Orioles Card "O" the Day

An intersection of two of my passions: baseball cards and the Baltimore Orioles. Updated daily?

Thursday, November 20, 2014

Omar Daal, 2003 Topps Total #623

There's laughably bad Photoshop, and then there's this half-assed attempt to digitally change Omar Daal from a Los Angeles Dodger into a Baltimore Oriole. Is that the tiniest jersey wordmark you've ever seen? That's without even mentioning that he appears to be wearing road grays, and yet "Orioles" is in black lettering, as per the Birds' home uniforms at that time. This image doesn't portend great things, and so it went for the 31-year-old lefty in Charm City, the final destination of his big league career. You've got to fail on a grand scale to be the worst starter in a rotation featuring a sophomore-slumping Rodrigo Lopez (7-10, 5.82 ERA, 1.57 WHIP) and a past-his-prime Rick Helling (7-8, 5.71 ERA, 1.41 WHIP). Heck, even Damian Moss (1-5, 6.22 ERA after arriving from the Giants in the Sidney Ponson deadline deal) wasn't appreciably worse than Omar. He went 4-11 in 19 appearances with a 6.34 ERA and a 1.75 WHIP. He allowed nearly 13 hits per nine innings. Then poof, he was gone. You can see why I still shake my head when I hear or read that the current Orioles have a surplus of starting pitchers. It's been a long time coming.

2 comments:

deal said...

Game Date on the card photo 8/4/2002. Pretty sure that is the Vet. Daal had only 1 start at PHL in 2002 and The Giants played Pittsburgh that day

http://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/PHI/PHI200208040.shtml

deal said...

and the pitchers numbers on the Out o town scoreboard match up Rueter=46 and Kris Benson = 34.