Ranking the Orioles Free Agent Starting Pitching Targets

Earlier this week Mike Elias went on the MLB Trade Rumors Podcast and was asked very directly what happened last offseason when he was putting together the Orioles rotation. 

“With Rubenstein taking over and like you said, you made the playoffs in 23 and 24 and you fanned the flames a little bit last November of last year because you said… you were considering the whole menu of available pitchers and that included high end free agent deals over many years. But in the end your rotation investments were a 1 year deal for 41 year old Charlie Morton and then a 1 year deal for 35 year old Tomoyuki Sugano who had no major league experience at that point. So to what do you attribute that disparity?” 

I couldn’t have written a better question and Elias was not happy with this summation of his offseason. 

He claimed that this wasn’t a fair reflection of their philosophy and that they had made offers to sign pitchers to multi year deals. 

My issue with that response is that the question was not about the Orioles front office philosophy about signing pitchers, it was about their execution which at least last offseason was indefensible. 

To recap

The Orioles had a clear need for top of the rotation starting pitching. 

They had the owners blessing to dramatically increase the payroll demonstrated by the fact they almost doubled the 2024 opening day payroll. 

They had prospects to make a trade if that was the best route to get a pitcher. Coby Mayo was still a top 20 prospect in baseball, Heston Kjerstad had some value still, Vance Honeycutt wasn’t considered a massive bust yet and Enrique Bradfield had ended the 2024 season on the periphery of some top 100 lists.

They had all this going on and they came home as close to empty handed as possible. 

They were correctly criticized for this before the season started and then when the season did start their failure to acquire pitching was directly responsible for the Orioles being effectively eliminated from the playoffs before Memorial Day. 

Charlie Morton went 0-6 in his first 6 starts with an ERA of 10.36.

Kyle Gibson went 0-3 in his 4 starts (He might not have gotten credit for it but believe me they lost the 4th start) with an ERA of 16.78. 

And that’s the season.

This year the Orioles once again have a clear need for top of the rotation starting pitching and they have cleared their books to have as much payroll as possible. 

Today we are going to look at this year’s starting pitching free agent class. We’ll do a little tiering, we’ll do a little ranking, it’ll be fun. 

Tier 1 – Best Available 

Framber Valdez 

IP: 192 | ERA: 3.66 | FIP: 3.51| xERA: 3.75 | xFIP: 3.34 | WHIP: 1.245 | K%: 23.3% | BB%: 8.5% | WAR: 4.0

This year’s free agent class has a lot of interesting arms who would be immediate upgrades for the Orioles rotation but Framber Valdez deserves to be in his own tier. 

Ever since Framber became a regular part of the Astros rotation he’s been dependable from a health perspective and his performance has been incredibly consistent. 

Over the past 4 seasons Framber has averaged 30 starts per season at a 3.21 ERA. He’s gotten Cy Young votes every year.

He doesn’t get the swing and miss strikeout numbers that we typically associate with an ace pitcher but his ability to induce ground balls allows him to get deep into games. He has led the league in complete games and shutouts in multiple years. 

Normally with a pitch to contact type pitcher you worry that their results will fluctuate based on BABIP but Valdez’s results have been steady and his ERA generally lines up well with his FIP and xERA. So he’s not a luck merchant and I feel good about lineups full of right handed batter pounding grounders at Gunnar Henderson and Jordan Westburg on the left side of the infield. 

There are a couple of concerns with Valdez as a free agency target. 

Problem #1 is that he’s the clear cut best pitcher available so if there’s a guy who is going to benefit from a bidding war it’ll be Valdez. Boston, Detroit, Toronto, Chicago, The Mets, and San Francisco are all teams that want to contend in 2026 that will be looking for a top of the rotation arm and Valdez will be the ultimate prize. 

You have to go into a bidding war with eyes open that if you spend too much money on Valdez it could impact your ability to sign other important players. However the Orioles need starting pitching so much more than anything else if there’s a position to spend big on it’s this one. 

Problem #2 is that Framber pretty obviously intentionally crossed up his own catcher to punish him for a homer that he had just given up and both his immediate reaction to it and his answers to the media later were odd. Over the past few years Valdez has been prone to occasional temper tantrums on the mound and Houston has allowed it to leak out that he can be a difficult personality. 

Does that mean the Orioles should avoid signing him? I’d say no.

In the end he’s good enough I can put up with some poor sportsmanship. That’s just how it goes with sports, if you’re good enough you can get away with some things. Valdez is good enough and the “sportsmanship crimes” he’s committed are relatively minor offenses. 

