FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla.-- No doubt, there will be some teeth-gnashing about Troy Patton, the centerpiece of the Miguel Tejada deal who will undergo surgery to repair a torn labrum and miss the entire 2008 season.
Orioles president Andy MacPhail knows that, but he doesn't seem particularly worried about it.
The critics will call it a screw-up - a failure of the medical evaluation process - except that Patton's sore shoulder was no secret on the day the Orioles sent their most accomplished player to the Houston Astros.
Call it a calculated gamble by a baseball executive who isn't normally known as a riverboat kind of guy.
Here's the rationale, and it does make a certain sense. Patton was acquired along with four other players as part of an overall plan to repopulate the Orioles' system with young talent. It would have been nice to see him in the No. 5 starter role this year, but it's important to remember - when you put the whole situation in its proper context - that the 2008 season is just a stop on the way to 2010.
If Patton makes a full recovery and is ready for next year, he will still have a full year to get up to speed before the team is, at least theoretically, close to being competitive in the American League East.
Of course, there is a certain degree of uncertainty associated with significant shoulder surgery, so it's possible he will never be the same prospect he was when Baseball America recently rated him as the 78th-most promising player in the game.
The other bad news: Because he's on the 40-man roster, the service time clock will be ticking all year, which could cost the Orioles a valuable season down the road if Patton pans out.
Even so, MacPhail said yesterday that he was aware of all the contingencies and would have made the deal even if he knew going in that labrum surgery were a foregone conclusion instead of a strong possibility.
"It's pretty much, again, what I expected," he said. "I could've gone a different way. Sometimes you've got to go for the high-risk, high-reward type deal. I could've had a different player in there, but he's 22, left-handed and already worked his way to the big leagues."
If nothing else, this little bit of bad news might provide some consolation for the Astros, who have taken a lot of heat from their fans for giving up a big chunk of the organization's young talent for a player who is now the subject of a federal investigation.
