1994 Lee Smith acquisition context

[Just Regular]

2024 Craig Kimbrel felt quickly like 1994 Lee Smith, but hat tip to a BP feature for reminding me a strong team needed a closer, and its Gregg Olson/Felix Bautista character had messed up his elbow, extending the parallel.

Risk-averse Peter Angelos went for the non-tender move on an injured high achiever.

Their full write-up as they are kind of playing the What If? we were analyzing the offseason day to day 30 years ago like the internet lets us do now:

The Baltimore Orioles sign RHP Todd Frohwirth to a minor-league contract.

The Baltimore Orioles sign RHP Lee Smith to a one-year, $1.5 million contract.

One of the poor souls trapped in the 90s zeitgeist by Chris Berman (Todd “What Hand Does He” Frohwirth), the Orioles submariner found himself non-tendered in December and then found little interest in his services. “There was some interest, but it was a soft market,” [his agent] Katz said. “I don’t understand why.” It probably had something to do with an ERA that incremented its leading digit each of the past two years, from 1.87 to 2.46 to 3.83, with walk, strikeout, and home run rates all trending in the same bad direction. His DRA- went from 58 to 93 to 125, and based on what Baltimore saw in spring training, they didn’t like where he was headed. They wound up cutting him near the end of March.

But Frohwirth wasn’t the prize; he was just a basic, low-risk reunion. The real prize was the less basic reunion, one with their former closer, Gregg Olson. Like the submariner, the O’s career saves leader had been non-tendered a month prior, but the concern wasn’t over talent or even money. It was the ligament in his right elbow, which was at least partially torn—and, as the team feared, worse than that. Three months into his regime, owner Peter Angelos would cement his legacy as being averse to trusting medicals, and that’s in part because in this case, he was absolutely right. Olson had (at the time) the most saves of any pitcher by the age of 27; he collected just 57 over the second half of his career, much of it injury-riddled. 

Still, even as Baltimore and Olson’s agent continued to search for a solution—both team and player would have preferred a reunion, if one that required the other party to take on the risk—the Orioles were building a championship contender and needed to make sure they got a closer. 

Enter the game’s all-time saves leader in the 36-year-old Lee Smith. Smith was a bit of a gamble himself—he’d worn down over the season in 1993, and publicly considered retiring—but with other teams like Seattle and Cleveland closing in, Baltimore felt like it couldn’t be the team left without a chair. In terms of swings, the choice to opt for Smith instead of Olson can’t be understated. Smith wore down yet again after the break, and was probably saved by the bell that was the strike, but the fraction of the year that he did pitch was his single greatest, by DRA- (43). He made the All-Star Team, won the Rolaids Relief Man Award, and earned down ballot votes for both Cy Young and MVP. 

***

Smith wasn’t the final piece of Baltimore’s massive overhaul, with some role players to come in the weeks ahead. But this was the masterstroke, and announced the Orioles as successors to Toronto as the era’s primary AL East roadblock for the rise of the Evil Empire. In the 1993-94 offseason, the Orioles spent more than three times as much on free agents as any other team in their division, and that doesn’t include the funds necessary to re-sign incumbents Brady Anderson and Harold Baines. But even then, it pales in comparison to the financial outburst of a reanimated George Steinbrenner the year before, who acquired the aforementioned Smith, Wade Boggs, Jimmy Key, Jim Abbott, and Paul O’Neill. 

It should have marked the beginning of a grand AL East rivalry, and for a few years, it looked that way. But eventually the luster of the Orioles’ names stopped matching their performance, Pat Gillick resigned, and the franchise went into a 14-year hibernation.