Orioles Must Take Deep Breath, Give Cash to McDonald

Welcome to the most difficult week of Larry Lucchino’s brief life as a baseball executive, the week he gets to choose between pleasing the owners of every other major league baseball team and signing the best pitching prospect in history.

The first guy to walk into a dark cave is always the bravest. Branch Rickey stepped into it when he signed Jackie Robinson. Curt Flood did it when he phoned his lawyer. Jerry Kapstein did it when he convinced a couple of his more famous clients that free agency would forever alter baseball’s ever-changing landscape.

So it is with Lucchino, the youthful and savagely competitive president of the Baltimore Orioles.

Nine weeks after making Ben McDonald the No. 1 pick of the annual amateur baseball draft, Lucchino finds himself upon shifting earth. He finds himself not simply negotiating with a kid pitcher out of Louisiana State, but bidding for the services of a free agent with an astoundingly high competitive offer.

McDonald has said he’s willing to accept $1 million less to play for the Orioles. He’s a Louisiana kid who grew up dreaming of pitching in the big leagues, of warming up beside the monuments in Yankee Stadium, of looking over his right shoulder and seeing the Green Monster in Fenway Park.

The math gets complex, but in recent weeks, the Orioles essentially have offered $700,000 and the McDonalds are seeking $1.1 million.

That’s a difference of $400,000, a substantial amount of money. In fact, an insane amount.

However, baseball uses a different sort of math. The new television contracts with CBS and ESPN will raise each team’s annual TV take from around $7 million to around $13 million. That’s insane.

So are a lot of other things in the game, including $14 box seats and $3.50 for a cold one.

You want to hear insane? McDonald wants another $400,000. That, oddly enough, is what the Orioles are paying veteran designated hitter Keith Moreland to help them down the stretch. Two years ago that’s what they paid Lee Lacy to sit at home. They’re paying Scott McGregor more than twice that this season.

You want insane: Utility infielder Ed Romero, released Sunday by Boston, is making $415,000. Wayne Tolleson earns $410,000 from the Yankees, John Cerutti makes that much from the Blue Jays and Dave Anderson makes that much from the Dodgers.

Insane?

Absolutely.

Yet, the Orioles must see this as new and challenging waters. As a respected general manager said: “You negotiate and negotiate and negotiate. You work the best deal you can and then you sign him. You don’t let him get away.”

The hard part is that no one is wrong. The Orioles have made a fair offer, what Lucchino calls “an extraordinary offer.” Likewise, what the McDonalds seek is fair. The moment he puts his name on the dotted line he’ll be the best pitcher the Orioles have.

He may only pitch 20 or 30 innings down the stretch, but they may be the innings that give Gregg Olson a key rest. He should also be the anchor of what could be an impressive rotation for 1990 and beyond.

What should the Orioles do?

They should sign him. They should give him the $400,000 and move on to other business. If that shatters their salary structure, they should trade him next June (when rules allow). Get something, anything for him. If they don’t sign him, all they get is a compensation draft pick next year--pick No. 27 in the draft.

Agent Scott Boras says the McDonalds still hadn’t made a decision. That means they’re home in Louisiana wrestling with the issue.

Boras said they definitely wouldn’t accept the offer on the table, but around their kitchen table, there’s surely a vote or two for it. It’s a game of who blinks first, and despite the other league, McDonald’s heart clearly is with the Orioles. His dad installed a satellite dish at his home, and subscribes to Baltimore papers. His mother refers to the Orioles as “Us.”

There won’t be a decision for several more days because the McDonalds clearly would like to see a groundswell of support for their cause. There appears to be that, especially with the local talk shows flooded with calls supporting McDonald.

“They owe us this because of last year and the year before,” one Oriole fan said.

Even if Lucchino ultimately agrees, his two worries are: (a) alienating other owners by paying a rookie so much money, and (b) alienating players in his clubhouse.

The first doesn’t wash. Every draft and every draft pick is different, and this kind of prospect coming along at the same time as a new league provides unique circumstances. And what did these teams do for Lucchino while his team was losing 107 games last season? They laughed at him, they gloated. Not one of them offered an outfielder or a pitcher.

The other problem is more realistic. Surely some players will want theirs too. The Orioles knew that day would come when they slashed their payroll by half last winter. They knew (and hoped) that eventually their young players would have success and that someday they’d all get big raises. That’s how Eddie Murray went from the $48,000 minimum to $2 million. Performance works like that.

What they didn’t expect was that these improvements would come so quickly, that the Orioles would be in first place in August.

The one player who’ll have a legitimate beef is rookie reliever Olson. He was the fourth pick of last year’s draft and had the misfortune of leaving school a year before there was a new league to raise offers.

He’s earning $70,000 this year and will have to settle for whatever the Orioles offer him in 1990. If they offer $250,000, he would take it and not blink. That would still be a few thousand less than McDonald, but it’s a huge raise and an indication that better performances will beget better raises.

Ben McDonald’s sacrifice is that he will take a cut of nearly $1 million to play for the Orioles, and that ought to be enough. The Orioles can curse the rules changing in the middle of the game, and when they’re done cursing, they ought to pay him and get on with it. Rules changes have always been part of the game and it’s the first-rate organizations that bend with them.