Orioles News & Notes: Ryan Mountcastle, Albert Suárez, Alex Jackson, Hank Conger

Orioles News & Notes: Ryan Mountcastle, Albert Suárez, Alex Jackson, Hank Conger

The Orioles removed a few players from the 40man roster on Friday at the deadline, but surprisingly none of them were Ryan Mount Castle. We’ll talk about why coming up on this episode of the Locked On Orioles podcast. You are Locked on Orioles, your daily Baltimore Orioles podcast, part of the Locked On podcast network. your team every day. Hey there Orioles fans. Today is Monday, November 24th, 2025 and welcome back in to the Locked on Orioles podcast, part of the Locked on Podcast Network, your team every day. As always, I’m your host Connor Nukem. And coming up on today’s episode, we’re going to recap all the Orioles news and notes from the end of last week. We’ll talk about the non-tender deadline which came up on Friday evening with the Orioles non-tendering Albert Suarez trading Alex Jackson but tendering a contract somewhat surprisingly to Ryan Mountcastle. We’ll talk about how that all fits in the roster. And then the Orioles hired two more coaches seemingly officially filling out their major league coaching staff under Craig Albernaz for 2026. So it get a little more info on Hank Conger and Brady North joining the O’s staff. But that’s all coming up on this episode of the Locked On Orioles podcast, which is brought to you by Game Time. Download the Game Time app, create an account, and use code locked on MLB for $20 off your first purchase. So, let’s get to some news and notes from the weekend for the order. Just a little disclaimer, I am recording this episode on Saturday. Generally, I record on Sunday for the Monday pod. So, if anything does happen in Birdland on Sunday, just look forward to it later this week on the show, unless of course it is some huge signing or huge trade. I’ll probably find some time to get on here on Sunday or Monday. But let’s begin with Friday’s non-tender deadline because that is the thing that we knew we were going to talk about here on Monday because it is a roster moving deadline that was coming up. The non-tender deadline basically works like this. I talked about it a little bit on Friday’s episode. Make sure to go back and check that one out. talked about the possibility of the Orioles going after someone like Pete Alonzo or Kyle Tucker in free agency this off seasonason with you know the names being connected to the Orioles a little bit by Ken Rosenthal and Jeff Passen but the non-tender deadline is basically for arbitration eligible players so usually have six years you’re under contract as a rookie before you hit free agency those first three years you are pre-arbitration making somewhere near the league minimum years four, five, and six you are an arbitration player which means the amount of money you make each year is based on your performance in the previous season and that number can only stay the same or go up yearbyear. So sometimes you get a player who’s in his, you know, heading into his fifth or sixth year. He’s coming off a really bad season. He’s projected to make, you know, five, six, seven million, but the way he’s played, he’s not worth nearly that much. A team will just decide to non-ender him, which essentially just sends him to free agency maybe a year or two years earlier than he was scheduled to be. takes his money off the books, takes him off the roster because they just said, “Look, we’re gonna probably have to pay him $6 million. This player is barely worth a million. He might not even make the roster. This is not worth it for us. We are going to non-tender him.” And that is what the Orioles did with one player, and we’re probably going to go with two on Friday. So, let’s start with the one player they did non-tender, and that is Albert Suarez. So, why would they make that move? Suarez is about to be 36 years old and barely pitched in 2025. Suffered a shoulder injury in his first outing of the year back in March. Did not return until September. Pitched a little bit, but then had like an elbow and forearm issue that kept him out for the rest of the year. The reporting around that is that it’s not going to require Tommy John surgery for Suarez that he’s planning to start throwing again early in the off season, which is a good sign. And again, MoB trade rumors projected him to only make around a million dollars in arbitration for 2026. So, a very cheap player as well, who certainly was a huge part of the Orioles pitching staff back in 2024. But I still do get this move. I talked on Friday how he was certainly a candidate to be non-tendered, even though he’s only going to cost a million dollars and he was going to be one of their cheaper players. the age, the injuries, it’s it’s very possible, if not probable, that Albert Suarez was kind of a one-hit wonder in 2024. He did amazing things for the pitching staff, but it’s hard to repeat that for a guy who was over in Asia for a while and was never really an impact pitcher the first time he was in the big