Bergesen Sent Down

There were two more cuts with the Orioles and there was one that surprised me...

From Peter Schmuck's blog: The Orioles coaching staff has been giving every indication for quite some time that pitching prospect Brad Bergesen was a strong contender to be in the major league starting rotation when the club breaks camp in a couple of weeks. In fact, there were allusions to that this morning, just a few hours before the announcement that Bergesen has been optioned to Triple-A Norfolk.

Bergesen has been one of the steadiest pitchers in camp, and it is possible that he could still join the major league rotation early in the season, but it's still a curious about-face by the club.

The only way to make sense of it is figure that the innings crunch has gotten so bad that the club had to send somebody out to stretch out. The squeeze got worse with today's rainout, which forced manager Dave Trembley to move Mark Hendrickson into tomorrow's start in Jupiter and, most likely, pitch Hayden Penn later in the game against the St. Louis Cardinals.

Guess it'll all shake out soon enough, but the Orioles certainly caught a lot of us by surprise with this move.

Pitcher Andy Mitchell also was reassigned to the minor league camp in Sarasota.

I'm sure that Bergesen will be seen in Baltimore at some point; however...

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