The 100 Most Significant Dates in Modern Orioles History

[Redskins Rick]

Cito still sucks!

[Moose Milligan]

A big middle finger to Cito, wherever you are.  As an 11 year old in the stadium that day, all I wanted to see was Cal and Mussina have a good game.  

[murph]

2 minutes ago, Moose Milligan said:

A big middle finger to Cito, wherever you are.  As an 11 year old in the stadium that day, all I wanted to see was Cal and Mussina have a good game.  

I still remember screaming at my TV as the game ended. 

[OsFanSinceThe80s]

1 hour ago, Moose Milligan said:

A big middle finger to Cito, wherever you are.  As an 11 year old in the stadium that day, all I wanted to see was Cal and Mussina have a good game.  

I was at the game and still remember like it was yesterday.  It's too bad the O's and MLB  are in litigation because last year's (or this year''s?) all star game would have been in Baltimore.  

[Legend_Of_Joey]

Griffey isn't the only person who has hit the Warehouse. He was just the first. This season alone, Schwarber and Gallo hit the Warehouse in batting practice almost a week apart.

However, I do agree that Cito sucks! Could have just brought Mussina in with 2 outs ffs.

[MDtransplant757]

8 minutes ago, Legend_Of_Joey said:

Griffey isn't the only person who has hit the Warehouse. He was just the first. This season alone, Schwarber and Gallo hit the Warehouse in batting practice almost a week apart.

However, I do agree that Cito sucks! Could have just brought Mussina in with 2 outs ffs.

Griffey is the only guy who hit the warehouse in a game or event. 

[MDtransplant757]

On 11/23/2017 at 10:29 AM, SteveA said:

It's 82 days until pitchers and catchers report to Sarasota.   Here is the 82mnd most significant date in modern Orioles history:

#82 June 5, 1989

The Orioles' horrible 1988 season came with one silver lining...they earned the #1 overall pick in the 1989 draft.  It's the only time in Oriole history that they drafted first overall.

And they had the top pick in a year where the consensus top pick was considered possibly the greatest pitcher in college baseball history.

Ben McDonald, a tall righthander from LSU, pitched for the Gold Medal winning US Olympic team, won the Golden Spikes Award for the best collegiate baseball player in the nation, and had 44 consecutive scoreless innings during his final season at LSU.  The major league scouting service gave him the highest grade ever given to a pitcher.

The Orioles took McDonald as expected, and he was in the majors later in the 1989 season, pitching 6 times out of the bullpen in September and getting his first major league win on the last day of the season. He was in teh starting rotation the next season.

Ben McDonald was a solid major league pitcher.  He started 142 games with the Orioles, and had a 3.89 ERA.  But he was never the franchise savior that the Orioles hoped for.  He battled some injuries, and by age 29 he was winding up his career for a couple years in Milwaukee.  He put up 20.8 WAR in his career.

The Orioles had the number one overall pick in a year where perhaps the most hyped amateur baseball player in history went pro, but in the end Ben was unable to be the pitcher the Orioles needed to put the team over the top in the 1990s.

 

 

This sounds like another guy from LSU who the O's picked. 

[Frobby]

14 minutes ago, MDtransplant757 said:

This sounds like another guy from LSU who the O's picked. 

Except that McDonald came with about 10 times the hype — think Steven Strasburg.   

[MDtransplant757]

4 hours ago, Frobby said:

Except that McDonald came with about 10 times the hype — think Steven Strasburg.   

Yeesh. 

[OsFanSinceThe80s]

8 hours ago, Frobby said:

Except that McDonald came with about 10 times the hype — think Steven Strasburg.   

I'm convinced that McDonald would have been a star if he wasn't over used in college.  McDonald pitched complete games with absurd pitch counts and pitched the next day if needed.  

https://usatoday30.usatoday.com/sports/baseball/2009-06-02-ben-mcdonald-cover_N.htm

Quote

Boras, who has become baseball's most powerful agent, has no misgivings. He scoffs at the view that the negotiations shortened McDonald's career. He says a more reasonable explanation is that McDonald was a product of the times, when collegiate pitchers started a game one day and closed it the next.

 

[SteveA]

It's 77 days until pitchers and catchers report to Sarasota.   Here is the 77th most significant date in modern Orioles history:

#77 September 3, 1960

In previous posts I have detailed the lowly status of the early Orioles.  The Browns/Orioles franchise had been horrible for three decades.  In the 30 years spanning 1930 to 1959, they posted a grand total of three winning seasons, and ALL of them came during World War 2 where many major league regulars were off fighting, and the Browns managed to come up with better replacement players than other teams.

I've detailed how the Orioles hired Paul Richards to run the franchise, and how he made 48 trades in his first two years including the biggest deal in baseball history in terms of number of players traded.   And how he developed the "Kiddie Corps" of young pitchers.

On September 3, 1969, a member of that Kiddie Corps, Jack Fisher, shut out the Yankees 2-0.  Brooks Robinson had a homer and a double and knocked in both runs. The day before, another Kiddie Corps pitcher, Milt Pappas, had shut out the Yankees 5-0.  Fisher's shutout was the Orioles 78th win, which clinched a winning season for the first time in Baltimore Orioles history and for the first time in 15 years for the franchise, ending a string of 14 consecutive losing seasons.

And it was the beginning of an era of winning in Baltimore.  In the 26 years from 1960 to 1985, the Orioles posted a winning record 24 times, missing only in 1962 and 1967.  They won 90+ games 17 times during that stretch (and their 1960 team, 89-65 in the last year of a 154 game season, would certainly have been a 90 game winner in a 162 game season, and their winning percentage in the strike shortened 1981 season would work out to 91 wins in 162 games).  Their overall record (2291-1749) for that time period would average to over 91 wins in a 162 game season.

