Baseball America recently wrote about the findings of Major League Baseball’s study on pitching injuries and what it meant for amateur youth pitchers.

The study found – to no real surprise – that youth pitchers are throwing too much, too hard, and too often. This is leading to long-term injuries. Again, no one should be surprised.

They are chasing the dollars of MLB and before that the scholarships from top Div. I schools that lead them to get drafted that lead them to pro ball and possibly one day to the big dollars of the majors.

How big?

Price tags are going up.

The turkey will be the star today in many households, but I’m more of a sides guy. They can make or break a meal.

Trading for or signing a starter the caliber of Corbin Burnes, if not actually him, would be baseball’s turkey. The same goes for a big right-handed bat.

Three more minor league signings on Monday were sides.

The Orioles didn’t make any bold moves last November, their final transaction of the month a minor league contract for left-hander Jakob Hernández. They claimed outfielder Sam Hilliard on waivers from the Braves and gave right-hander Adrian Heredia and left-hander Andy Tena minor league deals.

The most important business this month has involved restructuring the 40-man roster, with relievers Danny Coulombe and Jacob Webb unexpectedly entering free agency, and finalizing the coaching staff. Those are the primary sides. We’re talking stuffing, potatoes and casseroles. The minor league stuff, while necessary to build depth, is more like the relish tray.

The trend for O’s young players and some of the top prospects in the last year or two has been to come to the big leagues and struggle initially. It doesn’t happen every time, but it has happened a lot of the time.

Right-hander Grayson Rodriguez and outfielder Colton Cowser are two prime examples. In his first 10 MLB starts during the 2023 season, Rodriguez went 2-2 with a 7.35 ERA and .956 OPS against. It got better for him. During that same ’23 season, over 77 plate appearances (yes, a small sample) Cowser hit. 115 with an OPS of .433.

Rodriguez, as was Cowser, was sent back to the minors after those initial struggles in 2023. In July of that year he came back a different pitcher. In fact, in his last 33 games, he has gone 18-6 with a 3.35 ERA and 1.18 WHIP. He has 18 quality starts allowing a .237 batting average and .664 OPS. His groundball rate is 45.7 and that helped him keep the ball in the park allowing 0.84 homers per nine since that July 2023 date.

Cowser just posted a second-place finish for the AL Rookie of the Year, losing out to Yankees right-hander Luis Gil after a strong first full season in the majors.

Watching Rodriguez go from pitching to a 7.35 ERA to pitching like a No. 1 or No. 2 starter and watching Cowser go from hitting .115 to getting Rookie of the Year votes, reminds us it can take a while for young players to reach their potential or to trend up on the stat sheet.

If the Orioles do not re-sign right-hander Corbin Burnes and are not in the final hunt for lefty Max Fried and find that Roki Sasaki gets posted but signs with another team, there is still another stud pitcher out there to potentially sign.

He is a two-time Cy Young Award winner with huge strikeout numbers and was the best pitcher in the majors last season starting July 9. Did we mention he does not have a qualifying offer attached to him and no draft picks would be lost for signing him?

He is lefty Blake Snell, who in, what could be his one year with San Francisco, went 5-3 with a 3.12 ERA over 20 starts and 104 innings.

A Scott Boras client, Snell had designs on a $200 million dollar or more deal last winter via free agency. But he did not get that and signed very late, during training, with the Giants for a two-year deal and $62 million. It included an opt out after this past season and he has taken that.

Snell got off to a terrible start after signing late. He had a 9.51 ERA after his first six starts and made injured list stints with a left adductor strain and left groin strain. 

If there’s only one player the Nationals are likely to pursue this winter, it’s an established slugger, preferably one who can play first base.

If there’s a No. 2 item on general manager Mike Rizzo’s wish list, it’s probably an experienced starting pitcher, one who could help lead an otherwise young rotation to better days.

This isn’t earth-shattering news. The next time Rizzo says he’s not looking for starting pitching will be the first time. It’s always a priority.

But the evidence suggests it’s been more of a priority certain years compared to others. Yeah, the Nationals pursued starters last winter. The only one they landed was Zach Davies, who got a minor league contract and then lost a spring training battle for the No. 5 spot in the rotation to Trevor Williams and was cut loose before camp ended.

