The Baltimore Orioles will lean on a former MLB catcher to manage its top affiliate for the 2025 season.
The Baltimore Orioles recently named Tim Federowicz as the manager for Triple-A Norfolk, replacing Buck Britton.
The Baltimore Sun was among the outlets reporting the move.
Federowicz was most recently the manager at Toledo, the Triple-A affiliate of the Detroit Tigers.
His biggest claim to fame in baseball is that he was part of a blockbuster trade that involves a current Orioles player.
In 2014, the catcher, then with the Los Angeles Dodgers, was traded to the San Diego Padres, along with superstar Matt Kemp for a raft of players that included Orioles starter Zach Eflin. The others involved were Yasmani Grandal and Joe Wieland.
The 38-year-old bounced around baseball for nearly a decade as a player after he was drafted by the Boston Red Sox in the seventh round of the 2008 Major League Baseball draft out of North Carolina.
He later made his MLB debut with the Dodgers in 2011. The Red Sox moved him out west in a three-team trade that sent Érik Bédard to the Red Sox and Trayvon Robinson to the Seattle Mariners.
He played in the Majors for the Dodgers (2011-14), the Chicago Cubs (2016), the San Francisco Giants (2017), the Houston Astros (2018), the Cincinnati Reds (2018) and the Texas Rangers (2019).
He was not active during the Cubs’ 2016 World Series run.
He ended his career in the Dodgers’ system in 2021 with their Triple-A affiliate. He also played for the U.S. in the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo.
After he retired, he took over Seattle’s Triple-A affiliate in Tacoma as its manager.
In 2023, he moved to Detroit to serve as the Major League team’s catching coach before he took over as the manager in Toledo.
By taking over Norfolk, Federowicz will manage some of the organization’s top prospects at the top rung of its system. Right now, that will likely include top hitting prospect Samuel Basallo and some of the organization’s top young pitchers. It could also include the O’s top overall prospect in Coby Mayo, assuming he doesn’t make the Opening-Day roster.
