Baseball Instinct, Inc recently had its Auction for its flagship fantasy league Baseball Tonight in Palm Beach Gardens, FL. We gathered league members from New York City, as far as Northwest Washington State and one member of our league even making it all the way from Hong Kong. We gathered for a weekend of Baseball, Friends and Food and got in our Annual Auction while we were at it. I want to take a moment to thank the staff of the Palm Beach Gardens DoubleTree Hotel for their time and effort as well as the staff at Taverna Opa in West Palm Beach for a great night of food and dancing.

I said that we took in some baseball during the weekend and it all started on Friday afternoon when myself and Aaron, another member of the league, took a drive down to Ft. Lauderdale to catch the Orioles and Cardinals in the

afternoon part of a split squad day.  After the long drive and a little bit of traffic getting onto the Stadium grounds we were given probably the nicest gift the baseball gods could have bestowed that day.  While walking past all of the ticket scalpers and towards the Box Office booth to procure two seats, a gentleman asked us if we would like two tickets.  I’m not one to buy from scalpers and would rather buy direct from the box office so I politely declined and continued to walk away.  “They’re Free” I heard the man exclaim.  “And they’re in the front row” he continued.  Well, I’m not one to take things for free so I continued to walk away… ok, I’m a liar, the “And they’re in the front row” statement caught my attention well enough to get me to turn around and inquire as to why he would be giving away the seats.  He said he just had some extra seats.  I tried to pay the face value but the gentleman kindly declined and asked only that we enter the stadium right away and not sell the tickets to anyone else.  So while waiting for Ashton Kutcher to pop out from behind the Box Office booth and tell us we had been Punk’d, we took the tickets and walked into the stadium.  No Ashton.  And the tickets were indeed in the front row.  Right next to the Orioles dugout.

We weren’t more than five feet from the Orioles on-deck circle and the coaching staff was sitting right below us on the other side of the fence.  Aaron got the chance to meet Democratic Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, and the future politician in Aaron was quite beaming at the opportunity.  The best of the meeting for me came when Orioles skipper Dave Trembley was standing at the railing and signing autographs when we brought up a couple of names that the average fan wouldn’t know.  We asked Trembley about uber prospects Chris Tillman, Brian Matusz and Jake Arrieta as well as Brandon Erbe and the status on newly acquired lefty Rich Hill.

I started off with a question about Hill (because he’s on my fantasy roster and I’m selfish) and the first words out of his mouth were “What a curve”. I asked if Hill would be ready for the season and Trembley said that Hill would throw a bullpen that Sunday, which he did. He also said they were expecting his time table to run into the season but were optimistic that Hill would be a part of the starting rotation some time in April even if he missed a couple of starts at the beginning of the season.
Even though I asked about Hill first these were the questions I wanted to pose to the O’s Skipper and he didn’t hesitate to answer.  We asked about the glut of young arms in the system and where he thinks each of them stands in terms of being ready.  A couple of key surprises came out of the conversation that I’ll share with you.  First the obvious, he thinks Tillman is going to be very good.  Likes his stuff but thinks he has some more to work on before he can take on a major league lineup multiple times through.  When I asked about Brian Matusz I was surprised to hear that he believes Matusz will need to spend an entire year in the minors before he takes a spot in the rotation.  While I don’t agree fully, since I see Matusz as the most major league ready starter that came out of the 2008 draft, it’s tough to argue with a Manager of the team on his own players.  He didn’t have a lot to say about Erbe except that this will be a big season for his development. I agreed.

“Arrieta is going to be the best of them” was not something I expected to hear.  While I’ve followed Arrieta, and am high on his ability to be a major league starter, I hadn’t until that point looked at him as a front of the rotation guy.  But Trembley insists that when you watch Arrieta on the mound that he’s a horse and he just goes right at hitters with no fear of filling the zone with hard moving fastballs.  I have to admit that I came away from the conversation with a different view on the Orioles farm system, and especially Jake Arrieta.  Arrieta has definitely taken a step up of a few spots in my prospect rankings.  Sometimes you just can’t get the same insight into a prospects psyche regardless of how much reading you do or how much video you can get your hands on.  Sometimes it takes an insider to give you that one line that says enough to take a good prospect into elite status.  I know I’m going to have a much closer eye on Arrieta this year while I follow the Orioles system.

One last bit of wisdom was bestowed upon Aaron and myself at the game that day.  On a flyball to deep centerfield, Ty Wigginton tried to get Wiggy Wit It and tag from 1st to 2nd on a flyout to rook Colby Rasmus.  Rasmus proceeded to drop back to the track and then shoot a laser beam to 2nd and nail Wiggington at 2nd. Adam Jones who was on deck at the time turned to us and bestowed these words before turning and heading to the batters box:

“Can’t Run? Don’t Run.”

Thank you Adam for your wisdom. We are grateful.

I want to thank the gentleman who gave us those tickets. His name now escapes me and I’m very sorry that it does. But a Thank You goes out nonetheless for being so generous.

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