Orioles Can’t Blame Bad Luck If They Don’t Sign McDonald

In the year of the great leap forward, the Orioles are about to hit a wall -- the one with Ben McDonald’s name written on it.

We know the name. We know how he used to wrestle alligators all by himself and now wrestles (with the help of an agent or two) Orioles. We know, too, that the Orioles made him the No. 1 pick in the June draft, and that the Orioles, in desperate need of strong, young arms, are on the verge of losing this strong, young arm of exceptional promise.

Bad luck -- believe me, hitting a wall is very bad luck -- may scotch the deal.

It’s bad luck that some new proposed baseball league (which has caught the eye of Donald “Name the League After Me and I’ll Pay the Kid Anything” Trump) has decided to start next year (maybe) and offer Ben McDonald (for reasons beyond understanding) $2 million, in guaranteed money yet, to sign with the new guys whether or not they ever throw a pitch in anger.

It’s bad luck that the Orioles started losing and that their starting pitching began to blow up real good and that they need McDonald right now in this tractor pull of a pennant race.

It’s more bad luck that McDonald has an agent like Scott Boras, known to be a tiger in the cause of his clients.

And if the Orioles do lose McDonald, they will tell you it is not their fault and that, well, they got unlucky.

They would be wrong.

No matter how well the Orioles have handled these negotiations -- and that is sure to become a subject of debate -- they can’t have handled them well enough if they fail to sign McDonald. It isn’t a matter of whether the Orioles can afford to sign him; what is clear is that they can’t afford not to.

If, as the Orioles believe, McDonald has what it takes to be a big-leaguer immediately and a star soon after, they must find a way to persuade him to come aboard. We know what the chief tools of persuasion are these days, stacks of dollar bills. In this case, great stacks.

The Orioles have already made what they like to call an exceptional offer, of around $700,000 over three years. Only Bo Jackson, when signed out of the draft, has ever gotten more. Only Bo Jackson, among all other such draft picks, has ever signed a multiyear, major-league contract. Boras, who says it will take another $400,000 to sign his player, denies none of that.

“Ben is a unique player,” he says. ‘Money is not the issue here. It’s principle. The Orioles are saying to themselves, ‘Can we do the unusual?’ I say you’re not doing anything unusual. You’re doing what has been done before. You’re doing what Kansas City did when they signed Bo Jackson.”

Boras equates his player to Jackson, saying their situations are comparable. Jackson, who had a $6 million offer from the NFL, got $1.1 million from Kansas City. Boras wants the same for McDonald, even saying, “I just might be selling him cheap.”

The Orioles, we can say, have been generous in their offer. We can say they’ve even been creative. But they have to sign McDonald if we want to say they have been successful.

The difference is $400,000, and the Boras camp is convinced that the Orioles are loath to come up with the money only because they fear the censure of the baseball community, which is sure to cry behind boardroom doors that the Orioles are ruining the salary structure.

That may well be the case. Even when the owners aren’t colluding, they’re sure pressuring everyone to hold the line. The Orioles, who obviously can afford the extra bucks, have a new owner and a new president, and they may not want to offend.

And not only do you risk offending owners. There are the guys in the clubhouse who aren’t making nearly that kind of money. Gregg Olson comes to mind, as a quick example. If there’s anything teams worry about, it’s upsetting the local salary structure. But if truth is told, the Orioles barely have a structure. They’ve got a pyramid with nearly everyone at the bottom. Next year, a lot of young guys are going to get at least a little richer, and nobody’s going to be too worried about what McDonald got.