Late Innings

As everyone knows by now, I’m an Orioles fan. And for fun, I’d like to throw a few names out of free agents that would be interesting to see if they signed:

1. Ben Sheets
2. Braden Looper
3. Adam Dunn

Dunn of course would be an interesting addition, bringing massive amounts of walks and home runs with him. The two starters on the other hand would truly transform their rotation.

I’ve said this all off-season, Andy MacPhail has been loading the Orioles’ system with talent. This includes stocking both the farm system and the major league team. I’m curious to see how many wins BP and PECOTA will project them with this year, but as of now they currently have one major weakness: starting pitching.

Add Sheets. Add Looper. The price for these two might have gone up a little today thanks to the Mets however:

Left-hander Oliver Perez will be taking the hill for the New York Mets again next season.

Perez and the Mets agreed to a three-year, $36 million deal, sources told ESPN.com’s Jerry Crasnick and 1050 ESPN New York’s Andrew Marchand

I’m not the biggest Perez fan by any means, and I think that Scott Boras won big for his client once again this winter. Still if I had to guess on contracts for Sheets and Looper, I’d say that Sheets get 10MM, Looper gets 6MM. Sheets I don’t understand. When healthy, he’s an ace, and last year he was for the most part healthy. Why aren’t teams fighting over his services?

Sheets is a proven staff ace, in case anyone has forgotten (source mlblogs.com.)

Insert Sheets as the staff ace, and suddenly Jeremy Guthrie is a solid #2. Looper and Koji Uehara fill out the other spots, and your fifth starter is Rich Hill. Other arms they’ve brought in this offseason (e.g. Mark Hendrickson, David Pauley) would provide much needed depth.

I like the Hill deal, I like the Felix Pie deal. MacPhail got these two players for pennies on the dime, hopefully. Granted Baltimore is an improved team, but they’re still not ready to compete with the other players in their division. However if they made these small moves, I’m curious to see the media’s reaction this year. After all look at the White Sox… Hill could become Gavin Floyd, Pie could be Carlos Quinten.