of them mentioned to the others that the jersey should definitely be in the wardrobe for the commercial shoot (scheduled for mid-February), because it's part of the new uniform, and the "Baltimore" across the chest hasn't been there for 20 years and it's "a big deal". I just couldn't help myself, and I piped up that it was more like 35 years. First, Peter, who was operating the camera and doing most of the talking and instructing (and whose name was the only one I remembered), prompted me to tell my story. I'd rehearsed it in my head all week, going to Baseball Reference to fact-check the little details.

It was June 19, the final game of a six-game interleague homestand in which the Birds had come from behind to win four of the first five. (They'd also battled back from 4-0 in the one loss before dropping it in extra innings.) The point was that I believed, for the first time in years, that they could win any game, no matter what the circumstances. After falling behind 2-0 early in this one, they used three home runs to take a 7-3 lead going into the ninth inning. Dennis Sarfate loads the bases with one out, and George Sherrill is brought in to save the day. I turn up the bill of my hat to flatten it, for good luck. He coaxes a fly ball for the second out. So it's 7-4 and Miguel Tejada is up. He singles, it's 7-5 and I start to sweat it. Lance Berkman, one of the best hitters in the National League, is up representing the winning run. George gets two quick strikes and Camden Yards comes alive. I'm on my feet now, whipping my hat around in my hand (here I act it out), chanting, "Sweep! Sweep! Sweep!" Sure enough, it's a shallow fly ball to left, Jay Payton camps out under it, and makes the catch. Game over!

Okay, I wasn't quite that verbose, but it was close. They seemed impressed with my level of recall, so I admitted that I'd checked up on myself. Now Peter helped me condense it to the meat and potatoes, essentially jumping to the two-strike pitch. Then he asked me to work with a crude script centered around the previous Friday's game against the Pirates. It was a bit strange, since it was a moment someone else had submitted. He had me improvise a scenario in which I watched the game with a friend who was down on the Orioles and giving me a hard time about them falling behind 6-0. There was some youthful banter he was looking to get, probably trying to place me in a "smack-talking young guys" demographic. I was encouraged to get fired up, and to use colloquialisms like "Dude". I pushed through it a few times, feeling a little more awkward and less genuine, but I realize that if I get the commercial I'm not going to be doing 100% of my own material. As we wrapped up, Peter tossed out a few shouts of elation that I might want to work in, and I took his cues. Caught up in the moment, I let out a loud hoot of joy, which is the sort of thing that I really would do if the O's pulled out a big win, regardless of whether I was at the stadium or in front of the TV. That got a good laugh from the group, and I hope it was a good note to leave on.

There are more auditions next weekend, and I assume that I'll know the verdict shortly thereafter. For now, it looks like my acting background and my obsession with sports have intersected in an unexpected way.

Lance Cormier, 2008 Topps Updates and Highlights #UH199

Even though I lost my taste for Topps' 2008 offerings after one too many cheap gimmicks (I'm just about done beating that dead horse, I promise), I am one of the maligned few who still appreciate the Updates and Highlights addendum to the base product. I appreciate it for the very same reason that most collectors probably roll their eyes and pass it by: the little guy.

We all know that stars and rookies are what sells. All of the smaller, more premium sets (Allen and Ginter, Goudey, Baseball Heroes) have no room for relievers and backup catchers and fourth outfielders, and these days, neither do the base products. Topps is down from the 1980s and 1990s standard of 792 cards to a more Donruss or Fleer-like 660. If you're a team collector as I have become, you see plenty of Brian Roberts and Nick Markakis, but little else.

Updates and Highlights is a 330-card supplement, taking the place of the old Traded sets. In addition to the handful of significant stars (Manny Ramirez, C.C. Sabathia) and rookies (Jay Bruce, Evan Longoria) who warrant fresh cards, there's ample room for players number 20-25 on the roster, the role players who normally fall through the cracks. We all root for the underdogs, don't we? Personally, I'd like to see every player who suits up for the O's get his own card, and this is as close as we're going to get these days.

Lance Cormier pitched for his third team in five seasons in 2008. His lot in life is the unglamorous middle reliever, largely called upon to hold the fort and consume innings when the starting pitcher is knocked out of the box early. This happens in Baltimore more often than I would care to say. Lance was a pleasant surprise on the whole this year, particularly when you look at his career stats beforehand (14-18, 1.73 WHIP, 5.98 ERA). He went 3-3 with a 4.02 ERA and his first career save, a four-inning, one-hit gem against the Nationals. He was at his best in the first half, posting an ERA of 3.00 before injuries decimated the O's bullpen and put a greater burden on him in July and August.

It seems like every year, almost every spot on the Birds' pitching staff is up for grabs. Lance Cormier is certainly not assured one of those spots, and it's very possible that he won't get another card as an Oriole. But he's got this one, anyway.