leagues and he’s getting into his late 30s. It’s just tough to get anything close to repeating what he did two years ago. I think it’s very likely if Suarez is healthy enough to like not be out from injury for the majority of the 2026 season that the Orioles will offer him a spot back on a minor league deal with an invite to big league camp to give him a chance to make the team out of spring training. But it just gives them a little more roster flexibility, especially because he is injured and older and we didn’t see him much last year to non-tender him and take him off the 40man roster at least for now. But everyone else who was still on the 40man roster at the time of of Friday evening’s deadline was at least tendered a contract. The two others who I think were maybe on the bubble a little bit and were tendered were Keegan Akin who was projected to make about $3 million next year from LB trade rumors. He did have a pretty bad 2025, but he was really good for, you know, five years before that. There’s certainly space in the Orio bullpen. He’s still pretty cheap. I’m not surprised. It’s not a guarantee Akin makes the team, but I’m not surprised they at least kept him around. And same with Yeny Keno, who’s projected to make about $2 million. Again, even cheaper. Was also like Aken, bad in 25, but was even better than Keegan Aken in the years before that. Of course, making the All-Star team in 2023. And the other thing with Canó is not only is he cheaper than Akin, but he also has minor league options remaining, which Keegan Akin does not, which means if Canó does struggle again next year, the Orioles can just send him to AAA Norfol and have him, you know, work on things like they did at one point in the 2025 season. So, when a guy still has minor league options, it’s even less likely that he gets non-tendered because again, if you still think there’s talent in there, and there still is talent in Yukon’s arm, despite the struggles we’ve seen over the past year, if you can just freely send him to Triple A for a reset without losing him off the roster, there’s no reason to non-tender a player like that, especially if he’s only going to cost you at most $2 million. So, there were people who thought he’d get non-tendered. I never thought that was really a possibility. honestly thought Aken was a much bigger possibility than Canó, but both of them do stick around. But the big shocker really was that the Orioles tender a contract to Ryan Mount Castle. And as I talked about on Friday and as I’ve kind of been talking about so far this off season on the show, it felt like the Orioles were kind of moving away from Ryan Mount Castle. He’s set to be a free agent after 2026. So this is kind of the final year of his quote unquote rookie contract of arbitration coming up. and MLB trade rumors had him projected to make about $8 million in 2026. And for what Ryan Mount Castle gave the Orioles in 2025, you know, an 81 wrc plus, you know, only played about 90 games because of the hamstring injury when he was out there, you know, he was still had good bat speed and hitting the ball hard and kind of the usual Ryan Mount Castle, you know, under the hood things that you like, which is why he’s still a, you know, a major league hitter and why he was a top prospect back in the day. But was even worse at the things you don’t like about Ryan Mount Castle. Even though they moved the wall in in left field that was supposed to help him again, he continued to not pull the ball in the air. He continued to chase out of the strike zone and swing and miss even more than he had in the past. And it was already an issue that part of his game and it got even worse in 2025. And although he has developed, I’ll give him credit, into a a pretty good defensive first baseman. And that has added some value to Mount Castle, it’s still first base. It’s still not like it’s shortstop or center field. And he doesn’t have any positional versatility. It’s just it’s first base or DH from out. You’re not putting him anywhere else. We saw how bad it looked when they tried him in the outfield a couple of years ago. So, I just don’t know how he fits on this team with the struggles. And again, before 2025, he was at least at times a good hitter and even at his worst was an above average hitter. Was a what productive piece at bat to have on your team. And you could say, Connor, it’s it’s maybe a one-year blip that he just really really struggled at the plate in 25. You know, he’s still not even 30 years old. there’s still plenty of time for him to bounce back. All of that is absolutely true, but when you add the struggles with the context of where he fits in for the rest of the Orioles roster, especially after acquiring Taylor Ward last week, I just don’t see a place where he truly fits for regular at bats. Like, I’m sure you want to give more at bats to Kobe Mayo. At this point, I think the Orioles have taken, you know, the third base position away from Kobe Mayo. I think he’s proven he can’t really play there. So, he’s really also a first