Tier 2 – Solid but Flawed Top of the Rotation Arms

The pitchers in this tier are guys who have been top of the rotation arms throughout their career but for one reason or another they aren’t entering the market at peak value. Some of them had down contract years and some of them dealt with injuries. Anyone in this tier would be an excellent addition to the Baltimore rotation by name but if it went south you’d be able to point to some signs that there were risks. 

Unless the Orioles plan to get all of their rotation upgrades via trade it is important that when the dust settles on this offseason that they bring one of these guys home.

Dylan Cease 

IP: 168 | ERA: 4.55 | FIP: 3.56| xERA: 3.46 | xFIP: 3.56 | WHIP: 1.327 | K%: 29.8% | BB%: 9.8% | WAR: 3.4

How much do you trust expected stats? How much do you trust FIP? Most people are aware that ERA isn’t necessarily the best way to evaluate pitcher performance and it’s even worse for projecting future performance but when you look at that 4.55 ERA and it makes you cringe. 

Cease has been even more consistent than Framber from a health perspective. He’s averaged over 32 starts per year since 2021. Unlike Framber the results seem to vary a bit more yer to year. Here is Cease’s ERA and FIP over the past 5 seasons.

2021: 3.91 ERA | 3.41 FIP

2022: 2.70 ERA | 3.10 FIP

2023: 4.58 ERA | 3.72 FIP 

2024: 3.47 ERA | 3.10 FIP

2025: 4.55 ERA | 3.56 FIP 

You can see the ERA rises and falls quite a bit year to year but the FIP is quite consistent. So it seems like he doesn’t necessarily pitch worse every other year as much as the way he pitches opens him up to possibility of underperforming the expected stats and every other year things don’t work out quite as well for him. 

So let’s talk about the way that Cease pitches. 

Cease hunts strikeouts. When he throws a pitch he usually intends for the batter to miss it or take it for a strike. This style of pitching is generally effective but not especially efficient. It makes it hard for him to get deep into games because he gets into a lot of deep counts, ends up throwing a lot of pitches and has to be pulled in the middle innings. 

I think it would be fair to say that Cease is a less effective but more durable version of Blake Snell. Similar to Snell you have to be ready for a lot of walks and high pitch counts but when he’s on he’ll mow through a lineup. 

One major difference between Cease and Snell is the pitch mix. Snell has a fastball heavy 4 pitch mix whereas Cease is basically a 2 pitch pitcher. I’d be interested to see if the Orioles would try to get him to throw something else. He technically has 4 other pitches but he hardly ever throws any of them. If any of those could be adjusted and improved upon it could help him be less volatile. 

As far as Cease’s market I’ll be interested to see if he’ll even want to sign a long term deal after this season. I could see him signing a shorter deal that has a player option after year 1 to try to have a better contract year and hit the market again. He’ll be newly 30 this offseason so hitting the market a year later wouldn’t affect him too much. If I were the Orioles I’d be happy to accommodate something like that. 

If he is looking for this deal to be his big free agency cash out and there are multiple teams willing to give him something like what Blake Snell got last year the Orioles should still try to win the Cease sweepstakes. He’s young for a free agent, he’s been incredibly durable and even his “bad” years would be helpful for the Orioles. 

Plus whatever the numbers say this is an opportunity to bring in someone with real arm talent. Do you think any of the Cubs hitters that faced him on Wednesday felt better about facing his 100 mph fastball and diving slider because his ERA was in the mid 4s? 

Michael King

IP: 73.1 | ERA: 3.44 | FIP: 4.42 | xERA: 4.26 | xFIP: 4.20 | WHIP: 1.200 | K%: 24.7% | BB%: 8.4% | WAR: 0.8

Unlike many of the other top arms available in this year’s free agent class King does not have a long track record of putting up 30+ starts year after year. He was a reliever for 4 seasons with the Yankees, popped as a starter for 1 year with the Padres making 30 starts at a 2.95 ERA but in his contract year struggled with injuries. 

In his 1 healthy season as a starter almost nobody was better than Michael King at inducing soft contact. Most soft contact guys lean on that skill all the way but King also still stuck batters out at a high rate. Elite at inducing soft contact with a K/9 in the 10s is ace stuff. 

This year, while dealing with injuries both of those numbers took a step back. He got hit harder more frequently and he didn’t strike guys out at nearly the same rate. Pretty good at inducing soft contact with K/9 numbers in the low nines is still good but not ace stuff. 

