Well, Hell-O Daaly, II

I just read that Omar Daal's contract is for $7.5 M over two years. Can it be that this team actually competed with the Yankees during their dynastic run? Daal's ERA will climb at least half a run just by swapping his Dodgers Stadium address for Camden Yards (average adjusted ERAs in 2002: Balt 4.38, LA 3.79. I'm being too kind-that's 60 points).

Daal has been subpar for 3 years. He will be 31 in 2003. He has a 4.40 ERA for his career. That's 2% worse than the adjusted average. Here are his career numbers for ERA, WHIP, SO/9 IP, and SO:BB:

Season	  ERA	WHIP	SO/9IP	SO:BB
1993	5.09	1.61	4.84	0.90
1994	3.29	1.24	5.93	1.80
1995	7.20	2.20	4.95	0.73
1996	4.02	1.27	8.45	2.22
1997	7.06	1.80	6.91	2.10
1998	2.88	1.21	7.30	2.59
1999	3.65	1.24	6.20	1.87
2000	6.14	1.68	5.17	1.33
2001	4.46	1.37	5.19	1.91
2002	3.91	1.21	5.86	1.94
Total	4.40	1.38	6.13	1.83

The O's can point to an improvement in each category over the last three years, but a) after his abysmal 2000 season, things had to imporove and b) who's to say how much Dodgers Stadium had to do with that. His ERA on the road in 2002 was 4.48, and his strikeouts were down and walks up. Anyway, he still is nowhere near his career peak in 1998 (or even 1996).

He may pitch alright, but, more likely, he will be a sligthly-to-very-much worse than average pitcher. Why do you give him $3.75 M per in today's market? It seems that the O's dueling GMs got a little free agent happy.

Meanwhile, Jose Hernandez still can't get a job.