base in DH and a right-handed hitter, power hitter, just same as Mount Castle. But Mayo is younger, cheaper, and quietly was better offensively last year than Mount Castle was. Not that he was good, but that’s how bad Mounty was. You just added Taylor Ward as another right-handed bat. You still have Tyler O’Neal as a righty power bat and kind of that outfield DH mix. And because you’re going to want to get Samuel Bisayio into the lineup, he’s not just going to catch, he’s going to DH and play some first base for this team as well. So, when you look at all those guys that you could argue you should be prioritizing at bats for all four of them over Ryan Mount Castle, I just don’t see where he really fits. And maybe, you know, if he was going to be worth three or four million, you could say, you know what, that’s nothing payroll-wise. You can’t even get a free agent for like a oneyear $3 million deal. So it’s not like he’s taking money away from someone else. If he’s a bench bat, that’s five to three or four million. If we have to DFA him in May, we’re fine eating three or4 million. And although payroll is going to be up under David Rubenstein, like 8 million, that’s that’s the money for a legitimate one-year free agent. Like a legitimate reliever for your bullpen, like a good reliever you can sign for one year, 8 million, right? This is essentially what Andrew Kitrich’s contract is this year. He’s going to make $9 million. for $8 million you can get a good setup man in a bullpen that needs a setup man. So to allocate that money at least for now instead to Ryan Mount Castle doesn’t mean they’re not also going to sign another setup reliever doesn’t you know stop them from doing stuff financially like it would have under John Angelos. I just $8 million for a guy who might not have space to play and if he does hasn’t produced in two years and has injury concerns and you know he’s kind of everything that’s wrong with the Orioles offense. all the chasing, all the swing and missing. I just I do love Ryan Mount Castle. He’s been a big part of this team, but it just it seemed like it was over. It felt like an easy decision for the Orioles to make and they just went the other way. And you know, Ryan or Mike Elias did have a press conference on Friday after the deadline and kind of talked about how, you know, he still sees Mount Castle as a big picture of this team and likes him as a hitter and blah blah blah. All the stuff you kind of expected him to say. Nothing really stand outish from those Elias quotes from Friday. But it’s just you look at the roster and you got to think something else is in the works, right? Like like maybe there was a trade in the works where Mount Castle was a part of it and they Orioles weren’t able to finalize it by the deadline, so they decided let’s just pay him, you know, the 8 million. Well, he doesn’t get it right now, but tender him a contract to keep him on the roster so we can continue to include him in a trade that gets us pitching. But I don’t think Ryan Malcas has a lot of value right now. So there’s never going to be a place where Ryan Mountcastle is the main piece in a trade to get you anything of value back. He’d have to be a throwin piece for another team. So maybe you say, “Okay, Connor, they’re actually planning to trade Kobe Mayo in a deal for pitching, which would then, you know, give Mount Castle a lot more playing time and make it worthwhile to keep him on this team.” So you have a first baseman and there’s still space for Mount Castle. But I would argue there that even if you did non-tender Mount Castle and trade Mayo in a deal for pitching, couldn’t you get a guy for, you know, one year, $8 million or less who has the potential to be more productive than Ryan Mount Castle? Like couldn’t you sign a Tai France or Reese Hoskins type player for that kind of deal in free agency who might actually give you more than Mounty would have if if you really did, you know, non-tender Mount Castle and then trade Mayo. And there’s still Samuel Bisayo where you can give him at bats at first base. He plays a really good first base defensively. He can stick there to make sure you play both your catchers. and and maybe, you know, they do trade Mayo and Mount Castle sticks around and he bounces back and he, you know, chases less and he finally starts pulling the ball in the air more and taking advantage of the wall coming back in. It’s it’s all possible. I’m I’m just not really sure that I see that happening for Mount Castle and the Orioles. And the other thing I talked about on Friday’s episode when I talked about kind of the connection between the Orioles and Pete Alonzo so far in free agency is, you know, that kind of deal only works if the Orioles did non-tender Mount Castle, which is what I thought they would do because it opens up some of those first base DH at bats. Makes it easier even after getting Taylor Ward to slide in a hitter like that to first base and DH. You’d still have some space for Bisio and maybe even some space for Mayo if you wanted to. And