Kerry's CALCULUS
STRATEGY? STRATEGY?!? WE DON'T NEED NO STEENKEENG STRATEGY!
In light of the Orioles signing of Marty Cordova to a three-year contract yesterday and comments in today's Baltimore Sun implying that the "fun" has just started as the Orioles turn their sights on the likes of Tino Martinez, et al, I thought it might be instructive to take a look at the big picture...whatever the heck that is.
Bob's point, in a message board note this morning, about the Orioles giving players like Cordova at least one year more on a contract offer than they should is dead on, I think...this appears to be the way the Orioles are choosing to outbid would-be competitors to secure their services. The club has a history of this (Brady Anderson, Scott Erickson, etc.), and doing so with players who aren't particularly good to begin with and are extremely unlikely to do anything but get worse over the terms of these deals. Let's keep that in mind. We're talking about contract offers to players who are past a ballplayer's prime age, and typically at least four years past that prime.
This is not the case of a team on the cusp of playoff contention that is filling holes, filling out a roster where any improvement is a clear step toward a postseason spot. For instance, if the Orioles had won 88 or 89 game last year but only had one obvious Achilles Heel--let's say it was Brady Anderson in left field--signing Marty Cordova might be enough to push them over the top. Probably not, but it's not
totally insane to draw that conclusion. (Of course if the Orioles had won 88-89 games last year they'd have benched Brady by mid-season at the latest and already taken a shot at filling the hole...but I digress.)
Similarly, if they'd won 88-89 games last year and the only obvious hole was the fact that they had to play a bucket of warm puss at first base most of the time, signing Tino Martinez might be just the ticket to
get them over the hump. Might be...probably wouldn't be, but again, it's not totally nuts to make that assumption.
But that's not where the Orioles are. Not even close. We're talking about a team that hasn't had a .500 or better season since 1997.
We're talking about a team that avoided losing 100 games last year because of an
unrescheduled cancellation. We're talking about a team that has been
getting worse for four straight years. We're talking about a team that has
so little confidence in its own home grown talent that it left its "highest
ceiling" position player off the 40-man roster this spring and is now going
out and picking up second and third tier free agents to fill positions all over
the field. Teams in positions like this don't sign mediocre free agents to
long-term guaranteed contracts. Pardon me...teams like this shouldn't sign
mediocre free agents to long-term guaranteed contracts.
Why is that? Why is this a bad approach? Here's why. If the acquired players play more or less as expected...heck, even if the guys signed play significantly better than expected, the Orioles are so far away from contending that it won't matter, unless the Orioles are bright enough to seize on the overproduction and trade these players for something that will actually help down the road. Given the track record of the braintrust--which didn't do this with Delino DeShields in 2000 and didn't do this with Jeff Conine in 2001--I can't see it happening. Under the current scheme of thought, the Orioles are doomed to a legacy of mediocrity or worse long into the future.
Now, if something happens to shake things up on the home front and the Orioles actually start developing major league caliber players of their own in a year or two, what are they going to do with the likes of Cordova, Martinez, etc.? Will other teams just jump at the chance to add millions of dollars and multiple years worth of commitment in the form of these guys, who are likely to be clearly worse than they are now? The answer is, of course, a big, fat no and the Orioles ought to know that because they tried unloading guys of comparable value in 1999 (remember Mike Timlin and Will Clark?) and they found themselves having to pay teams to take these players off their hands. They tried, presumably, dealing Brady Anderson's carcass this year and ended up having to release him, eating the final value of his contract. In other words, if things actually go well and the Orioles somehow find themselves with the young players to put a contending team together in short order, the club probably won't have the dollars to make the free agent moves they need to make to finish the deal...all because of being weighed down with a bunch of players who are unlikely to significantly help the team no matter how things play out.
Let's be clear. It's not that Cordova and Martinez and Moises Alou and any of the other second tier 30-somethings that have been mentioned as serious Oriole acquisitions aren't better than what the Orioles had in comparable spots last year. They are. But--and here's the point--they're not better enough, given the rest of the talent on the team, to put the team over the top. Ever. Furthermore, not one of these guys is likely to even be as good next year as he was last year. The odds of further decline in succeeding years improve astronomically. And, these guys weren't that good to begin with, though Alou has been well above average at his position for years now...Cordova and Martinez, however, have been well below their positional averages for their careers...and all, excepting Tino, have been badly nicked up of late, and can't be counted on to be healthy for anything approaching a full season, yet another point that the Orioles should be quite familiar with (see Segui, David).
So what's the plan here? If there's a long-term element involved, I'm missing it. If the goal is to be better than last year, the Orioles may accomplish that for a season or two by signing these guys, but we're probably talking about winning 75 games, at best. That's better, but does it really warrant this kind of a financial commitment? Rebuilding, a process that the Orioles supposedly started at the 1999 waiver deadline, is often an ugly, lengthy process. It requires patience and, when it starts with a farm system as relatively barren as that of the Orioles two years ago, it requires a several year period where the team stockpiles as many promising young players as possible. The hope is that, within three or four years, the club starts to clearly recognize the fruits of that stockpiling. We're two years in and already the team appears to have lost patience with the process and is returning to a reactionary approach of bailing with one hand and sticking a finger in the dike with the other. If there's any semblance of a long-term plan here, I don't see it. In a sense, it seems as though we're back to 1998.