At the other end of the spectrum, of course, were the major signings of Max Scherzer in 2015 and Patrick Corbin in 2019 to nine-figure deals.

The offseason gives media a chance to make early predictions on free-agent signings, trades and other activity while waiting for actual news.

Don’t pay any attention to early World Series odds. No team has a set roster in November.

Can we at least wait until spring training?

OK, if you’re going to press me, the Orioles make the playoffs in 2025. That’s all I’ve got.

The Athletic’s Jim Bowden has Corbin Burnes and Max Fried signing with the Mets. I never considered Burnes as a realistic possibility for the Orioles, but I also stress how new ownership dumps us in uncharted hot stove waters.

SAN FRANCISCO – Unfortunately, there were no eclipse sightings here on the West Coast today. Fortunately, the view at Oracle Park is awe-inspiring enough, despite the absence of any celestial bodies.

The Nationals open a nine-game West Coast trip tonight, the first six of which take place in the Bay Area, with a nicely scheduled San Francisco-Oakland pairing all week before they head to Los Angeles. And they’ve arrived here just in time to be part of a big debut for the home team.

Blake Snell, the top free agent pitcher who sat around unsigned all winter and spring, finally makes his Giants debut tonight. The reigning National League Cy Young Award winner with the Padres is ready to go after his late start to spring training, but you’d have to think the lefty will be limited to some extent in his first start.

Trevor Williams starts for the Nationals, and if you forgot, he actually delivered the best start of anyone in the rotation the first time through, holding the Pirates to two runs and three hits over 5 1/3 innings Wednesday in D.C. This is a great pitcher’s park, so perhaps Williams (who has been known to serve up a homer or two) will benefit from it, though the Giants have quietly assembled a really nice lineup as they try to catch the Dodgers and Diamondbacks in the NL West.

WASHINGTON NATIONALS at SAN FRANCISCO GIANTS
Where: Oracle Park
Gametime: 9:45 p.m. EDT
TV: MASN, MLB.tv
Radio: 106.7 FM, 88.7 FM (Spanish), MLB.com
Weather: Clear, 61 degrees, wind 13 mph out to center field

With spring training games beginning this week – Saturday for the Orioles at Ed Smith Stadium versus Boston – some big-name free agents remain unsigned.

We have seen big names sign big dollar deals before with the season only weeks away. The Phillies signed Bryce Harper to a 13-year deal worth $330 million on March 2, 2019.

This can’t be good for the game or the players, wondering where they will be playing this year as teams are already in camp and games are about to begin.

The management of the sport would like a signing deadline of some sort – a time when free agent signings come to an end. Much like the mid-summer trade deadline. The players association is against this and really against anything that they believe limits the players free market in any way. This would not limit their earning power, but it would limit the time they would have to sign a deal.

As of last night, outfielder Cody Bellinger, infielder Matt Chapman and pitchers Blake Snell and Jordan Montgomery, some of the biggest names in this free agent class, were unsigned.

The Nationals, like pretty much every other team in the major leagues, could use some pitching help entering next season. They would love to add an experienced starter to a rotation that, while improved from a year ago, still was lacking in many ways.

Saying you’re interested in adding a veteran starter, however, is very different from actually adding a veteran starter. And the term “veteran starter” can mean a whole lot of different things.

Are we talking about a top-of-the-rotation guy, someone who could lead this staff for years to come? Are we talking about a middle-of-the-rotation guy, a solid-but-unspectacular pitcher who takes the ball every fifth day and usually gives you a chance to win? Are we talking about a back-of-the-rotation guy, a stopgap solution who may not even make it through the entire season?

We don’t know specifically yet what the Nationals have in mind. But if we look back at Mike Rizzo’s track record, we can probably get an idea about the type of pitcher he usually pursues. And the type of pitcher he usually ignores.

Since becoming general manager in 2009, Rizzo has signed nine starting pitchers as major league free agents: Jason Marquis and Chien-Ming Wang in 2010, Edwin Jackson in 2012, Dan Haren in 2013, Max Scherzer in 2015, Patrick Corbin and Anibal Sanchez in 2019, Jon Lester in 2021 and Trevor Williams in 2023.

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