then you could play a guy like Pete Alonzo. If there’s not another move coming to clear some other space, I don’t know if I see the Orioles adding another big-time hitter. I’m not sure that’s going to be the case here. Like, unless you’re planning to offload Mayo and Mount Castle, you’re not going to sign Pete Alonzo, right? You’re not going to sign Kyle Schwarber with all these guys with O’Neal there as well. So, I would think to get someone like Alonzo of O’Neal, Mayo, Mount Castle, you’d basically have to offload two of those from the roster. And my thinking from Friday was, okay, if you non-tender Mount Castle, if you do get Alonzo, you can either trade Mayo for pitching or try and, you know, dump the salary of O’Neal somewhere. And that makes it very easy to have someone like Ponzo on your roster. Now that we’re past the non-tender deadline and all three of O’Neal, Mayo, and Mount Castle are still on the 40 band, it’s not impossible to go get someone like Alonzo, but it’s so much tougher now and I think feels so much less likely, which is disappointing. Now, if they’re all on the roster, it’s still possible to roster everyone, right? You have your three main infielders with Westber and and Henderson and Holiday right now. I’d say Jeremiah Jackson is kind of the front runner for the utility infield spot. So, there’s your four infielders. You got Mayo and Mount Castle at first base, makes six. You know, you have Rutman and Bisayio as your two catchers makes eight. And then your five outfielders in Ward, O’Neal, Cowser, Beavers, and Tiveres. That’s 13 position players. And that’s how many you’ll carry on the opening day roster is 13. So you could theoretically go into spring training or go into opening day was these 13 players. But when you’re rostering all of O’Neal, Mounty, and Mayo with limited positional availability, and you know, you want to get Adley Rutman more DH time, Bisio out there to keep him fresh, you just lose so much roster flexibility. And you know, maybe there’d be a way to play him at least against lefties, right? You could have Warden left, O’Neal in right, Mount Castle at first, Mayo dhing, Adley catching, and Samuel Bayio sitting against left-handed starters. And then Bayio just comes in for Mount Castle or Mayo as soon as you know a lefty’s out and a righty comes out of the bullpen for the opposing team. I mean, that’s a way to do it to still get Mount Castle and Mayo and O’Neal at bats and still play Bio in this scenario. It’s not like it’s impossible. You can go into the season with this roster, but it’s just not the ideal situation. And it just felt like not only would non-tendering Mount Castle open up more space on the roster for other guys, it would also open up that $8 million for the Orioles to go and use that as well to better their team via free agency and trade. So I have to think something else is coming. A Mayo trade, an O’Neal salary dump, and and I’m going to stand back and we’re very early in the offseason. We’re still in November. There’s plenty of time for this winter to play out. We know the Orioles are going to make more moves and hopefully more major moves. So maybe in two months this picture will all be a lot clearer, but right now it’s a little odd. It’s a little weird. So I I just have to think, you know, something else is coming here because it just it does not make a lot of sense at $8 million to tender this version of Ryan Mount Castle on this roster contract for the Orioles. But at the very least, I guess they did clear theoretically some other roster space, right? It seems like they would have non-endered two players, not just Suarez, but also Alex Jackson, and instead they found a trade partner. We’ll talk about that deal coming up next. But first, this episode of the Locked Orioles podcast is brought to you by FanDuel. The NBA is back, and there’s no better place to get in on the action than FanDuel, the official sports betting partner of the NBA. Even if you missed the start of the game or want to ride the hot hand, FanDuel has live bets on everything from who will score next to fourth quarter comebacks. Plus, you can even combine your live bets into a same game parlay for a shot at a bigger payout. It keeps every game exciting, especially when your team’s making that late push or your team is the Wizards and they’re one and 14. And right now, FanDuel is giving new customers $300 in bonus bets when your first $5 bet wins. So head to fanduel.com to sign up and play your game with FanDuel, the official sports betting partner of the NBA. So the only player the Orioles did non- tender at Friday’s deadline was Albert Suarez, but seemingly they were also planning to non-ender their third catcher, Alex Jackson. And when you’re planted a non- tender someone, you always ask around and see, hey, would anyone like him in trade so we can try to get at least something for him before we just take him off the roster for nothing. And the Orioles got a team to bite on Alex Jackson as they announced on Friday they have traded catcher Alex