The Orioles Warehouse

A reaccounting of the deal

With the benefit of a month's hindsight, the Sosa trade looks better than it did originally. Had the Orioles not acquired Sosa, they would have faced a host of unappealing alternatives to improve their outfield situation. Magglio Ordóñez was the most attractive free-agent outfielder left on the market, and the O's would have been played for fools had they matched the exorbitant $75 million contract Scott Boras wangled from the Tigers. Ordóñez is a fine hitter when healthy, but his thorny knee condition stirs memories of another White Sox outfielder who became a full-time designated hitter around age 30 due to knee injuries: Harold Baines.

After Ordóñez the pickings were slim. Jeromy Burnitz, whom the Cubs signed to replace Sosa, had superficially good 2004 numbers playing half his games in Coors Field, and at $5 million he was cheap. But his track record over the last three years is erratic, and he would not have been a good fit for Baltimore's lineup because he bats left-handed. The only other available outfielder of note was over-the-hill Ray Lankford, who is still unsigned and may retire. In acquiring Sosa at a reasonable price, the O's probably made the most of a bad situation.

Also, it cannot be ignored that the Orioles played this winter's free-agent market with a hand tied behind their back. With the Nationals moving in next door, and given the incomplete status of negotiations with Major League Baseball to compensate Baltimore for the expected market hit, the Orioles had little idea whether their future revenues would be able to support another expensive, long-term contract. So top-shelf free agents such as Carlos Beltrán were basically off the table from the start because of the years and dollars involved.

The Orioles then came up empty in the competition for other major free agents, but not for lack of trying. After being stymied by homeward-bound Carl Pavano and Richie Sexson, who both refused competitive offers from Baltimore to return to their native regions, the O's bid as high as rationally possible for Carlos Delgado before he opted to sign with the Florida Marlins for a few million dollars more. Indeed, I find little to criticize in those free-agent misses. Back in January I wrote, “If Baltimore finds itself in a position where it must guarantee Sexson-like dollars to secure Delgado's services, it should shift its focus elsewhere.” Sure enough, the O's went up to a Sexson-esque level for Delgado (four years and $48 million was reported as their final offer) before drawing the line and returning to trade discussions, whereupon they discovered that the Cubs' asking price for Sosa had dropped considerably. In Sosa, the Orioles found a relatively affordable stopgap for 2005 and retained the ability to navigate the market more confidently once their financial situation becomes clearer.

In my original article, I was probably too harsh on the Orioles when I described Sosa as no more than “a salve for the open wound on the face of the team.” Yes, the Baltimore franchise has lost a great deal of luster since the mid-1990s, mostly because of self-inflicted injuries. Furthermore, the O's remain relegated to third-fiddle status in the AL East, and their growth prospects are stunted because of the rise of the neighboring Nationals. But this team has far more star power than it did two years ago, and its trajectory is rising—more slowly than most fans would prefer, but rising nevertheless. In fact, the Orioles have an excellent chance of registering a win total in the mid-eighties this year, and with some luck and a few judicious moves they could be serious playoff contenders in '06. That makes them better than at least half of the teams out there. Things could be, and have been, a lot worse.

Back to the future

One disturbing trend I noted with Sosa a month ago was the nosedive his numbers have taken in the last two seasons. Yet if you believe the statheads, it is likely that Sosa's decline will slow, if not reverse itself, this year. Most of the 2005 statistical projections I've seen for Sosa estimate that his batting numbers will stay at or above his 2004 rates, placing his OPS in the .850-.900 range. (Keep in mind that those projections assumed he would remain a Cub, so they should be adjusted downward slightly.) I still think those numbers sound a bit optimistic, but such production is hardly out of the question—36 is getting up there for a baseball player, but it's not ancient.

The difficulty in predicting the trajectory of an aging superstar such as Sosa is that superstars are by nature exceptional and thus have few close historical peers. Scoot over to Sosa's profile on Baseball-Reference.com, and you'll see that his five most similar players through age 35 are Mickey Mantle, Willie Mays, Eddie Mathews, Frank Robinson, and Barry Bonds. That's a great list, but consider that the best match for Sosa statistically, Mantle, only registered a score of 838, which is not all that close. Author Bill James, discussing the similarity scores method in Whatever Happened To The Hall Of Fame?, described scores in the 800-849 range as “somewhat similar.” (Other ranges: 750-799 is “vaguely similar,” 850-899 “essentially similar,” 900-949 “truly similar,” and 950 and up “unusually similar.”) Virtually all mathematical projection systems leverage the power of historical player data to come up with their yearly estimates. Since there are so few comparable data points for Sosa, those statistical projections have to be taken with several grains of salt.

