Late Innings

I’ve seen this tactic used a good deal, and I’ll attempt to employ it here. It’s the infamous “Player A", “Player B” trick. Using 2008 stats, take a guess on who these two pitchers are:

• Player A: 7 W, 8 L, 133.2 IP, 5.45 K/9, 5.45 ERA, 1.44 WHIP
• Player B: 8 W, 10 L, 180.0 IP, 4.75 K/9, 5.25 ERA, 1.61 WHIP

If you guessed Mark Hendrickson as Player A and Daniel Cabrera as Player B, you are clearly correct. From looking at the stats above, both pitchers had similar 2008 campaigns. Cabrera’s strikeouts were down last year, but so were his losses (he lost 18 games in 2007.)

I’m not saying Hendrickson (a York, PA native like myself) is an improvement by any means, however he’ll help mitigate the loss of the innings that Cabrera ate. Both pitchers provided negative value for their teams (each costing their teams about 1.5 wins), however Cabrera was paid 2.8MM, Hendrickson 1.5MM. It was clear to see why Andy MacPhail pulled the plug on Cabrera (a ~10MM loss from last year.) He only regressed further in 2008 (as evidenced by his 5.61 FIP, wow.)

Long story short, Baltimore needs pitching, and Hendrickson provides essentially the same value as Cabrera, however at 1.5MM he’ll cost at least 1MM less than Cabrera (the smallest pay the Orioles could have gave him in 2009 was 2.5MM, according to the labor contract.) Still, Hendrickson alone won’t solve their pitching woes. I like Braden Looper, and I think a three year deal would be beneficial for his services. The same thing goes with Kensin Kawakami (apparently the O’s have an offer out for him), however anything over 10MM a year is a huge risk.

I know Baltimore fans are anxious and are wanting to see Andy MacPhail make some more moves. I’m glad that he’s staying the course. He inherited a hell of a mess in 2007. It took the O’s years to get into the mess, it’ll take them years to get out of it.