The Winter of the Orioles

Back in September, I was lucky enough to grab lunch with Jonah Keri and Patrick Sullivan at The Friendly Toast in Cambridge, where we mostly marveled at how big the kitchen in that place must be to support a roughly 142 page menu. Once we got our food figured out, the conversation shifted to baseball. Curiously enough, a decent part of the discussion between an Expos fan, a Red Sox fan, and a Mariner fan focused on the potential moves the Baltimore Orioles might make.

The Orioles were interesting to all three of us. Through some savvy transactions (okay, mostly the Erik Bedard trade) and good drafts, the O’s have amassed an impressive group of young talents. And after years of overspending on bad veterans, the team had been financially sound, giving themselves a significant amount of financial flexibility heading into the winter.

Flush with cash and some obvious holes, it seemed like an off-season of good spending could setup the Orioles to be an interesting team in 2010, even pushing into fringe contender status if their young talent all matured quicker than expected. Especially as another strong buyer’s market emerged, this appeared to be a perfect opportunity for the Orioles to add some key pieces that could grow with the core already in place.

Instead, they ended up spending $25 million in 2010 (and $6M in 2011) to acquire Kevin Millwood, Garrett Atkins, Miguel Tejada, and Mike Gonzalez. They filled four holes, but the return on investment seems… underwhelming.

Let’s start with the two infielders. The signing of Tejada and Atkins fills the two corner spots, with Tejada expected to play third while Atkins shifts to first base. By pretty much any projection you use, both are expected to be roughly league average hitters – CHONE expects a .335 wOBA from Tejada and a .324 wOBA from Atkins. Given that both are adjusting to new defensive positions and on the wrong side of thirty, forecasting their defensive value is a bit tricky, though I wouldn’t expect either to be particularly good at their new spot.

Tejada is probably a league average player while Atkins is a bit below that. Overall, the production that the duo will offer the Orioles should be around +3 wins. Given that the market is paying about $3.5M per win on one year deals, Baltimore paid almost exactly what you’d expect. They didn’t overpay, but these weren’t bargains either.

On the pitching side of things, they inherited $9 million of Kevin Millwood’s contract, then gave Mike Gonzalez $6 million per year for both 2010 and 2011 and surrendered their second round pick for the right to do so. Millwood, like Tejada, is a decent bet to be a durable, league average-ish player for the next year, while Gonzalez will offer value out of the bullpen, though my position on relievers being less valuable than the market believes is well known. Again, you’d expect about +3 wins of value from the pair this year, but given the higher acquisition cost, Baltimore overpaid on both of these guys.

But, beyond just the dollars per win stuff, there’s the real head-scratching part of all this. The Orioles added about +5 to +6 wins to their roster for 2010, but that’s not a big enough improvement to make waves in a tough AL East, and only one of the players – the relief pitcher, no less – is under contract beyond this season.

They improved their team’s chances of being decent this year, but have done nothing to improve the team’s future. There was no multi-year deal for an undervalued position player (say, Adrian Beltre), who would provide value both in 2010 and beyond. The deals that were made were handed to a couple of 35-year-olds, a 31-year-old reliever, and a 30-year-old.

There’s just very little upside in any of these deals. Even in a best case scenario, Tejada and Millwood continue to be above average players, make the team good enough to fight the Rays for third place in the AL East, and then file for free agency again next year. Or, I guess, you could hope to trade them at the deadline for a prospect if they’re playing well, but then that raises the question of why the team didn’t just take the $15 million they gave those two and plow it into the draft and international free agents in the first place.

This just isn’t the off-season that I thought the Orioles had in them. This is a safe, low risk, low upside winter that doesn’t really change the fate of the franchise much at all. They got a little bit better for next year, but lost an opportunity to really help the 2011/2012 teams that could actually be quite good.