Jackson to the Minnesota Twins in exchange for infield prospect Payton Eels. So let’s start with the trade of Alex Jackson. Jackson who’s 29, a catcher, he’ll be 30 in December. Orioles acquired him in a trade with the Yankees in early July. Jackson was the catcher in Tripaa with New York because the Orioles had basically run out of catchers. They had Adley hurt. They had Gary Sanchez hurt. Then Chadwick Trump got hurt. Then Maverick Handley got hurt. And they just needed bodies. They bring in Alex Jackson. They bring in Jacob Stallings from the Rockies just to have people play out there. But Jackson was the one who stuck. He was a former top prospect, you know, top five pick. He’d been in the majors before with multiple teams, but just kind of he’d always been a good defensive catcher. Just could never hit. had these giant strikeout rates, but then he hit with the Orioles, had 100 played appearances at the big league level, had a 111 WRC plus, still was running an incredibly high 37% strikeout rate, and that is still concerning, but his 15% barrel rate was elite. He was playing really good defense, he was hitting the ball hard. It was enough to keep him on the roster even when the catchers got healthy, right? They eventually DFA Jacob Stallings and got rid of Chad McTomp and option Maverick Handley and never actually brought back Gary Sanchez. They stuck with they brought up Bayio. They stuck with Jackson and even when Adley came back, Jackson stayed on the roster for the rest of the year as a third catcher. And I already talked about it on an episode a couple of weeks ago this off seasonason that I thought the or Orioles might want to carry Jackson as a third catcher along with Samuel Bisayio and Adley Rutman in 2026. And and my reasoning was with Bisayio and Adley both being good with high ceilings and there’s a chance that both could be playing every day, right? One is catching and the other one is dhing. Basia will probably play a little first base as well as we just talked about. In those situations, it’s nice to have a third catcher on the roster because, you know, if you have one catcher dhing, one of the catchers gets hurt, you have to burn the DH. If it happens early in the game, then your pitcher has to hit for the rest of the day. It makes that you avoid that situation completely if you have a third catcher. And Jackson showed the Orioles with the bat and with the glove that he can be a useful and valuable third catcher. I mean, he barely played and still was worth 1.1 wins over at Fan Graphs. He was like a top five player that ended the year with the Orioles. And that’s a lot of how bad the Orioles were, but how good Jackson was in his limited time. Now, this trade again shows the Orioles were going to non- tender him, but they found a trade partner. It also shows I don’t know if it says that, oh, the Orioles never had plans of carrying a third catcher. I actually still think they would still like to have a third catcher on the roster at times next year. But the one well, two issues with Jackson. One is it was still just a 100 plate appearances of small sample size. And although the defense is good and that’s what you’d be number one looking for in a third catcher, he still was running again a 37% strikeout rate. That’s really not sustainable, it was just so so bad the rest of the times he’s been to the big leagues and tried to hit in his career that you could argue that projections would say he’ll probably fall flat on his face again if he gets that big of a chance at least offensively in 2026. So that’s one part of it. I think the bigger part of it is though that Alex Jackson, as he was last year and will continue to be, is out of minor league options. What that means is you can’t just freely send him back and forth between the big leagues and AAA. And maybe the Orioles plan is yes, we’d like a third catcher, but we want that catcher to have options because we don’t want to carry a third catcher for all 162 games. Maybe for stretches when we have, you know, a month with oneoff day, right? You’ll see that a lot where you’re playing almost every day. Maybe for that whole month, you want the third catcher to give a break to Basio and Adley and and specifically try and keep Adley healthy. But maybe in those months when you have a bunch of off days, you have like four or five off days in a month, you’re okay with just having the two catchers and you rather give that other spot to, you know, another infielder or another outfielder to make your offense more versatile, right? That that is totally possible. And I think that’s pretty smart roster management to do that. If your third catcher is Alex Jackson who has some skills and is out of options, you’re going to have to DFA him, put him on waiverss, and other teams are probably going to claim him. It makes it much harder to do those moves. So for the Orioles, maybe they’ll be searching out instead a third catcher who has those options. Now the guy that is still on the roster that fits that bill is Maverick Handley, who