How do you evaluate a player with that kind of resume? Do you just accept that 2024 is who he is? Can you give a guy with such a limited track record a multi year deal? Can you trust him to stay healthy if you do? 

Between Bradish, Rogers and Rodriguez the Orioles already have a lot of pitchers that you worry about their health which is why I would prefer they target someone with a track record of durability. However that kind of thinking is how you end an offseason with no major signings. 

If I were the Orioles I would think about it like here is a guy who has flashed ace stuff and we have an opportunity to sign him for less than ace money. 

The Orioles have been known to be pretty strict with medicals and I don’t think they would drop those standards if they were thinking about signing King to a long term deal. Assuming King can pass the Orioles physical they should be willing to pay up.

Ranger Suarez 

IP: 157.1 | ERA: 3.20 | FIP: 3.21 | xERA: 3.15 | xFIP: 3.61 | WHIP: 1.220 | K%: 23.2% | BB%: 5.8% | WAR: 4.0

Suarez is kind of flying under the radar as a free agent target this offseason. As a Phillie he’s been overshadowed by Zach Wheeler, Aaron Nola and now Christopher Sanchez. 

I think it would be tricky for a team to sell it’s fanbase that we’re contenders and our number 1 starter is Ranger Suarez. He doesn’t have overpowering stuff, he doesn’t strike a lot of guys out and he’s never eclipsed 162 innings in a season. 

But since becoming a starter over the last 4 seasons he’s averaged 147 innings per year at a 3.59 ERA and a 3.57 FIP. That kind of consistent production out of your 2-3 starter would be incredibly impactful in Baltimore. 

Nothing about his profile suggests that he’s been lucky to keep his ERA in the 3s, in fact there’s an argument that if he was on a team with some better infield defense his numbers could be even better. 

He’s been getting better year over year for the past 4 seasons and he just turned 30 so it’s fair to expect that we haven’t even seen the best version of Ranger Suarez yet.

You’d also feel very comfortable starting him in a postseason series. Suarez has 1.43 ERA in 37.2 postseason innings as a Phillie. 

I don’t know if signing Ranger Suarez is going to get the fanbase fired up to sell out every game in the Orioles first homestand but it would undeniably push the team in the right direction. 

Tier 3 – Depends on the Medicals

I should maybe call this tier 2.5 becuase I really like the guys in this tier but their health over the last few years is concerning enough to me that I felt like they should be in their own tier. The guys in tier 2 I see no real excuse for not signing. With the guys in this tier if the Orioles came out and said we looked at their medicals and decided we couldn’t justify it I would understand. 

By sheer talent they might both be better than anyone in tier 2 but talent just isn’t that useful on the IL.

Shane Bieber

IP: 40.1 | ERA: 3.57 | FIP: 4.47 | xERA: 4.58 | xFIP: 3.35 | WHIP: 1.017 | K%: 23.3% | BB%: 4.4% | WAR: 0.3

I’ve got the stats from this year displayed but I don’t put too much stock in these stats.The reason I have Shane Bieber in this tier is because from 2019 to 2022 Shane Bieber made 92 starts at a 2.91 ERA with a 2.95 FIP with a K/9 of 10.9. That’s a dominant stretch of baseball.

Obviously it’s been awhile since that stretch and it would be unrealistic to think that signing Bieber in 2026 would be the same as signing Bieber in 2019 but even though it’s been a lot of years since Bieber was that guy it hasn’t been that many starts. 

It’s not like he’s been scuffling around pitching to 5 ERA for the past few seasons. He’s spent most of the time injured. 

So the question is what are you getting if you sign Shane Bieber this offseason? 

I’ll start by talking about the fastball. One of the concerns with Bieber before the injury was the declining fastball velo. In 2020 when he won the Cy Young the fastball averaged 94 mph. In 2021 it was down to 92.7 mph, in 2022 and 2023 it was 91.3 mph. 

Since coming back from his injury it’s back up at 92.7 mph which I consider a very good sign. 

If you look at each of his starts individually both by the numbers and if you watch some video you’ll see he settled into a groove in his last few starts and looked very comfortable on the mound. You’ll notice that his FIP (which is probably his ugliest stat this year) got inflated in his very last start where he gave up 2 solo shots and 2 walks. 

Obviously that’s how the stat works but if he had pitched even half a full starts workload I believe the FIP would have come back into the mid 3s. 

