Recently on the Saturday radio show, Tom Davis and I were looking at the Orioles? roster from just five years ago and counting the players from that 2002 season who will bewith the club this year. It?s a short list: Three position players ? Jay Gibbons, Melvin Mora and Brian Roberts ? and one pitcher, Erik Bedard, who appeared in two games.
It wasn?t so much a reminder of the disappointments of the last nine years as it was a wake-up call to those fans for whom the introduction of the full roster on Opening Day brings dreams of grandeur, or at least a meaningful pennant race.
Chris Richard was going to be a solid major leaguer, or so we thought. Obtained from St. Louis at the 2000 trading deadline for reliever Mike Timlin, Richard hit 13 home runs in just 199 at-bats in 56 games that year, and followed it up with a 15-homer, 61-RBI performance in 2001. He got hurt in 2002, appearing in just 50 games with four homers, and was traded after the season to Colorado for Jack Cust, whose lone Oriole “highlight” was falling down running home.
Richard continued to spend more time on the DL than the active roster with the Rockies, and after surgeries and tryouts with Texas and Kansas City, appears to be out of the game at age 32. Pitcher Willis Roberts compiled all of his big league wins and losses in a Baltimore uniform ? 17 W?s and 15 L?s ? from 2001 to 2003. A spot starter and long reliever in ?01, he went 9-10 in 46 games, including 18 starts, with an ERA of 4.91 ? the kind of year that today would earn you obscene dollars (see: Meche, Gil).
Strictly a reliever in ?02, he went 5-4 and 3.36 in 66 games and was rewarded with a $3.5 million contract. Hopefully, he put some of that away. Physical setbacks in ?03 dropped his numbers to 3-1, 5.72 in 26 games, and he was quickly an ex-O. He pitched 12 innings in relief for the 2004 Pirates, and his big league career was over before he was 30.
Journeyman right-hander Chris Brock concluded his big league career making 22 relief appearances for the 2002 O?s. They had swapped another largely forgotten Oriole, pitcher John Wasdin, to Philadelphia at the 2001 winter meetings for Brock, who had also pitched for the Braves and Giants. He went 2-1, 4.70 in Baltimore and packed his bags.
Jose Leon. Ryan McGuire. Mike Moriarty. Izzy Molina. Travis Driskill. I could go on. The point is, the 2002 Orioles didn?t lose 95 games by accident. Then-manager Mike Hargrove had little to work with and even less to substitute with.
The drastic turnover in personnel since 2002 is a good thing, despite the fact that every one of those players had arrived in town pretty confident they were, or would soon be, productive, long-term major leaguers.
So hang on to your programs from Monday?s season opener and look at ?em again around this time in 2012. Hopefully, I won?t be simply writing an update of this column.
Phil Wood has covered sports in the Washington-Baltimore market for more than 30 years. You can reach him at [email protected].
