long-standing relationship<\/a> stemming from Shildt\u2019s childhood around Ripken in the minors.<\/p>\nRipken, through a spokesperson, declined to comment. But Albernaz said Ripken is part of a large group that includes minor league field coordinator Jeff Kunkel, lower-level coordinator of instruction Samuel Vega, director of player development Anthony Villa and Shildt.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m not sure if he\u2019s actually working with players hands-on, but having Cal around is such a value \u2014 an understatement,\u201d Albernaz said. \u201cThe thing with Cal is, he has such a great way about him. He has a wealth of knowledge. Obviously, his playing career speaks for itself, and he has such a great way of disarming everyone when you talk to him. And he never uses the word \u2018I\u2019, like \u2018how I did things\u2019 or \u2018how we did.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Instead, Albernaz said, Ripken engages in baseball conversations with members of the organization, although he doesn\u2019t force his opinion.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe never feels like his way is the right way,\u201d Albernaz said. \u201cIt\u2019s more of an open dialogue of how he sees the game, how everyone else sees the game, and just being a resource for everyone in this organization. He\u2019s been great to have conversations with this year, popping in, talking even with our hitting guys and Miggy [infield coach Miguel Cairo] and [third base coach] Buck [Britton] about infield play.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Orioles have struggled at times this year with fundamentals at the major league level, particularly on defense. Albernaz often says \u201cdevelopment is messy\u201d and improvement will come with time.<\/p>\n
Part of those efforts comes from establishing best practices in the minor leagues. President of baseball operations Mike Elias said this season that defense has always been a focus for the organization but that Albernaz is bringing best practices he learned during his time in Tampa Bay, San Francisco and Cleveland.<\/p>\n
The hiring of Shildt, the former San Diego Padres manager, and the promotion of Vega appear to be efforts to establish those best defensive practices early in the minor league process.<\/p>\n
\u201cHiring Shildty and his role and promoting Sam Vega, both of them coordinators of instruction. It\u2019s a new role for them, so they want to make sure what\u2019s happening at the big league level is being filtered down to the minor league level,\u201d Albernaz said. \u201cSo there are constant conversations. It was great to have Shildty around a lot in spring training and have that mind. He has such a great P.D. [player development] background and upbringing with the Cardinals, and he has such a passion for the little things and fundamentals.\u201d<\/p>\n
Albernaz said it\u2019s not a one-way street from the major league staff to the minors. Instead, \u201csometimes the best idea can come at the complex league that we might want to implement.\u201d<\/p>\n
Albernaz said the major league staff, especially bench coach Donnie Ecker and catching coach Joe Singley, works to find ways to improve the processes in the majors and minors together.<\/p>\n
Ripken hasn\u2019t held a coaching position with the Orioles, but his father was a longtime coach and manager in Baltimore. Ripken doesn\u2019t hold an official title beyond his role as a part owner. But, as one of the people familiar with Ripken\u2019s involvement said, he has been a resource for Elias and across the organization. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SEATTLE \u2014 Since returning to the Orioles organization as part owner of the club with which he became…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":729499,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2374],"tags":[40595,143,47,2538,5,3927,37779,46057,4,125],"class_list":["post-729498","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-baltimore-orioles","tag-40595","tag-baltimore","tag-baltimore-orioles","tag-baltimoreorioles","tag-baseball","tag-cal","tag-cal-ripken","tag-iron-man","tag-mlb","tag-orioles"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116773269299072555","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/729498","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=729498"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/729498\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/729499"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=729498"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=729498"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=729498"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}