There are reasons a front office could convince themselves not to pursue Bieber. The injury history chief among them. But as I said in regards to Michael King, that’s the kind of thinking that leads to a team settling for a couple of 1 year deals and praying for Cade Povich to take a big step forward. 

If guys are coming off the board and it looks like the Orioles might get stuck without a dance partner, Bieber is a guy who could pay off the risk with lots of upside.

Brandon Woodruff 

IP: 64.2 | ERA: 3.20 | FIP: 3.17 | xERA: 2.18 | xFIP: 3.24 | WHIP: 0.912 | K%: 32.3% | BB%: 5.4% | WAR: 1.8

It took Brandon Woodruff longer than expected to get back from his shoulder surgery, but when he finally did return to the mound this year he looked really good. Of course he did get hurt before the end of the season which casts a shadow over his performance but that injury is relatively minor and if the Brewers make it deep enough into the playoffs he could pitch for them again. 

We’ll address the injuries but first I do want to talk about how good Brandon Woodruff is. In his 3 seasons before he missed all of 2024 he made 68 starts at a 2.70 ERA with a 3.11 FIP, a 0.981 WHIP and K/9 at 10.7. 

He prevented runs at an elite level and he did it by striking a lot of guys out while also not struggling with walks. He’s not a nibbler, he pounds the zone lives with the results, which have mostly been very good over his career. 

He gets hit hard sometimes but he doesn’t get hit a lot. The combination of not walking people and having a low opponents batting average has kept his WHIP number impressively low throughout his whole career and makes it so that when he gets barrelled up the damage is limited. 

Injuries are a big part of the should we sign Woodruff equation. If you knew he was going to be healthy you could argue he might have the highest ceiling of any pitcher available to sign this offseason. Unfortunately you can’t guarantee health and based on the last few years you can’t even really expect him to be healthy. 

All the talent in the world can’t help you if you’re on the IL. I know I mentioned other injury concerns for guys like King and Bieber but with Woodruff those concerns are much greater. 

That shoulder surgery he got is pretty unique, lots of guys get Tommy John every year and teams know what to expect from guys recovering from that. Will the Orioles staff be equipped to help Woodruff get back to his old self? Even though he came back and performed well this year the velo was noticeably down from before his surgery. Is there a plan to get him back up to his old velo? Would that be dangerous? 

Similar to Bieber it really all depends on the medicals. If the Orioles look at the medicals and they feel good about it they should try to sign Woodruff. Seriously if they think he’ll be healthy going forward he should maybe be their number 1 target.

If they look at them and they don’t like what they see I’d be fine avoiding another often injured pitcher. 

Tier 4 – Really Good 2019-2021 and Still Young 

Starting in this tier is where I’d be really disappointed if any of these guys are the best pitcher the Orioles acquire in the offseason. I say acquire and not sign because if the O’s signed Giolito and traded for Joe Ryan I’d consider that a very good offseason. If the O’s big offseason haul is Jack Flaherty and Dustin May I’m going to feel like I’m never going to see the Orioles win a World Series in my lifetime.

Lucas Giolito 

IP: 145 | ERA: 3.41 | FIP: 4.17 | xERA: 5.01 | xFIP: 4.59 | WHIP: 1.290 | K%: 19.7% | BB%: 9.1% | WAR: 2.0

Giolito’s been on a weird path. He was one of the best pitchers in the league from 2019-2021 (prime sticky stuff era). Then he was one of the worst starters in the league from 2022-2023 and then he missed all of 2024. 

2025 was his big bounce back year and he did well enough he will opt out of his contract with the Red Sox and become a free agent but I’d be nervous of being the team to sign him.

As someone who watches baseball through a very Orioles centered lens I thought Giolito was having a much better year than this mostly based on the fact that he mowed through the Orioles lineup a few weeks ago. 

I know that he got off to a slow start coming back from an injury this year so maybe looking at year long stats makes him look worse than what his talent really is. 

Also at this point in the tiers we’re looking for guys who can come in to bolster the middle of the rotation so it’s ok if they don’t have ace stuff or if they have a blow up start here and there that makes their stats a little ugly. 

My main concern with Giolito is that he really over performed a lot of the expected stats and I wouldn’t want to have to pay him like a low/mid 3s ERA starter and then get stuck on the bad end of a regression to the mean season. 

If the price lines up and it’s a good deal go for it but if there’s any sort of bidding war for Giolito’s services the O’s should bow out early.

