Oriole GM Hemond Pleased With Trades

In the last 2 1/2 months, Roland Hemond, general manager of the Orioles, somehow has refrained from making any trades.

“I just got a call I have to return,” he said in jest. “And I’ve got something written down on a scrap of paper. Maybe one of those will bring a trade.”

The man who has a reputation in baseball as a wheeler-dealer has gone silent in the marketplace. Now it is his team that is making all the noise.

But Hemond is ever vigilant after a whirlwind first 19 months with the Orioles, when he averaged a deal a month.

“You still pay attention,” he said. “You look ahead at your possible needs. But, at this moment, that hasn’t been pressing.”

In great measure, the heat is off because of the success of Hemond’s trades since last summer, when the Orioles finally made a full-blown commitment to youth.

Six players who contributed strongly to the Orioles’ first-place drive, Brady Anderson, Randy Milligan, Brian Holton, Phil Bradley, Bob Melvin and Mike Devereaux, came in transactions engineered by Hemond after the team decided to sweep out the old regime.

Two others, Francisco Melendez and Chris Hoiles, have had the proverbial cup of coffee with the major-league team and could return.

Moreover, the average age of the Big Six is 27.5 years, almost seven years younger than the average of the six who left in deals during the same time span--Mike Boddicker, Mike Morgan, Eddie Murray, Terry Kennedy, Jim Dwyer and Fred Lynn.

Another player, pitcher Ken Howell, is not included because he was an Oriole for four days, then, presto, he wasn’t one because Hemond had struck again, trading him and Gordon Dillard to the Philadelphia Phillies for Phil Bradley.

“I’m very happy with the way things have turned out,” Hemond said. “We got young players with talent, and they will get better. The plan was that they would grow with us, that we will get many more years of production from them.

“But I don’t think anyone could have expected these kinds of results this soon.”

Judging the outcome of trades is an inexact art at best. Generally, several years are required before a gauge even can be applied accurately and unforeseen events like career-ending injuries can intervene.

But down the line, after Boddicker and Lynn and Kennedy and Murray have ceased to be productive, the Orioles’ acquisitions may be going strong.

Still, Hemond is not of the school that believes in hornswoggling the other team. Ideally, he said he likes his trading partner to receive benefits as well.

“All you try to achieve is to have a better club after it’s all over,” he said. “You can’t be concerned that each and every trade is to your advantage. If you can give the other club players they can utilize effectively, that’s fine.”

Hemond said he believes in “value for value, needs for needs” and that “you have to consistently cross the same bridges and deal with the same people. You can’t purposely burn them. If somebody gets delight out of getting much the better of a trade, that’s just their character.

“I’m happy to see Morgan and Howell doing well. And Boston wouldn’t have won the division without Boddicker last season.”

At first, his appointment to succeed Hank Peters met with both skepticism and criticism. After 1987, the Orioles were wallowing in stagnation and Hemond appeared to be plugging gaping holes with Band-Aids.

The deals he made entering last season he described as “not major transactions. They were stopgap. We were doing something, trying, but it wasn’t until later that we figured a definite direction for the club.”

Only two players, Mark Thurmond and Jay Tibbs, are with the Orioles from that first off-season under Hemond. A third, Keith Hughes, is playing for the Class AAA Rochester Red Wings. Of the players the Orioles traded in six deals, only Mike Young (Cleveland Indians) is in the majors elsewhere.

It was a feeling-out period, much like the early rounds of a boxing match.

“We had a new organization with people who hadn’t worked with each other,” Hemond said. “We only had three weeks before the winter meetings, and a lot of what we were doing was just acclimation.

“We felt it important to do something, but we had to be careful about major deals. First, we had to learn how people (in the organization) expressed themselves and what they meant, how explicit they were, in evaluating certain players.”

Hemond had not been involved in the operation of a club for two seasons, and “what I remembered about players from ’85 did not necessarily apply going into ’88. Some of our people had to save me (in some judgments).

“But that situation leads to the status quo. It’s better not to make a move than make radical ones you might regret. When you’re not on the inside with a club, you’re seeing it with a different set of eyes. You have to stop on top of players’ progress month to month, week to week.”

So the Orioles were on a treadmill for a season. But after the release of Scott McGregor May 2 last year and then Fantastic Fans Night later the same day, the commitment to youth was on.

Given license by ownership to start the wheels, Hemond began to resemble Pa Bell, a telephone constantly at his side. As in his days with the Chicago White Sox with Bill Veeck, he was “Open for Business,” a sign those two posted in the lobby of the headquarters hotel during the winter meetings one year.

Hemond first concentrated on dealing with pennant contenders who were more likely to seek veterans who could help them during the stretch drive.

The Anderson-Boddicker swap started an irreversible trend that accelerated with the moving of Lynn and hit a peak with the deal of Murray.

There was no turning back.

The Murray deal actually was three-sided, with Howell going to Philadelphia in the trade for Bradley four days after he became an Oriole, and two months later, Devereaux coming to Baltimore for Morgan.

“The Dodgers might not have been in need of that type of pitching (Morgan) if they hadn’t traded Brian Holton and Howell,” said Hemond. “That was still part of the Murray trade.”

Somewhere inside Hemond, a little voice is exhorting him to talk turkey with his fellow GMs. He just can’t help himself.

“I guess I’ve made a lot of trades by nature,” he said. “It’s exciting. You remember when you were a fan in Rhode Island waiting for the paper just to see the speculation about the Braves and Red Sox. In baseball, there is more attention to trades than any other sport. It’s part of the lure of our game.”

At Hemond’s first winter meeting as the GM of the White Sox, 16 players changed teams in 18 hours. It’s in his blood.