Adam Loewen, 2004 Donruss Diamond Kings #88

The Phillies have recalled Adam Loewen from AAA Lehigh Valley...yes, that Adam Loewen. It's hard to keep track of these things, but he's a pitcher again, albeit a reliever now. If the lefty gets into a game with Philadelphia, he'll have one of the more unusual career stat sheets in MLB history. The O's drafted him fourth overall in 2002, and his Baltimore tenure was marred by injuries and a metric ton of walks. In parts of three seasons (2006-2008), he was 8-8 with a 5.38 ERA and 5.8 walks per nine innings. He converted to the outfield and first base to preserve his arm, and signed with the Blue Jays. He got a cup of coffee with Toronto in 2011, batting .188/.297/.313 in 14 games with a single home run...off of Tommy Hunter of the Orioles, of course. He's been kicking around the minors ever since, and was able to pitch without pain in the Venezuelan winter league following the 2013 season. The Phillies signed him, and he's posted a 2.01 ERA and 10 saves in 58.1 innings between AA Reading and AAA Lehigh Valley in 2015. He's also struck out 73 batters, but walked 37. But hey, the Phillies are going nowhere fast, and Adam's got a left arm and a pulse, so it'll be interesting to see what he can do in the third act of his career.

Nick Markakis and Adam Loewen, 2004 Topps #691

Here's proof positive that Nick Markakis has been an Oriole for a long time. The O's grabbed him with the seventh overall pick in the June 2003 amateur draft. That year, the Tampa Bay Devil Rays took Delmon Young with the first pick. Eleven years later, there's no such team as the Devil Rays, and Delmon is probably en route to his sixth team after spending this past season as Baltimore's pinch hitting ace. Later in the first round of that 2003 draft, the Montreal Expos spent the 20th overall selection on pitcher Chad Cordero. That one's a two-fer: a defunct team and a player who's out of baseball altogether despite making the All-Star Team in the Nationals' inaugural 2005 campaign. Just to hammer the point home, Markakis shared his rookie card with the Birds' previous first-round pick, Canadian junior college pitcher Adam Loewen. In the last decade, Loewen has switched from a pitcher to an outfielder/first baseman and back to pitcher again. As the longest-tenured member of the Orioles, Nick Markakis has enjoyed a level of stability that is foreign to Loewen, Young, Cordero, and scores of other baseball players.

Today, Nick celebrates his 31st birthday in an odd sort of limbo. The O's have bought out the $17.5 million option on his contract for 2015, paying $2 million for the privelege of making their senior player a free agent. Rumors and whispers make it seem like all but a foregone conclusion that #21 will stay in Baltimore, with a four-year contract in the $40-48 million range. But if it were so cut and dry, why would it take several weeks and counting to put it to paper? I know that the Orioles typically move at their own pace, but it seems like they're leaving things to chance. I'm sure some fans panicked when word leaked that Markakis' agent was meeting with other teams last week, though you'd have to chalk that up to due diligence.

I expect Nick Markakis to patrol right field in Camden Yards in 2015, just as he has ever since 2006. But until he signs on the dotted line, he is not officially on the team. He is still an Oriole, and yet he isn't. If I'm impatient and anxious about it, I can't imagine how Nick himself feels.

Adam Loewen, 2005 Donruss Career Stat Line #104

Boys and girls, it's time for Stupid Card Manufacturer Tricks! Today's participant is Donruss, who put lipstick on the pig that was foil parallels and called it "Career Stat Line"! In 2005, Donruss randomly inserted these parallels in packs of their flagship set, serial-numbered to a selected one-, two-, or three-digit number for each featured player. That serial number corresponded to, you guessed it, one of said player's career statistics. The only one of these cards I have features Adam Loewen, who had been the Orioles' first-round draft pick in 2002 and didn't even sign a contract until well into 2003. He wouldn't make his big league debut until May of 2006. So Donruss took a gander at his fledgling minor-league stat line and went with 116, his total number of innings pitched in pro ball. The card you see above has a serial number of 114/116 stamped on the back in silver foil. Pretty wild, huh?

Stop yawning, I can't hear myself think.

In doing 30 seconds of hack research for this post, I discovered that there were also SEASON Stat Line parallels. The mind boggles. How did this company lose its MLB license the very year that they came up with such an ingenious idea?