we saw at times last year before the injuries. He’s currently still on the 40man roster and will have minor league options in 2026. But if the Oz are go with going to go with kind of a dedicated third catcher who goes back and forth, I I love Maverick Handley’s defense, there’s just zero bat at the major league level. And yes, he has hit better at AAA the past couple of years. It’s been a little better. It was nothing. He was like what three for 40 or something like that when he was hitting the big leagues this year and it’ll probably get better than that if he plays more regularly. But I’d rather be someone who is a little more of a veteran and can swing the bat a little bit more. But it’s tough to find that guy who also still has minor league options on his contract. So it’ll be interesting to see what the Orioles do. I still think they do want to carry a third catcher at times. So it may be some sort of one-year cheap deal signing for a guy who still has those minor league options. But it’s not going to be Alex Jackson because the Orioles went and got Pton Neil instead. And this could be a guy who does actually fit with the Orioles roster. So, who is Pton Neil? 26-year-old left-handed hitting infielder who has played a little outfield as well, but mostly second baseman and shortstop who is the number 21 ranked prospect in the Minnesota Twins system according to FanRass. They got him as a 40 plus future value and he is listed at 5 foot5, but he packs a punch out of that 5 foot five. Fan graphs tools on him from Eric Logenhagen has a 50 hit tool on the 20 to 80 scale, 40 power, 60 speed, and 45 fielding. Now, great story. Payton Neil played four years at Division 2 Cedarville University in Ohio. He had no division one offers coming out of high school. So, he played four years there. Then he got his chance to play D1 in his fifth COVID year in 2023. He transfers to Coastal Carolina, great program, you know, made it to the College World Series finals in 2025. And you know, after hitting .382 in his career at Cedarville, he goes to Coastal Carolina to face good D1 pitching. He was teammates with now Orioles teammates Teddy Shy and Kaden Boddine. And all he does is hit 374 with a 992 OPS in his one season for the Shant Clears. But mostly because of his height and probably questions about his position, he was not drafted and he was not even signed as an undrafted free agent by any team after the 2023 draft. So, he goes to Indie Ball. He plays for the Chicago Dogs in 2023. He plays for the Southern Maryland Blue Crabs in Independent Ball in 2024 and continues to hit and finally gets a contract. As in May of 2024, the Twins sign him to a $500 signing bonus on a minor league contract. Twins send him to Aball. He has a $170 W wrc plus in low A and high A. That makes him 70% better than a league average hitter. and the twins are like, “Okay, he’s way too good for this level.” He skips double A and they send him right up to AAA in July of 2024. And oh yeah, he hits 299 with a 141 W wrc plus with just as many walks as strikeouts in almost 300 plate appearances in AAA. And it’s like this guy might be knocking on the door of the big leagues. Unfortunately, suffers an injury in 2025. Misses the first two months of the season after minor knee surgery. Begins the year in June back in AAA. just not the same hitter. He’s 253. He’s more league average in the 86 games he played in. He struck out a little more. His power kind of went away that he was flashing in 2024. It’s only a 29% hard hit rate. It’s only a 3% barrel rate. It is not, you know, the big time power. It’s patience, it’s contact, it’s speed, and it’s a good versatile defender who in AAA over the past two years has played second base, short stop, third base, left field, center field, and right field. That is versatility. That is speed. and an interesting contact oriented bat that could make him at already 26 years old kind of the perfect utility player on a big league team. And I know Jeremiah Jackson showed out at the end of last year and is certainly fighting for that role for the Orioles. But Pton Neils again, you know, he doesn’t have to be on the 40man roster. He’s not. So it’s it’s more than likely he begins the year in AAA Norfol, but there’s an absolute chance that Pton Neils is the main utility guy for the Orioles in 2026 and potentially beyond, right? It’s a really interesting profile. You don’t see a lot of players built like or who play like Pton Neils in today’s Major League Baseball. And I like the Orioles, you know, finding something that could get back for Alex Jackson and having it be someone who could legitimately help the 2026 Baltimore Orioles. He’s going to be a really interesting prospect to follow. He may not work out, but he could be a really fun utility guy to have on this team. And if he does get on this team, he’s going to have some really intriguing coaches to work with. The Orioles made reportedly two other coaching hires at the end of last week, which seemingly has fully filled out their coaching staff. We’ll