It's a sad day in Birdland when Kevin Millwood is your key loss.

we are not letting the good talent walk.

and by good I mean, Oriole standard good.

We keep Markakis, Jones, Wieters, Matusz, Guthrie, Scott….

I know none of them are up for FA, but they’re still here, and will be for years to come (except Guts and Scott, who we still have a year or so of team control). The players who are actually good are locked up for a while. That’s a good thing.

We never have any decent players leave via free agency, so we never get good compensation picks

- Would Koji have been considered our top loss if he had left?

- It is kinda nice (and reflected by our top ranking) that we acquired 3 of the top losses from other teams and the 2nd highest loss from another. Whether that means anything we’ll see

I’d have to agree that Mussina was our last big offseason loss and losing Raffy and Alomar a couple years before are the only others that come to mind

although that was a trade and may have been prior to mussina leaving.

Another way of thinking about this is, how many, if any, compensatory draft picks have the Orioles had in the last 10 years/ever?

… when a guy leaves in a trade. I wouldn’t count Tejada because when he was traded it felt more like a relief than a loss.

BJ Ryan, but he had what, 1 or 2 good years before injury limited him after he left. Surhoff played only 1 more season I think, after he left. Conine might make the list if we wanted to fill it out to 4 or 5 names.

In summary, you have hit one of the sore spots of being an O’s fan. We haven’t had star players in some time. As I’ve stated before, it is the curse of Eddie Murray. Had we not insulted the man’s pride (on the part of both the organization and thge fans) and basically forced a trade, Baltimore would be neck and neck with the Yankees for titles.

for someone leaving on their own.

  As for the trade route that would easily be, for myself, the Glenn Davis trade. I remember rumors floating around that other teams were interested in Schilling or Harnisch as part of any deal the Orioles were looking to make at the time and it never occured to me that they would deal Finley. To imagine that they would package all three together was a shock and a kick in the gonads.

I realize at the time Schilling and Finley were still raw, but the scouting reports were promising and they were exciting to watch the few times I got to see them. Schilling was considered by some as a steal for the O’s in the Boddicker trade where we also got Brady Anderson. Harnisch was actually the best player of the three at the time of the trade. I was one of the few at the time that hated this trade, not because of Glenn Davis but that we traded away three young players with such potential.

A shame, I had always liked Roland Hemond, too.

and alomar and palmeiro before that. i was actually glad we traded tejada and bedard b/c i was ready for rebuilding. i wanted them to trade roberts, too, although i’d’ve missed him more. i didn’t care much about bj ryan, so meh when he left for beaucoup bucks.

…you got nothing to lose.

We certainly weren’t alone in not keeping the guy around; Arizona and Colorado passed on him before us, and then San Diego bizarrely kept him in the minors when he was OPSing over 1.000 his age 27 season. But he put up a 129 OPS+ in his cup of coffee in 2004 and then we sent him back to the minors and let him walk. Why? Batting average. He never hit .300. Sure, his IsoD was around .100 but you know the people who were running the franchise at the time.

He wouldn’t have made those teams contenders, probably, but he might have made 2005 a bit more tolerable after what happened, happened. Hard to say. Still a mistake to waste his early prime the way we and others did.

…but our DH in 2004 was David Newhan. In 2005 it was Jay Gibbons.