Anyway, performance is not the biggest concern about Sosa going forward; the thing to watch is his health, which has slipped in the last two years. Little has been revealed about the results of Sosa's physical exam in Baltimore, so it's hard to speculate on his potential for injury. Despite all the press attention Sosa has received since the trade, apparently no one in the media has gotten any detailed information from Sosa or the Orioles about his health. There may be doctor-patient privacy issues in play, but nowadays we hear reports on professional athletes' injuries so regularly that it seems odd that we haven't heard more in Sosa's case.

Some people (not the Orioles) have broached the possibility of signing Sosa to an extension. If I were the Orioles, I would not even consider extending Sosa's contract unless he rebounds in a major way this year. And even if he does bounce back, I would only extend him for one year at a time, maybe with a club option year attached. Why? His age and health make him too big of a risk for the dollars he's likely to demand. One of these years, Sosa's body is going to fail him, and I don't want the Orioles to be left hanging on to him when it happens. Remember, Brady Anderson was just 37 and had a year left on his contract when the wheels came off his game in 2001.

Fool me once

On the topic of bad extensions, can any Oriole fan forget the star-crossed Glenn Davis trade of January 1991? One rarely mentioned part of that story is that after a freakish nerve injury ruined Davis's first season in Baltimore, the Orioles compounded their error by re-signing Davis to a two-year extension worth nearly $7 million, which was quite a spillage of cash in those days. The re-signing came just before he was to go on the open market that fall, and it was completed only after the Orioles had heard several doctors give optimistic prognoses for Davis continuing his baseball career.

But Davis's health never fully recovered, turning the Orioles' good-faith gamble into a debacle. In total, the Orioles paid Davis nearly $10 million over three years for what amounted to slightly over one season's worth of subpar production. And unlike the Albert Belle situation of a decade later, the Orioles received very few insurance dollars to defray Davis's salary; in 1993 they got about $600,000 from a disability policy for Davis—about 15% of his $3.7 million take in a year in which he played just 30 games in the majors.

Trading for Davis was not as silly as it now seems. At the time of the trade he was an elite, 30-year-old first baseman, and no one then could have predicted that his career would fall apart soon afterward. Indeed, a certain Washington columnist called it “the best trade for the Orioles since they got Frank Robinson.”

However, giving Davis a lucrative two-year contract before he had proven his healthiness was less defensible. By bringing Davis back for two more years, the Orioles were trying to make up for what had been a lost trade; it was an attempt to save face. But in the end, they only succeeded in giving themselves more headaches.

In the same way, the Orioles made a sensible move to acquire Sosa, but they shouldn't feel obliged to keep him any longer than his health and performance warrant.

Touch and go?

One reader, commenting on the January 30 Sosa article, suggested that Sosa, as an impending free agent, would be a good candidate to peddle to a contender in midseason should the Orioles fall from contention. That could be a profitable strategy for the Orioles, who as I wrote earlier are probably a year or two away from becoming a serious playoff threat. If they can find a team willing to deal a top prospect that is close to the majors, then they probably should pull the trigger.

But it's not likely to unfold that easily. If Sosa is going to be worth that much in a trade, then he's going to have to be productive in the first half of 2005. And if he is productive, his Oriole teammates are capable enough that Baltimore could easily find itself within shouting distance of a playoff spot in June and July. That would make it hard to publicly justify dealing Sosa away, even in a swap that favors the long-term health of the ballclub.

A midseason trade of Sosa would make unequivocal sense under two conditions: (1) if he returns to All-Star form in the first half of '05, and (2) if the rest of the team regresses significantly in the same time frame. But that set of circumstances is improbable. More likely, he will slow down and his teammates will improve this year. So be prepared, for better or for worse, for a full season of the Sammy circus.