Instant Grade: Orioles Taylor Ward Trade: F for Fraud

The Orioles got three right-handed arms from Seattle who carry absolutely nothing in their profiles to portend ever helping the team at the MLB level. Taylor Ward, for all his many warts, was near the league lead in walks all season and getting on base 40% of the time.

Orioles baseball exec Mike Elias, who revealed Friday how little he believed in this team (for good reason because it stunk and was always going to stink the way he built it), could have moved Ward much sooner, before his power drought got this deep, and before mere hours before the deadline, when his value had been sapped by having one homer and 10 RBIs at Camden Yards all season. Instead, he waited ‘til deadline day like he almost always does to make a trade that was doomed before it was executed.

So, sorry, even by this miserable failure of a GMs standards, this return in trade is an F folks. A reliever giving up six earned runs for every nine pitched in the best pitcher’s park in baseball plus a AA reliever who is already 26 and can’t get anyone out there and an oft-injured kid who just got to High A, isn’t a baseball trade.

It doesn’t even qualify as such.

Okay, Wise Guy, What Is it Then?

It’s a salary dump.

We call things what they are around here. When a gaslighting conman keeps saying and doing the same things over an eight year cycle, we call it what it is. If you can’t handle that, you should apply for a job with the Orioles or most of the corporate entities who cover them daily. Fealty is a prerequisite .

But we, like you, pay real money to watch this perpetual slop, and we call it what it is. And what Mike Elias did here is go out of his way to ensure he’ll ever assume any real MLB payroll in this transaction, and take things from the Mariners that they didn’t even want, in exchange for shedding what’s left of Ward’s $12.3M salary. It was a financial equation with the Mariners taking a chance that Ward might start to want to swing the bat again – although in their ballpark, good luck – and that he can at least keep getting on base.

And Elias opens up a spot for Dylan Beavers to play everyday – if he doesn’t then trade him too – and maybe we get Enrique Bradfield, Jr. up here soon, too. It’s as cynical a transaction as you will find, foisted on a fanbase that’s been waiting for a parade since 1983. But it’s right out of the Private Equity playbook that David Rubenstein and his ownership group hold so dear.

We give them $600M in tax money so they can fix up our stadium to charge us more to attend, raising the value of their investment, while they complain about a salary cap they knew didn’t exist when they assumed control of this public trust. So try to do the absolute minimum financially in payroll investment as a baseball operation to try to coax the turnstile swinging 2 million times a year anyway.

Getting nothing for Ward helps their bottom line, and that’s the only standings that matter at The Warehouse.

That’s why it gets an F from us. But it’s an A+ for Ivy League Mike from his owner, who told you out loud how feckless he truly is, in his own words, about 10 days ago. Believe him.

Subscribe To "The Daily Flock Show" On YouTube For HarDCore Orioles Coverage:

Add us as a preferred source on Google