Signs that your career as a starting pitcher hasn’t turned out that great is being labeled with the term innings eater. Though the term does rank ahead of terms such as swing man, minor league free agent and certainly ahead of former big leaguer.

Today the Baltimore Orioles agreed to terms with pitcher Mark Hendrickson on a one year deal worth $1.5 million. He can earn an additional $100,000 if he pitches 180 innings and $300,000 if he makes 30 starts.

Now we aren’t going to go out of our brians here and pull a Spencer Fordin and say that “Hendrickson signing solidifies O’s staff” but we will say that the team could have done worse. After all he is not Sidney Ponson but we do question the rational behind the front office spin that he is there to eat innings.

Call me stupid but I’m a bit confused. If Hendrickson is such a monster at eating innings and is going out there to try and give the bullpen rest then why is he getting incentives for reaching pedestrian levels such as 180 innings or 30 starts. Almost any joker who spends the year in a rotation can reach those totals.

Well almost any joker not named Mark Hendrickson. You see Hendrickson has earned the label innings eater despite his career high for innings being 183 1/3 and his career high for starts was 31 coming in 2005. Actually in his last two stops teams have tried to keep him out of the rotation and use him more as some kind of swing man which hasn’t worked too well either. He’s 11-15 with an ERA well over 5 during the last two seasons with the Los Angeles Dodgers and Florida Marlins.

Maybe the Orioles were hoping to help the Washington Wizards with this deal. Hendrickson who stands 6′9″ played in the NBA sparingly from 1996-2000. His final NBA career numbers were 114 games played, 8 starts, 1,508 minutes played, 316 rebounds, 15 blocks and 381 points scored.

Hendrickson was drafted five times by major league clubs before joining the Toronto Blue Jays in 1998 he made his big league debut in August of 2002. Since that time Hendrickson has played eight big league seasons split between the Blue Jays, Tampa Bay Rays, Los Angeles Dodgers and Florida Marlins.

It would take a team with a rotation as much of a mess as the Baltimore Orioles to even consider Hendrickson a major league caliber pitcher. The Orioles currently are entering the season with Jeremy Guthrie as their ace and then will be hoping by some act of God that they can skip the next four games before allowing Guthrie to take the mound again.

Their rotation projects to be the majority of the following: Garret Olson (9-10, 6.65 ERA in 26 starts) Chris Waters (3-5, 5.01 ERA in 11 starts) Radhames Liz (6-6, 6.72 ERA in 17 starts) Matt Albers (3.49 ERA but used primarily out of the pen) or injured pitcher Troy Patton who missed all of 2008.

Hendrickson likely becomes the number two pitcher on the Orioles and the team which is an idea somewhere along the lines of thinking Roseanne Barr is sexy.
Below you can find the career numbers of Henrickson.