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Writings on baseball by Matt Barnard and Dan Stein.
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2.11.2003
Orioles sign Rick Helling to a minor league contract One year minor league deal (though he's very unlikely to spend any time in the minors) that guarantees $1 million if he's on the Opening Day roster and up to another million in incentives. For all the idiocy of the Deivi Cruz signing and other recent moves of the Oriole front office, this is a pretty damn good idea. I don't really understand why no one else signed Helling before this, but it's virtually a risk-free situation for the Orioles and could work out very nicely for them if he can be turned into some good young players come July 31. Before this signing, the Baltimore rotation was probably going to be something like Rodrigo Lopez, Omar Daal and Sidney Ponson at the top, followed by some combination of Scott Erickson (hurt), Pat Hentgen, Travis Driskill, Jason Johnson, and supposedly (according to manager Mike Hargrove) Steve Bechler and Sean Douglass. That's a lot of guys, which would be fine...except that a lot of them are pretty bad. Rick Helling is a league-average pitcher who throws 200 innings and wins at least 10 games pretty much every year, which you'd think would be a pretty valuable commodity. Apparently not, as Helling somehow wasn't able to find a suitor more attractive than the abysmal Orioles. If something's wrong with Helling during the spring or they don't like what they see...the Orioles have the option to simply cut bait and he's gone. Of course, chances are he not only makes the team, but does so as one of the team's top four starters along with Lopez, Daal and Ponson, and has the first four months of the season to pitch his way out of Baltimore. If he pitches well, the Orioles can move him for guys who might be part of the next decent Baltimore team, and Helling will get an opportunity to both play for a decent team and increase his bargaining power going into the offseason next year, when he'll be a free agent again. Mike Flanagan and Jim Beattie haven't been overly impressive in their tenure so far at the helm of the Oriole organization, with their major acquisitions being the signings of the likes of Deivi Cruz and John Valentin as they missed out on premier catcher Ivan Rodriguez, who appeared to many to be heading to Baltimore. However, this is the kind of low-risk, high-reward move that pushes a team in the right direction, and Oriole fans should be pleased (with this, at least). - |