25-Year-Challenge: The Baltimore Orioles (!)
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by user Andrewx73
Sure, anybody can put together an all-25-year team for historically great (and historically expensive) teams like the Red Sox, Mets, and Yankees. But who has the guts to put together a 25-year team for a once-great, now-crappy franchise like my beloved Baltimore Orioles?
Using DNL 's rules was a challenge -- after all, the Orioles lost 21 games in a row in 1998 (en route to losing 107 games overall), and yet that team has to have a representative. Ditto for 2001, when the team lost 98 games and had basically no good players. Adding to the frustration is the fact that from 1994 to 2000, the team basically had one good pitcher (Mike Mussina), and I'm only allowed to use him once.
With all of that being said, this team stands up pretty well to the Mets, and ... less well to the 25-year Red Sox. But I'm pretty sure we'd beat the 25-year Pirates. Particularly if they keep batting the pitcher 8th (and the O's keep the DH).
All statistics are neutralized to 750 runs/team, 4.63 RPG environment as per Baseball-Reference.com. Using the lineup analysis tool, the starting lineup below would score 7.331 RPG -- better than everyone except the Red Sox. The sabermetrically optimized lineup would do even better at 7.455 RPG, but I decided to sacrifice that tenth of a run for "realism" purposes; see below.
Lineup:
POS Player Year Age G AB AVG/OBP/SLG OPS OPS+
CF Brady Anderson 1996 32 148 569 .288/.386/.620 1.006 157
3B Melvin Mora 2004 32 140 544 .333/.412/.550 .962 149
SS Cal Ripken 1991 30 162 669 .342/.394/.598 .992 162
1B Eddie Murray 1984 28 162 603 .322/.429/.534 .963 156
C Chris Hoiles 1993 28 126 421 .314/.419/.587 1.006 163
RF Eric Davis 1998 36 131 453 .329/.389/.583 .972 151
LF Larry Sheets 1987 27 135 473 .321/.365/.575 .940 143
DH Albert Belle 1999 32 161 606 .292/.395/.531 .926 139
2B Brian Roberts 2005 27 143 573 .328/.403/.536 .939 145
As you can see, Eddie Murray's best season saw him post a normalized .429 OBP, tops in organization history. Similarly, Brady Anderson's best year -- one of the all-time great fluke seasons, in which he hit 50 home runs -- saw him post an organization-best .620 SLG. Any sensible lineup would involve Murray leading off and Brady Anderson hitting cleanup, but as an Orioles fan, I just couldn't picture it. I would also hit Hoiles higher than 5th, but the O's actually hit him eighth for a significant chunk of 1993 (!) This lineup represents my best guess as to what the organization would do if given these actual players. Oh, and I'm as surprised as anyone by the inclusion of Albert Belle. I really wanted to take Harold Baines's 1995 (139 OPS+) or something from Mickey Tettleton, or even Sam Horn's hilarious 1990 -- but I just couldn't make it fit with the one-player-per-year requirement.
Bench:
POS Player Year Age G AB AVG/OBP/SLG OPS OPS+ Note
C Charles Johnson (R) '00 28 84 286 .294/.364/.570 .934 137 stats w/BAL only
IF Alan Wiggins (S) 1985 27 87 343 .271/.339/.332 .671 96 32 SB
OF John Lowenstein (L) '82 35 121 327 .333/.429/.624 1.053 176
OF Joe Orsulak (L) 1988 26 126 393 .308/.353/.450 .803 113 played all 3 OF positions
UT David Segui (S) 2001 34 82 297 .313/.420/.495 .915 140
Ah, David Segui, the least-useful "utility" man in the history of the game. In 2001, the Orioles bizarrely offered Segui a 4-year, $28 million deal that made him the team's second-highest paid player (just behind Brady Anderson, and ahead of some dude named Cal Ripken). They got 300-odd plate appearances at a 140 OPS+ in 2001 and basically nothing else. Alan "Cokehead" Wiggins is basically this team's designated pinch-runner; in this reality, I hope Brian Roberts never breaks his arm. Not sure how well Wiggins can play short, but I'm pretty sure this team doesn't need a backup shortstop anyway. Oh, and I really wanted to get a lefty-masher to platoon with John Lowenstein a la Gary Roenicke, but I just couldn't get it to work given the year constraints. So imagine that Lowenstein is DHing 3/4 of the time and is spelled by Albert Belle against tough lefties -- where he gets another 100 points of OPS.
Rotation:
POS Pitcher Year Age W-L IP ERA WHIP BB/K ERA+
P1 Mike Mussina 1994 25 21-8 262.3 2.57 1.048 56/147 163
P2 Ben McDonald 1990 22 9-4 117.3 2.68 1.108 37/64 157
P3 Mike Boddicker 1983 25 13-6 178.7 2.82 1.086 52/119 143
P4 Kevin Brown 1995 30 14-8 199.7 3.07 1.062 50/135 136
P5 Erik Bedard 2006 27 13-9 199.0 3.48 1.291 67/173 120
Here's where we start to hit a snag. The 25-Year-Orioles get Mussina's best season, 1994, but miss out on six other pretty good ones. By rights, that fifth-starter spot should probably go to either Rodrigo Lopez in 2004 (133 ERA+), Jimmy Key in 1997 (128 ERA+), or Storm Davis way back in 1984 (124 ERA+), but you know the drill. So I decided to give one of the league's brightest rising young lefties a chance to shine at the back end of the rotation.
Bullpen:
POS Pitcher Year Age W-L IP ERA WHIP BB/K ERA+
CL Gregg Olson 1989 22 7-2 83.3 1.94 1.296 48/88 225
RP Todd Frohwirth 1992 28 8-2 95.3 1.98 1.007 30/76 213
RP Buddy Groom (L) 2002 36 5-1 62.0 1.60 0.903 12/48 274
RP Armando Benitez 1997 24 6-2 73.3 2.45 1.255 43/106 179
RP Don Aase 1986 31 6-3 81.7 2.98 1.212 28/67 139
RP B.J. Ryan (L) 2003 27 3-2 50.0 3.42 1.380 27/62 128
Folks, the Orioles were ugly in 1986 and 2003. In 2003, I could have taken Kerry Ligtenberg, who had a slightly better ERA+ (130), but it's hard to consider an unsuccessful one-year rent-a-pitcher as an all-time Oriole. So B.J. Ryan makes the team, one year before his truly spectacular season in 2004 (210 ERA+, 122 Ks in 87 innings). I also deliberately left off Randy Myers' 1997 in favor of Armando Benitez, even though Myers had a 1.51 ERA (291 ERA+). If we could jiggle roles around, I'd take the aforementioned Jimmy Key and put him back in the bullpen just like in the old Toronto days. Gregg Olson's best season was actually 1993 (276 ERA+), but I passed on that in favor of Chris Hoiles instead.
So there you have it: from the scattered pig-parts that are the last 25 years of the Baltimore Orioles -- a team with seven 90+ loss seasons and 16 seasons under .500 -- I managed to put together a team that scores almost seven and a half runs per game, has a good-to-serviceable rotation and three and a half dominant relievers. Not bad, eh?
Now, if anyone wants to try and assemble the all-Worst-25 years squad, I'm willing to bet the Orioles could be awfully "competitive" there too. After all, this was an organization that gave 512 at-bats to Billy Ripken one year (OPS+: 48), and also once gainfully employed a 93-year-old Doug Drabek (7.29 ERA, 62 ERA+) as its third starter. But that's another post....