talk about Brady North and Hank Conger to finish off the show coming up next. But first, this episode of the Locked Orioles podcast is also brought to you by Game Time. The NFL season is back and honestly, there’s nothing better than being in the stadium surrounded by fans and cheering on your team. But let’s be honest, getting tickets can be a hassle. Between cues, login screens, and prices jumping at checkout can really be frustrating. So that’s why I use Game Time, the app that gives the advantage back to fans. Game time is fast, it’s easy, and it’s backed by the Game Time guarantee. You’ll always get 100% authentic tickets delivered on time and at the best price. Plus, all fees are included. So the price you see is the price you pay. Just pull up Game Time. In a couple of taps, I see amazing deals. talking about Ravens games under $100. So download the Game Time app, create an account, and use code locked on MLB for $20 off your first purchase. Terms apply. Again, that’s promo code L O C K E D O N ML LB for $20 off. Swipe, tap, ticket, go. Download Game Time today. So to finish things off today on a jam-packed Monday news and notes episode, want to talk about a couple of coaches that the Orioles hired continuously to this staff under new manager Craig Albernaz trying to fill out his staff. Reported by Rockabakco of Masson on Thursday. The Orioles have hired Hank Conger as their new bullpen coach. certainly remembering some guys. If you remember Hank Conger, former first round pick of the Angels out of high school, who was a big league catcher for seven years 2010 to 2016 with the Angels, Astros, and Rays. He was never a great hitter, but he did acrewue, you know, almost three war in 2013 and 2014 due to his elite catching defense, especially he was one of the best framers in all of Major League Baseball. also played a little bit more in the minors and in the Mexican League and then retired after the 2018 season from playing. Took a year off and then was hired by the Lay Giants of the KBO over in Korea to be their catching coach. He was hired there in December of 2019. Spent two seasons there and then the Minnesota Twins hired him to come back to the states and be their first base coach and catching coach beginning in the 2022 season and that is where he has spent the last four seasons. He was also elevated to also be the assistant bench coach for the Twins, kind of adding to his duties in 2025. But after the Twins fired their manager, Roco Baldelli this year, they also announced after the season in November that Hank Conger, after four years on the big league coaching staff, would not return to that role. Now, with the Twins, he only worked with a couple of catchers as the catching coach. He didn’t help improve the framing for Christian Vasquez, who was already a good defensive catcher in the big leagues, but he also oversaw kind of the decline of Ryan Jeffers, who has certainly always been a bat first catcher, but went from a solid to just a straightup bad defensive catcher over the years. So, kind of a a mixed bag. I would say the best thing on Conger’s resume as a catching coach is his work with Gary Sanchez, who was known as a horrendous defensive catcher when he was a young player with the Yankees. He had negative 12 fielding runs value in his final year as a defensive catcher with the Yankees in 2021. Basically the worst defensive catcher in baseball. The Twins get Sanchez in 2022 and he jumps up to a negative from a negative 12 to a plus two fielding run value. Conger helped Sanchez just completely overhaul his catching defense. Tremendously improved his framing and his blocking. Two of his things he was just I mean even from the eye test terrible at with the Yankees. And some of that was work he did with Hank Conger. Now Conger has connections to both Mike Elias and Craig Albernaz. He played for the Astros in 2015, of course, when Elias was still in their front office. And in 2016, he split time between the big leagues and TripleA with the Tampa Bay Rays. Albernaz was then in his second year with the Rays as a coach and of course had also been there for a while as a player. So I’m sure they did cross paths and this should provide even more help to Samuel Bisayio becoming a better defensive catcher. The Orioles now have three coaches on staff who were essentially recently full-time catching coaches. You have Conger who will be the bullpen coach out there with some catchers. You have the actual catching coach they hired away from the Marlins in Joe Singley and Craig Albernaz who of course is the manager now. So much less focus on specific catching coach stuff, but that was what he did for four years with the San Francisco Giants before he was hired in Cleveland was work with those catchers. This feels like the O’s have created kind of a perfect environment for Samio and Adley Rutman to get better defensively behind the plate. And they also reported by Andy Kusca on Thursday have hired Brady North as an assistant hitting coach. I talked about how, you know, they already