The Orioles didn’t do what they needed to do at the Winter Meetings in order to build a team good enough to compete in the 2016 AL East — but they didn’t do the things that could have stopped them from becoming that team in the first place, and sometimes that’s good enough.
The big news for Baltimore out of Nashville this week was the signing of reliever Darren O’Day to a 4-year, $31 million deal that will keep the late-inning stalwart in orange and black likely for the rest of his productive career.
(Discuss this on the BSL board here.)
O’Day was expected to get “Andrew Miller money” this offseason, and while his contract is worth $5 million less over the same term as Miller’s while being signed a year later, O’Day is two years older than the former Oriole and current Yankee and doesn’t have his physical gifts. It’s a perfectly acceptable contract — it is backloaded and features deferred money, yes, but it also has a limited no-trade clause that kicks in even before O’Day acquires 10/5 rights late in the deal. In a vacuum, it’s the sort of contract a team that’s going to be competing for the next couple of years needs to sign — not just to acquire the player himself, who is a stabilizing influence in a bullpen with a lot of moving parts, but to demonstrate to other free agents that the team is serious about doing what it needs to do in order to compete.
There was another big deal that the Orioles figured into in Nashville, and it was one that they did not sign. Baltimore made their best offer to free agent Chris Davis, reported to be a seven-year worth around $150 million. It’s a deal acknowledged by Davis’s agent, Scott Boras, and sources in the warehouse, and it’s about where the Orioles should tap out of the Chris Davis proceedings. Then, according to reports, the Orioles pulled that deal off the table — that could mean something, or it could mean nothing. Most likely Davis is going to get a bigger deal anyway, with the Cardinals shaping up to be the team to beat. I thought earlier this offseason that the market for Davis was overhyped; I still believe Davis to be a player without much of a home anywhere but Baltimore, but the sheer amount of activity out of the Chicago Cubs this offseason (culminating with their signing of Jason Heyward) might force the Cardinals to respond with a signing they might not otherwise make.
Either way, 7/$150 million for Davis wasn’t a contract I, or almost any O’s analyst, was all that comfortable with Baltimore taking on. If Baltimore can bring him back to the bargaining table and bring that deal down by a year or two and maybe $25 million, I’d be back on board with signing him. Otherwise, Baltimore walks away from the Winter Meetings without having burned their first round pick unwisely (this could still be an issue, with Baltimore being constantly linked to Yovani Gallardo) and with a reliever that can step in to be the late-inning guy if the collapse of Aroldis Chapman’s trade market (entirely deservedly so) and the fact that Ken Giles is no longer an option for teams looking for young, controllable late inning relief means that Zach Britton starts getting more attention.
Where does Baltimore go from here? Well, there’s probably around $30 million still left in next year’s budget. There have been reports that the Cincinnati Reds have been actively shopping 3B Todd Frazier, which I’d personally take with a grain of salt. I don’t think the Reds will move Frazier for anything less than a great package, which I don’t think Baltimore can provide, but an infield with Frazier at third, Machado at short, Schoop at second and, well, fine, Mark Trumbo at first — that’s a pretty great infield on both sides of the ball. Hardy would have to be dealt, perhaps to San Diego, and the Orioles would have to eat a lot of that deal. Baltimore might be able to make a Frazier deal work with fewer prospects surrendered if they also took on the contract of Reds starter Homer Bailey — but that feels like more of a videogame trade than something that would actually happen in reality.
Pipe dreams of Frazier aside, the best outcome is probably Baltimore waiting for Davis to sign, then chasing Alex Gordon. He fits the team philosophy and adds defense to an outfield that all too often has been Adam Jones and two guys he has to cover for, and the deal he’d sign would let the Orioles trumpet their spending — and then they could sign Gallardo without the optics of him being the guy they punted on the first round for. Hopefully they can get Gordon for four years with an option with a high AAV; most likely they’ll have to go five years.
Gordon, O’Day, Gallardo, and Trumbo sounds like a high-spending, good-outcome modern Orioles offseason — it’s still a bit light on addressing team needs, but it hits the big ones with solid players that Buck Showalter can use, and it still leaves room for the team’s Rule 5 pick — an outfielder this time — to find his way onto the roster. There are bigger, splashier moves the team could make, and those might be moves that I prefer, but given the deliberation with which we know this front office conducts itself, so far, there might be reason for cautious optimism.
That said, they still have to make the signings. It doesn’t have to be Gordon. It does have to be someone in that tier. If the Orioles step back from the table with only Trumbo, a reclamation project starter and someone like Will Venable to show for it, it’ll be worth asking why in the world they bothered to spend all that money on Darren O’Day.
Jonathan is a contributing writer for VICE Sports. His work has previously appeared in Sports on Earth, Baseball Prospectus, The Classical, and ESPN’s SweetSpot Network. Born in central Maryland, Bernhardt currently lives in the New York metropolitan area.