Adam Loewen, 2007 Upper Deck #59

If you keep tabs on this sort of thing (which I highly doubt), you'll realize that it's been two and a half years since I last posted an Adam Loewen card. That's unsurprising, since he last played in the big leagues back in 2008. After his 52nd arm injury in about 4 years, the former #1 pick realized that he might not be built for that whole pitching thing and tried to start over as an outfielder/first baseman. The Orioles supported him, but when they dropped him from the 40-man roster to return him to the minors, the Blue Jays snatched up the native Canadian. I didn't think he'd resurface in the major leagues, particularly after he hit .246/.351/.412 as a 26-year at AA New Hampshire in 2010. But this year, Adam took advantage of the hitter-friendly ballparks of the AAA Pacific Coast League to put up a line of .306/.377/.508 with 46 doubles, 17 homers, and 85 RBI at Las Vegas. The leaguewide average in the PCL was .286/.359/.448, so it's still not likely that Loewen will stick as a hitter in MLB, but he's achieved a lot just by taking the field for Toronto. The Jays promoted him after the big league rosters expanded on September 1, and gave him a start in right field against Boston last night. In his first game since July 6, 2008, he went 1-for-3 with a hit-by-pitch and a run scored in an 11-10 Toronto victory. Even if you think it was a bum deal for the O's, it's still a pretty cool story.

Adam Loewen, 2004 Studio #26

I have to admit that I'm somewhat amused by the randomness that takes hold of this blog. Believe it or not, I often go to painstaking lengths to insert variety when it comes to choosing daily subjects. I try to feature new players, which becomes an increasing challenge fifteen months into the life of this ongoing project. Failing that, I at least try to post a card from a set I haven't featured. If I can kill two birds with one stone, all the better. In one of my more obsessive-compulsive bits of plotting, I even try to alternate between pitchers and position players every other day. For some reason, I usually seem to slant towards position players. But sometimes I want to jump on a snippet of news that I've heard about a player, or I just find myself staring down writers' block and have to grab the first interesting-looking card I see.

A quick check of my tags shows that the most frequently used card set is the 1991 Crown/Coca-Cola All-Time Orioles set, with 11 posts. That makes sense, as it's a great oddball set that features a whopping 500-plus cards of every player in Orioles history from 1954 through early 1991. The runners-up are 1983 Topps and 2007 Upper Deck, with five each.

Cal Ripken, Jr. is unsurprising as the top featured player, again with eleven appearances. The most surprising high-ranked player is Adam Loewen, who I am now featuring for the fifth time. Pretty heady stuff for an injury-prone failed #1 draft pick who is reinventing himself as a first baseman in the Toronto organization as we speak. But he had an eventful year, with his participation in the Orioles Magic video and his position switch. That's the way my mind works sometimes.

I wonder who will be a recurring character on this blog as 2009 keeps chugging along.

Adam Loewen, 2008 Upper Deck Documentary #1235 (BAL45)

I've always enjoyed the movie Groundhog Day, in which Bill Murray finds himself stuck reliving the same day over and over again, no matter what reckless or heroic or monotonous actions he takes. (As an aside, he also utters a great insult to a couple of annoying locals in Punxsutawney: "Morons, your bus is leaving!".) But while being stuck in a loop made for an entertaining movie, Upper Deck has taken a similar concept and turned it into a disappointing set of cards.

Upper Deck Documentary could have been something worthwhile. You all know how much I enjoy UD's crisp, detail-oriented photography, and how I've used it to pinpoint the game and moment that certain cards belong to. With Documentary, they undertook a massive set: one card per team per game for the entire 162-game 2008 season. My calculator tells me that the total is 4,860 cards. In theory, it's an excellent way to take a set of cards to the next level, to commemorate the most recent season and commit it to history. (At $2 a pack for 10 cards, it's also as much bang for your buck as you're gonna get these days.) So you would figure that each card would feature a photo taken during the corresponding game, right? Mmm, think again. Take a look at Thorzul's CC Sabathia scans and you'll see the same photo used for five different Documentary cards. So already, the set is repetitive and that much more bland. I suppose it would be pretty time-consuming to select nearly five thousand player photos for a card set, but it was Upper Deck's bright idea, not mine. But at least the player pictured is relevant to the featured game, right?

Uh-uh.

You'll notice that the card I've chosen highlights Adam Loewen. If you don't remember any command performances from the Canadian righty in 2008, you're pretty sharp (8.02 ERA in seven games). He wasn't even on the active roster on May 20, the date of this game. The O's starter and winning pitcher was Daniel Cabrera. The card back notes that Adam Jones cleared the bases with a double in Baltimore's seven-run first inning that chased Mike Mussina. So either one of those two players would have been a perfectly acceptable choice for this card. The whole set is full of crap like this, based on the four packs that I foolishly bought. One card has a bottom-front headline about A's catcher Rob Bowen...underneath a picture of Bobby Crosby. Another talks about Gavin Floyd shutting down the Orioles...and accompanies a photo of Jim Thome. This set is the very definition of sloppiness and laziness.

...Yet I would probably still be interested in completing the Orioles team set. Am I a masochist? Probably. But as I said, it's still an intriguing chronicle of a full season in club history. The card back, which box score, division standings (showing the O's a full 4.5 games ahead of the last-place Yankees!), and game summary nearly make up for the photographic failures. I probably watched more games (both in person and on TV) last year than I have in a long time, and reliving this game in particular warmed my black little heart. I was transported to that Tuesday night, when I stopped playing Nintendo Wii and flipped on MASN to find the Birds up 8-0 in Yankee Stadium in the SECOND INNING, with Mike Mussina already showering.