had their hitting coach in Dustin Lynn. They had hired Donnie Eker as the bench coach who has that hitting background and I felt like they’ll probably have one assistant hitting coach. It is someone in Brady North who I had on my initial list of potential hitting coach hirings. Brady North, 34 years old. spent the last four seasons in the big leagues as the Rays assistant hitting coach. The Rays have been ranked 15th in offense over those past four years. So really a pretty league average offense, but also you got to remember what kind of money they’re spending, which is none. It was however announced after the season that after four years as the Rays assistant hitting coach, Brady North would not return to that role. However, the Rays reportedly did offer North a minor league hitting coaching job. So to stay in the organization, but just get demoted, but allowed him to pursue other big league jobs if they were out there. and they were as the Orioles brought him in. North was a college player, played D1 ball at Jacksonville, then transferred to NIA Cumberland University where he won a national championship in 2014 and had an 878 OPS. He then played two years of indie ball in 2015 and 16 before retiring as a player. But even in those two seasons, he started coaching. He was the hitting coach for his high school, Gaither High School in Florida for two years. Helped them win a state championship in 2016. Then Cumberland, his college, hired him to be a graduate assistant there to help with hitting in 2017 and 2018 and finally got his call from a big league team. The Rays hired him to be the hitting coach for the rookie ball FCL Rays in 2019. He then moved up to be the high A hitting coach in 2021. And then in 2022, he was hired to be the assistant hitting coach on the big league staff and stayed there for the past four years. Of course, does have a connection to Craig Albernaz. 2019 was Albernaz’s first year in the Rays organ or excuse me, that was his final year in the Rays organization. He was their minor league field coordinator that crossed over with North’s first year in the Rays organization as the FCL hitting coach. And Albertaz’s role as minor league field coordinator. He was kind of roving around working with every single level that included North’s team at the FCL. So that looks like it kind of fills out the Orioles coaching staff. They haven’t made at least as recording here Saturday the 22nd. They haven’t made the official like press release graphic. Here’s our coaching staff at the major league level for 2026 under Craig Albernaz. But now with a bullpen coach and an assistant hitting coach know all three of the pitching coaches are coming back to the team. It feels like every spot has been filled. The last name who was out there that we didn’t know the future of was John Mabberry who the Orioles hired as an assistant to help out Tony Manscelino after Brandon Hyde was fired. But we learned on Friday that the Angels have hired John Mabberry to be their assistant hitting coach. So now he has a job as well. And funny enough, the Angels lead hitting coach who they just hired for his first ever big league coaching job is Brady Anderson. So we’ve got some very funny Orioles combinations happening in Anaheim in 2026. But maybe they could hire someone else, another assistant somewhere. It seems like the Orioles at this point have fully filled out Craig Albernaz’s coaching staff for his first year as a manager with the Orioles in 2026. But that’ll do it for today’s episode. Thank you so so much for tuning in. Had a lot of news and notes to get to today. So, a little longer episode than usual, but we had a lot happen over the weekend. But don’t worry, we are not done with the reverberations and talking about that Grayson Rodriguez and Taylor Ward trade. That’s coming up tomorrow. We got a uh crossover coming with the host of Locked on Angels. We’ll learn a little bit more about Taylor Ward, what he brings to the ODS, and also a little bit more about how they’re feeling about Grayson Rodriguez out there in Anaheim. Until then, make sure to like, comment, and subscribe to Locked on Orioles YouTube channel. Make sure to subscribe or follow the show wherever you listen. Apple podcast or Spotify. And of course, you can always email me with Orioles questions, want to talk ball, feedback for the show, whatever. Locked on orgmail.com. Back tomorrow to talk more about the Ward Rodriguez trade. Until then, I’m Connor Nukem and this has been the Lockdown Orioles podcast, part of the Locked on Podcast Network, your team every day.

The Baltimore Orioles surprisingly decided to tender a contract to Ryan Mountcastle on Friday. Host Connor Newcomb tries to figure out why they made that move while non-tendering Albert Suarez.

Then, Connor breaks down the Orioles decision to trade catcher Alex Jackson to the Minnesota Twins for infielder Payton Eeles before giving you the background on two new Orioles coaches — Brady North and Hank Conger.

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