Jack Flaherty

IP: 161 | ERA: 4.64 | FIP: 3.85 | xERA: 4.03 | xFIP: 3.69 | WHIP: 1.280 | K%: 27.6% | BB%: 8.7% | WAR: 2.5

Jack Flaherty had a disappointing tenure in Baltimore, but the pitching coach he had beef with is gone and most likely there will be a lot more new coaches as well. So unless he had a very specific problem with Kyle Bradish or Dean Kremer there shouldn’t be a reason the Orioles couldn’t bring him back. 

The question is do we want him back? 

Since 2020 Jack Flaherty has mostly been a slightly below average pitcher. Mid 4s ERA, Mid 4s FIP a WHIP of 1.398 which is quite high. 

In 2024 he looked like he’d found his 2019 self with the Tigers and even though he wasn’t quite as good once he was traded to the Dodgers he still played an important role in their World Series run. 

This year with Tigers it was back to the same old. But was it though? 

His 2025 FIP, K rate and WHIP were much closer to what he did in 2024 than the years previous; he just walked more guys and didn’t get as lucky with RISP or with homers.

So you can make a case that he’s actually due for some positive regression in 2026 and would be a decent fit to help fill out the middle of the Orioles rotation. 

The downside is that Flaherty has a 20 million dollar player option so the O’s would need to beat that number to get him to leave Detroit. Plus Detroit needs pitching and has a good relationship with Flaherty so they’d have to win a bidding war with a team Flaherty likes despite being a team he doesn’t like. 

I wouldn’t hold my breath on this one.

Tier 5 – Zac(h)(k)

This is a tier for people with a variation of the name Zach. 

Zac Gallen

IP: 192 | ERA: 4.83 | FIP: 4.51 | xERA: 4.40 | xFIP: 4.12 | WHIP: 1.260 | K%: 21.5% | BB%: 8.1% | WAR: 1.1

If you did a blind reveal of these numbers and asked me “Would you want the Orioles to sign this player to a multi year deal?” I would have to say we already have Dean Kremer at home.

Free agency isn’t done via blind reveal though and Zac Gallen has some truly impressive seasons under his belt. From 2022 to 2024 Gallen averaged 31 starts per year at a 3.20 ERA and a 3.22 FIP. 

The problem is that if you look at those years individually he was declining each year culminating in his very disappointing 2025 

WHIP

2022: 0.913

2023: 1.119

2024: 1.264

2025: 1.260

FIP

2022: 3.05

2023: 3.26

2024: 3.38

2025: 4.51

ERA

2022: 2.54

2023: 3.47

2024: 3.65

2025: 4.83

It’s not a good trend. 

The question is; will it continue getting worse or is 2025 the low point. If you take out the 2025 numbers and look at his year over year stats, yes he’s still getting worse but the numbers are still very respectable. 2025 is when the numbers hit a yikes point. 

2023 Zac Gallen would’ve gotten a massive bag in free agency, 2024 Zac Gallen would’ve still gotten paid very well but who is going to want to pay for the version of Zac Gallen we got in 2025. 

Narratively I heard people say he turned it around in the second half of the season and it’s true he did pitch better but even if you throw out his first half and said the version of Zac Gallen we got in the second half the season is the real Zac Gallen the stats are not that impressive. 

3.97 ERA | 3.99 FIP | 1.09 WHIP | 7.6 K/9 

It’s just not that good. 

I’ve looked at the stats and I see the very consistent decline and I looked at the playoff game logs from 2023 and they weren’t as good as I remembered and it makes me feel like signing him would be a mistake. BUT the Orioles pitching lab has been cooking recently and I feel like if they get their hands on Gallen they could reverse some of the decline. Also he pitches a ton of innings which even at a mid 4s ERA is still valuable. 

If the Orioles have the opportunity to sign Gallen to a short deal they should. 

Zach Eflin 

IP: 71.1 | ERA: 5.93 | FIP: 5.65 | xERA: 4.53 | xFIP: 4.38 | WHIP: 1.416 | K%: 16.2% | BB%: 4.2% | WAR: -0.3

2025 did not go Zach Eflin’s way. You look at his stats at the end of the year and they are not good at all. I’m not overly concerned about those numbers though. I think he tried to pitch through an injury and it made him look bad. Then he went on the IL for a bit and then he came back before he should have and looked worse. 

He ended up having to get pretty serious back surgery and that’s not the kind of thing that just happens one pitch to the next; it was likely bothering him for some time, possibly even going back to 2024. 

If we throw out 2025, I really like the pitcher Zach Eflin was from 2023-2024. He pounded the zone and he made hitters beat him. When he did go outside the zone it was with the purpose of getting hitters to chase which he did very well. 

