When this offseason began, just about everyone in Birdland was hoping and praying for the Orioles to get the big guy, which is why the signing this week of former NBA forward Mark Hendrickson has been viewed in certain quarters as some kind of cruel joke.
The big guy, of course, was free-agent slugger Mark Teixeira, and big was a figurative term. He was the top position player in the free-agent market, and he's from Severna Park and he would have made a big difference in the way a generation of disengaged Orioles fans view the beleaguered O's franchise.
Very big.
Hendrickson is a very big guy. He's listed as 6 feet 9 and 230 pounds, which makes him one of the biggest pitchers in major league history. He is not, however, a big acquisition for the Orioles, who signed him for one year and $1.5 million (plus some incentives) to compete for a place on a pitching staff that is still largely without form. He is a sub-.500 career pitcher with a 5.00-plus career ERA, which is not exactly going to make him the most popular guy at FanFest.
So, quite predictably, he is being cast by the team's most disgruntled fans as a symbol of all that is and all that has been wrong with the Orioles for the past 11 years.
That's certainly understandable on one level. The Orioles looked half-hearted in their pursuit of Teixeira and have not made a big play for any other marquee free agent, choosing instead to trade for reserve infielder-outfielder Ryan Freel and sign inexpensive shortstop Cesar Izturis before finalizing the deal with Hendrickson. The sharp contrast between the quality of the players they got and the player who got away is just too convenient an excuse to remain fatalistic about the future of the team.
Not that anyone really needs an excuse at this point. The Orioles will remain a huge disappointment to their fans until they do something dynamic to change that, which is why they needed Teixeira to view himself as the kind of Ripkenesque hero who could come home and save the franchise. The fact that he didn't only deepened the hurt when he signed with the rival New York Yankees.
Against that backdrop, the addition of Hendrickson might look like another slap in the face to the Orioles' faithful, when it really is just another routine roster move that is not significant enough to evoke that kind of negative energy. Hendrickson is a veteran pitcher who will go to spring training with a chance to win a job in the rotation or the bullpen and, if he does, hold a place for one of the young pitchers the Orioles are hoping will be ready to make an impact later this year or in 2010. In that context - and only that context - he is a decent acquisition at a decent price.
