January 10, 1991, 30 years ago: The Baltimore Orioles trade pitchers Curt Schilling and Pete Harnisch, and outfielder Steve Finley, to the Houston Astros for 1st baseman Glenn Davis.
Davis -- no relation to the Glenn Davis who won the 1946 Heisman Trophy winner for Army -- was already dealing with a rib injury. He hurt his neck during Spring Training, and was never the same. He played just 185 games for the Orioles over 3 seasons, feuded with manager Johnny Oates, and was released before the 1993 season ended.
He tried to make the New York Mets in Spring Training in 1994 and failed. He got the same result with the Kansas City Royals in 1995. He played the 1996 season in Japan, and retired. He played his last major league game at the age of 32.
The players the O's gave up? Despite battling depression, Harnisch pitched another 11 seasons, winning 95 games on top of the 16 he'd already won with the Orioles, making the 1991 All-Star Game. Twice, he won as many as 16 games. In 1993, he led the National League with 4 shutouts.
Finley played another 17 seasons, collecting 2,548 hits including 304 home runs, leading the NL in triples twice, winning 5 Gold Gloves, making 2 All-Star Games, and reaching the postseason with the 1996 and '98 San Diego Padres (winning the Pennant in '98); the 1999, 2001 and '02 Arizona Diamondbacks (winning the World Series in '01); the 2004 Los Angeles Dodgers; and the 2005 Los Angeles Angels.
Schilling pitched another 17 seasons, going 215-140, making the 3,000 Strikeout Club, and making 6 All-Star Games. He never won a Cy Young Award, although he finished 2nd in his League's voting 3 times. He had 3 20-win seasons, led the NL in complete games 4 times and in strikeouts twice.
He reached the postseason with the 1993 Philadelphia Phillies (winning the MVP of the NLCS and pitching a shutout in Game 5 of the World Series); the 2001 and '02 Arizona Diamondbacks (reunited with Finley, and sharing the Series MVP with Randy Johnson); and the 2004 and '07 Boston Red Sox (winning the World Series both times, famously winning Game 6 of the '04 ALCS on an injured ankle).
His strikeout-to-walk ratio of 4.38 ranks 2nd among all pitchers with at least 3,000 innings pitched, and the only man ahead of him, Tommy Bond, last pitched in 1884, the year that overhand pitching was legalized. He has not been elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame, but a lot of people believe that he should be.
This has been called the worst trade in Oriole history. But is it?
Top 5 Reasons You Can't Blame the Baltimore Orioles for Trading Curt Schilling
5. The Mirage of '89. After going 54-107 in 1988, The Orioles rebounded in 1989, going 87-75, finishing only 2 games out of 1st place in the American League Eastern Division. They slipped in 1990, going 76-85. But they still had most of the players that nearly got them into the Playoffs in '89. The idea was that, maybe, one more good player could get the O's back into position to make the Playoffs.
The truth was, the '89 O's were filling a vacuum. The New York Yankees had fallen apart. The Red Sox had an injury crisis, resulting in a bad finish between 2 Division title seasons. The Detroit Tigers and the Milwaukee Brewers got old.
4. Who's On First? Randy Milligan hit 20 home runs and had 65 RBIs in 1990. But he also had a slump that dropped his batting average to .194 on May 25. He finished at .265. He got hurt on August 7, and only played in 3 more games the rest of the season. His replacement, David Segui, was a rookie who batted .244, and turned out to be better as an outfielder.
The Orioles needed a new 1st baseman. Looking like a good replacement was...
3. Glenn Davis. In what had amounted to 6 full major league seasons, Davis had hit 166 home runs. And that was while playing his home games in the Astrodome, which, at the time, was the NL's worst stadium for a hitter. He was a good fielder, too. He had made 2 All-Star Games, and finished 2nd to Mike Schmidt in the voting for the 1986 NL Most Valuable Player award. Injuries limited him to 93 games in 1990, but he still hit 22 home runs and had 64 RBIs.
There was nothing wrong with wanting a healthy Glenn Davis in the 1990-91 off-season. The Orioles just didn't get a healthy one. Had he been healthy, the short right-field fence at Camden Yards, opening in 1992, would have been a tempting target.
2. Curt Schilling -- as he was in 1990. In 44 major league games for the Orioles, all but 5 of them in relief, he had gone 1-6, with 3 saves, an ERA of .454, an ERA+ of 85, and a WHIP of 1.471. He was about to turn 24, and there was no indication that he was going to get any better.
Furthermore, his character had already become an issue. A few years later, while he was with the Phillies, and had become one of the best pitchers in the game, their general manager, Lee Thomas, said about him, "One day out of five, he's a horse. The other four, he's a horse's ass."
Yes, he had become one of the best pitchers in the game. But the Orioles weren't the only team that gave up on him:
1. Other Teams. The Orioles got Schilling on July 29, 1988, from the Red Sox, along with Brady Anderson, in exchange for Mike Boddicker. They gave up on Schilling before he'd even reached the majors. No one calls this a bad trade, though, mainly because Boddicker, one of the heroes of the Orioles' 1983 World Championship, made the difference in getting the Sox the 1988 AL East title.
The Orioles traded Schilling to the Astros, and they traded Schilling away, too. For good reason: He wasn't getting the job done in Houston, any more than he was in Baltimore. In what turned out to be his only season with the Astros, in 56 games, all in relief, he went 3-5, with 8 saves, a 3.81 ERA, a 92 ERA+, and a WHIP of 1.559. These are inadequate stats for a starter; for a reliever, they're horrible.
And so, on April 2, 1992, the Astros traded him to the Phillies for Jason Grimsley. Hardly anybody ever talks about this as a horrible trade for the Astros -- probably because they were in rebuilding mode, and made the Playoffs 6 times in 9 seasons from 1997 to 2005. In contrast, the Orioles only made the Playoffs twice in the 21 seasons after trading Schilling (in 1996 and '97).
On July 26, 2000, the Phillies traded Schilling to the Arizona Diamondbacks for Omar Daal, Nelson Figueroa, Travis Lee and Vicente Padilla. Another horrible trade? Having Schilling probably wouldn't have helped the Phils much over the next few years: Their next season making the Playoffs was 2007, his last season.
And on November 28, 2003, the D-backs traded him to the Red Sox for Casey Fossum, Brandon Lyon, Jorge De La Rosa and Mike Goss. None of those players did much for Arizona (and Goss didn't even make the majors), and they only made the Playoffs twice over the next 13 seasons.
Five teams got rid of Curt Schilling. Two of them did so after he became a superstar. They all figured out what Lee Thomas had figured out: Keeping him just wasn't worth it. In other words, if the Orioles still had him in 1996 and 1997, maybe they wouldn't have made the Playoffs.
VERDICT: Not Guilty. Maybe Guilty of a lesser charge, of guessing wrong on Davis. But, at the time, the trade was totally justifiable.
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