Orioles pregame: Avery to Norfolk, Thome batting fifth, All-Star selections looming

By By Peter Schmuck and Dan Connolly

The Baltimore Sun

Jul 01, 2012 12:02 PM

It has been a busy weekend already, but the Orioles made a couple more roster moves on Sunday morning, optioning outfielder Xavier Avery to Triple-A Norfolk to finish making room for the arrival of newly acquired DH Jim Thome and the recall of reliever Miguel Gonzalez. The O's already had optioned pitcher Tommy Hunter to Norfolk on Saturday night.

Thome arrived at about 11:30 on Sunday. He held court briefly with the media and went off to prepare for his Orioles debut. He was in the lineup, batting fifth behind Adam Jones, before the plane carrying him from Florida to Baltimore landed at BWI. In short, it's been a bit of a whirlwind since he was informed of the deal on Saturday.

"Yeah, it usually is when you move from team to team and I am excited to be here,'' Thome said. "These guys, they've had a great year and I think they've done some special things and hopefully we can continue to do that. And I'm excited, excited to be here."

The anticipation is building as Major League Baseball gets ready to announce the All-Star selections at about 1 p.m. The Orioles have a chance to send multiple players to the Midseason Classic for the first time since 2005. The selection show will be broadcast on TBS.

Manager Buck Showalter has been apprised of the selections, though the reveal has been embargoed until the specific names are mentioned on the TBS show. He joked that it was nice to know some "good" news before the media, so you can read into that whatever you want.

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The lineups for today's game:

Cleveland Indians

Shin-Soo Choo RF

Asdrubal Cabrera DH

Jason Kipnis 2B

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Jose Lopez 3B

Shelley Duncan LF

Casey Kotchman 1B

Jason Donald SS

Lou Marson C