During my recent Bird Tapes interview with BJ Surhoff, I was surprised by the vehemence with which he defended the Orioles of 1998 and 1999 — two seasons in which Baltimore didn’t even have a .500 record after having reached the American League Championship Series in 1996 and 1997 under manager Davey Johnson.
“We were really, really good” in terms of talent in 1998 and 1999, Surhoff said.
Like many in Birdland, I had pretty much dismissed those seasons from memory. They were the starting point for the franchise’s 14-year run of consecutive losing seasons, a low ebb that didn’t end until Buck Showalter was managing the club in 2012. Enough said, right?
But you know what? Looking back now at the 1998 and 1999 seasons, Surhoff is right.
Although things didn’t pan out, the Orioles were as loaded with “really, really good” players in those years as they’ve ever been at any point in their history.
In 1998, they had three future Hall of Fame inductees — Roberto Alomar, Harold Baines and Cal Ripken Jr. — in their daily lineup and another, Mike Mussina, topping their starting rotation. Their general manager, Pat Gillick, also was on his way to enshrinement in Cooperstown. The team Gillick put together featured one of baseball’s most productive hitters, Rafael Palmeiro; a superb defensive shortstop, Mike Bordick; and Surhoff, Brady Anderson and Eric Davis in the outfield.
That’s a loaded squad.
A year later, Alomar and Palmeiro were gone, as was Gillick, but Albert Belle, the game’s most feared slugger at the time, now anchored the lineup after signing a record deal in free agency. Six Orioles hit at least 16 home runs that season, led by Belle with 37 and Surhoff with 28. Mussina won 18 games.
“We had really good players,” Surhoff told me.
There’s no doubt about it. A high-priced core, funded by owner Peter Angelos, had helped the Orioles make the playoffs in 1996 and win 98 games as wire-to-wire division winners in 1997. But with many of the same players still on the team, they won just 79 games in 1998 and 78 in 1999, finishing fourth in the AL East in both seasons.
“For some reason, we just could not win enough games, I don’t know why. We just couldn’t win enough games,” Surhoff lamented in our interview.
It’s a baseball mystery: What happened to the Orioles in 1998 and 1999?
Actually, I can answer that question. I was a front-row witness to those seasons as a Baltimore Sun columnist. Although it was a long time ago, I remember well the unusual circumstances that sent the Orioles spiraling in the wrong direction even with the talent on their roster.
For starters, Davey Johnson was gone as manager, having resigned after the 1997 season when Angelos balked at his demand for a contract extension. Surhoff didn’t hesitate when asked about the impact of Johnson’s departure, which famously came on the day he was named American League Manager of the Year.
“The thing with Davey, that hurt us. Whether you like or don’t like Davey, his track record was pretty good,” Surhoff said. “That was an unfortunate situation that happened between him and ownership. I thought that definitely had an effect on us. Davey did a very good job.”
Another issue was a sharp decline in the pitching, which was ironic because Johnson’s managerial successor was Ray Miller, one of the best pitching coaches in Oriole history. In 1998, the Orioles scored almost exactly as many runs as they did while winning 98 games the year before, but they allowed 104 more runs, a major falloff. Jimmy Key went from 16 wins to six, Scott Kamieniecki from 10 wins to two. Reliever Randy Myers, who’d saved 45 games, departed via free agency. Then the pitching decline accelerated even more in 1999.
It’s easy in hindsight to blame Miller, but in fairness, these were years when it was sinking in that Baltimore’s beautiful, new ballpark was, in fact, a tough place to get batters out with its smallish dimensions enabling routine fly balls to land beyond the fences. Also in fairness to Miller, the overall hand he’d inherited actually was flawed. After trying for several years to win a pennant via free agency, the Orioles woke up o-l-d in 1998. Every one of their everyday players was at least 30. Baines was 39. Ripken was 37. Anderson was 34. It was a roster of stars no longer at their peak, a roster that sounded better than it was. (Surhoff was an exception. He had his finest seasons as he approached his mid-30s in 1998 and 1999.)
The Orioles actually started well in 1998 with 10 wins in their first 12 games, but they quickly faded and were 20 games out of first place by late June.
“Things just kind of fell apart,” Surhoff said.
Gillick departed after that season, replaced as GM by Frank Wren, who lasted less than a year before Angelos fired him and replaced him with Syd Thrift. A year later, there was another managerial change, with Mike Hargrove replacing Miller.
Angelos hoped to reverse the club’s slide by signing Belle in 1999, but the steady drumbeat of front office changes was having an impact. Even with Belle anchoring their lineup, the Orioles started 4-14 and never contended.
“Change hurts,” Palmeiro told me when I interviewed him for my book on Orioles history in 1999. “When you have a lot of change, that’s tough. You need some stability. You have that when you have one general manager and one manager over a period of time. Here [in Baltimore] they’ve had a lot of changes.”
By midseason in 2000, with the Orioles headed for a third straight losing season, the front office broke up the nucleus, trading Surhoff, Bordick and four other veterans.
“We all figured [the breakup] was going to happen, but [Mussina], with that dry wit of his, said it seemed like they had a little too much fun doing it,” Surhoff recalled.
Joe Foss, the team president, told me in an interview for my book in 2000 that the Orioles were entering a “transitional period” in which they would rely on young, homegrown talent rather than free agents. But the minor league system was far from the developmental monster it had been in the Orioles’ heyday, and few of those homegrown players became stalwarts. Losing seasons became the norm.
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