I wish these cards were a little less Groundhog Day in their visual approach, but there's something here. I'm sure as heckfire not going to buy another pack of this stuff, but if I see a stack of Orioles on eBay, I may have to give it a click.

Adam Loewen, 2008 Upper Deck #426

Today was Homecoming at my high school, the first such event I'd attended in four years. Despite the fact that I stood in soaking rain and persistent winds for three hours, it was good to be back. The football team won 26-8, with the lone opposition touchdown coming in garbage time. I got to reconnect with some old friends, exchange pleasantries with other familiar faces, and take advantage of cheap beer and free food at the post-game alumni reception. Sometimes you can go home again.

Adam Loewen is going home again. In the above picture, he's wearing an Orioles hat but a Futures Game World team uniform. The photo is a few years old, and features Adam representing his native Canada in a minor league All-Star Game. I mentioned back in July that the 24-year-old was bringing an end to his injury-riddled career as a pitcher, attempting to retrain himself as an outfielder/first baseman. The problem was that he had insisted on signing a guaranteed major league contract when the O's drafted him; in order to continue his apprenticeship as a hitter in 2009, Adam would have to be put on waivers, pass through unclaimed, and then receive his release from the Orioles. There seemed to be a mutual agreement that the team would re-sign him at that point to a minor league deal. Just such a thing happened over the past few days...except that after being released, Loewen signed with the Blue Jays.

I'm somewhat baffled by the vitriol that a number of fans have shown in the wake of Adam's departure. Sure, he left the Birds holding the bag. But his future is extremely uncertain right now, and if he's going to take such a shot in the dark in order to continue his career in professional baseball, it makes sense that he would want to have some level of comfort, some chance to be close to home. Everyone agrees that there's very little chance that he'll be the next Rick Ankiel, a failed pitcher who climbs his way back and becomes a major-league caliber hitter. So what's the big deal? Now he's given us a way out. This isn't anything close to Rafael Palmeiro or Mike Mussina skipping town for the big bucks. It's just a young man at a crossroads hoping against hope that he'll get a chance to represent his homeland on the biggest stage of them all.

I hope that Adam Loewen's homecoming is a happy one. Either way, I'm not going to lose any sleep over it.

Adam Loewen, 2006 Topps Updates and Highlights #UH167

It's a shame to have to close the door on a pitcher's career at the age of 24, but that's the story for Adam Loewen. I can't begin to imagine how someone - even a finely-conditioned athlete - recovers from two elbow fractures in a little over a year. I guess Adam can't fathom it either, because he's chosen to call it quits as a pitcher. Once the most highly touted pitching prospect in baseball, his final pitching stat line is 8-8 with a 5.38 ERA and a 1.64 WHIP in 35 games. But there's still some hope, no matter how faint, for Loewen.

Undoubtedly encouraged by the example of Cardinals pitcher-turned-slugging outfielder Rick Ankiel, the young Canadian lefty has announced that he will attempt to re-imagine himself as an outfielder/first baseman. If his amateur track record and the endorsement of O's hitting coach Terry Crowley) are to be believed, Adam's got a fair shot at making it work. It would certainly make one hell of a feel-good story, and all of Baltimore will be rooting for him. After all, we've had a lot of practice when it comes to pulling for underdogs. It's a funny sort of thing to say about a former fourth-overall draft pick, but any future contribution that Adam Loewen might make to the Orioles has to be considered a bonus, a pleasant surprise.

It seems like a pipe dream right now, but it would be funny if, after years of chasing the Delgados and Konerkos and Teixeiras of the world, the answer to our need for a powerful first baseman came from a guy who we were once counting on to anchor our starting rotation. Never say never.

Adam Loewen, 2007 Topps #78

Okay, this video has already been all over the blogosphere today but I just can't help myself. If you've somehow avoided it for this long, the following video began appearing on the scoreboard at Orioles games this week, and it delights me to no end. After initially cringing at the outdated and hokey "Orioles Magic" song, Kevin Millar and company have made it their own. Sure, they're laughing at it, but it's pretty cheesy. Let's face it, it's not the 1980s any more. Besides, they're showing a great sense of humor and team unity. Do you think Joe Girardi's funereal Yankees are playing the keyboards and spelling out the team name with their bodies any time soon?

Without further ado, here's my new favorite video. Look for #15 Kevin Millar on lead vocals, #46 Jeremy Guthrie on backing vocals (and the horn at the beginning), rookie #10 Adam Jones on drums, relievers #45 Dennis Sarfate and #52 George Sherrill on guitars, and of course the man above, currently injured pitcher #29 Adam Loewen rocking some Journeyesque keyboard skills.

It's days like today that I remember why I love this team.