The Orioles were the winningest franchise in baseball for more than a quarter of a century, and the second straight shutout win over the Yankees in 1960 clinched the first winning season in that stretch.   It also put the Orioles a game up in the division.   Unfortunately the Yankees went on a monster 22-4 tear to finish the season, winning their last 15, and the Orioles fell short by 8 games.  But the seed had been planted for a quarter century of baseball excellence in Baltimore.

[Frobby]

1 hour ago, SteveA said:

In the 26 years from 1960 to 1985, the Orioles posted a winning record 24 times, missing only in 1964 and 1967.  

You meant 1962, not 1964.

[SteveA]

It's 76 days until pitchers and catchers report to Sarasota.   Here is the 76th most significant date in modern Orioles history:

#76 January 10, 1991

It was going to be the Orioles' last year in Memorial Stadium, and general manager Roland Hemond wanted to add a big bat to the lineup.  Soon to be 30 year old Glenn Davis had hit 164 home runs in the last 5 years in the spacious Astrodome, putting up a 129 OPS+.  He was a righthanded pull hitter with power, and Memorial Stadium, with the 309' down each line, was a pull hitter's paradise, and the new ballpark that would open the next year was also expected to be a good hitter's park.

Davis would be a free agent after the 1991 season, and the 5 years / $25 million that it would likely take to keep him would be prohibitive for the Astros.  So they were looking to deal him.  Davis had an Oriole connection, having spent his team years as a near-brother to former Oriole pitcher Storm Davis after his parents divorced, and Storm's parents (not related to Glenn) let Glenn move in with them.

So the Orioles pulled the trigger on a huge deal.  To acquire Davis, the O's sent Pete Harnisch, Curt Schilling, and Steve Finley to Houston.  Harnisch had been a mainstay in the Oriole rotation for two seasons.  Schilling was a young, hard throwing prospect who had put up a 4.54 ERA in 69 innings with the Orioles since being acquired along with Brady Anderson from the Red Sox in 1988 for Mike Boddicker.  Finley was a speedy outfielder with some pop in his bat.  The Orioles had a surplus of young, speedy outfielders, with Finley, Anderson, and Mike Devereaux, not to mention veteran Dwight Evans.

After the deal, Davis signed a 1 year, $3.275 million contract with the Orioles, the highest single season salary the team had ever paid.

In his first spring training, Davis suffered a nerve injury in his neck that would wind up keeping him out of the lineup from April to August, and the little he did play in 1991 he only hit .227 with 10 home runs.  He had a respectable season in 1992, but nothing like he had had in Houston.

In 1993 he got off to a horrific start, and then broke his jaw in a bar fight.  That kept him out of the lineup for a while, and just when he was ready to come back he was sitting in the dugout during a game and got hit in the head by a line drive off the bat of teammate Jeffrey Hammonds.  He didn't come off the DL until September, and then, when he complained about not being in the lineup, he was unceremoniously released.

For his 3 years with the Orioles, he got paid over $10 million, which was huge money back in that era.  He had fewer than 700 at bats, and put up a .247 average, .312 onbase, and hit just 24 HRs.   The huge acquisition was a complete failure, and he never played in the majors again after the age of 32.   He put up 0.7 WAR for the Orioles.

Meanwhile, the 3 guys the Orioles traded away all had successful careers, putting up a total of 241.4 WAR after leavint the Orioles.  241.4 WAR for 0.7 WAR makes this possibly the most lopsided trade in the history of baseball.   Finley had a long career, hitting over 300 home runs, winning 5 Gold Gloves, and winning a World Series with the Diamondbacks.  Harnisch's career was hampered by injury, but he had several productive years in the Astros rotation, making an All Star team, and winning 16 games twice.  Schilling is a potential Hall of Famer, winning over 200 games, making 6 All Star teams, and finishing in the top 5 of the Cy Young voting 4 times.

The deal makes everyone's list of the worst in baseball history.  The only reason that it doesn't make the list of best deals from the Astros point of view is because the Astros did not hang on to these guys enough to get the full benefit.  Of the 241 WAR they put up after leaving Baltimore, the Astros only got 24 WAR.  Schilling pitched in relief for them for one year, putting up a 3.81 ERA, and then they dealt him to Philadelphia for Jason Grimsley. Finley gave them four solid years, but at age 29 they traded him along with Ken Caminiti and several others to the Padres in a deal to acquire Derek Bell, Ricky Gutierrez, Phil Plantier and others, not knowing that Finley had 10 very productive years left as a major leaguer.  Harnisch left after four years as a free agent.

There's no telling if the Orioles would have hung onto Schilling longer than the Astros did, but the 1990s could have been a lot better in Baltimore with Shilling, Harnisch, and Finley, and this disastrous deal is a black mark on the long career of Roland Hemond as a major league executive.  What might have been!

[Frobby]

This probably would go much higher on my list.   The ‘92-97 teams were pretty strong; imagine them with Schilling, Harnish and Finley added.   

[beervendor]

"Broke his jaw in a bar fight" doesn't capture how weird this was. Davis is a born-again Cristian and neither drinks nor fights. He was out with some  teammates in Norfolk IIRC (predates O's affiliation with the Tides) playing peacemaker and was suckerpunched from behind by a bouncer.

Even more bizarrely he was hit in the head afterward by a ricochet line drive while IN THE DUGOUT TUNNEL. Think he was knocked out and tumbled down the concrete stairs. Snake. Bit.