Across those 2 seasons he had a 3.54 ERA, a 3.37 FIP and 1.085 WHIP, all of which are great numbers to the point where you can almost understand how the Orioles front office convinced themselves he could carry their rotation in 2025. 

Eflin was a bit overtasked as a number 1 starter but assuming his recovery from back surgery goes well I would welcome him back as a middle of the rotation starter. With the year he just had I don’t expect there to be too many teams lined up to give him a big deal and from what I can tell he likes playing for the O’s so I think we should be able to work out some sort of pillow contract for him that gives him a chance to get his value back up before hitting free agency again. 

Zack Littell

IP: 186.2 | ERA: 3.81 | FIP: 4.88 | xERA: 4.50 | xFIP: 4.35 | WHIP: 1.104 | K%: 17.1% | BB%: 4.2% | WAR: 1.5

Littell and Eflin are very similar pitchers. They’re both relievers turned starters and they both throw a ton of strikes. Over the course of their careers Eflin has fared a bit better but in 2025 it was Litell who had the better season. If you look at their expected stats those were still almost exactly the same. 

A lot of what I like about Zach Eflin I also like about Zack Littell. When it comes to middle to back end starters I prefer guys who are in the zone and that give their defense a chance to help them out. If your back end starters walk a lot of guys there’s only so much the rest of the team can do to help them especially on a bad day. 

If another team outbids the Orioles for Eflin it’s nice that there’s another Zack out there who could fill a similar role.

Tier 6 – Old but still got it 

These are pitchers who would be upgrades to the Orioles rotation and would provide valuable veteran presence. The downside is that they’re old and we saw with Charlie Morton last year when you bring in an older starter you can’t guarantee that the wheels won’t come off. 

So as much as I think these guys could help the O’s I think it would be irresponsible to sign them with the expectations they’re going to lead the rotation. If the O’s signed someone from the higher tiers AND one of these guys I think that would work quite well.

Merril Kelly 

IP: 184 | ERA: 3.52 | FIP: 3.76 | xERA: 4.09 | xFIP: 3.81 | WHIP: 1.114 | K%: 22.3% | BB%: 6.4% | WAR: 3.1

Besides some injury issues in 2024 Kelly has been a super reliable starter. Since he came over from the KBO he is 15th in innings pitched. You look at his career and he’s just a machine that churns out 160+ innings at a mid 3 to mid 4s ERA. 

He was also absolutely nails in the one playoff run he got with Arizona. I mentioned that Gallen’s postseason stats were not as good as I remembered and when I checked out Kelly’s stats and I must have swapped them in my mind because he was excellent in the 4 starts he made. 

I think contractually things line up between the Orioles and Kelly. Because of his age I don’t think many teams will be trying to sign him to a long term deal and that’s what Mike Elias fears more than anything in the world. So if he has a chance to sign a guy with a long track record of durability and effectiveness without being elbowed out of the way by desperate teams actually willing to hand out long term contracts he better take it.

Chris Bassitt

IP: 170.1 | ERA: 3.96 | FIP: 4.01 | xERA: 4.18 | xFIP: 3.84 | WHIP: 1.327 | K%: 22.6% | BB%: 7.1% | WAR: 2.4

Pretty much everything I said about Merrill Kelly also applies to Chris Bassitt even down to them being just a couple months apart in age. 

One thing that is unique to Chris Bassitt that I appreciate is that he’s got that crazy 8 pitch kitchen sink approach which is very cool. I’ve listened to him give some interviews and talk about his approach and I think he is the exact kind of veteran player that could help young guys like Grayson Rodriguez and eventually Trey Gibson transition from being “throwers” to being “pitchers”. 

From what Bassitt says about himself he’s very strategic on the mound and he puts a lot of thought into what he’s going to show a hitter in his first two plate appearances so that he can be effective as he pitches a third time through the lineup and get deep into games. 

The Orioles young pitchers responded really well to Jordan Lyles and Kyle Gibson and Bassitt would be a natural successor and upgrade in the role of veteran pitcher who shows the younger guys what it’s like to take the ball every 5 days and try to get deep into games.

Similar to with Kelly I expect Bassitt will be looking for a 2-3 year deal and I don’t think the AAV would be prohibitive. He’d be a good fit in Baltimore.

Tier 7 – Interesting Experiments/depth arms 

I would not want to go into the 2026 season relying on anyone in this tier to give the Orioles 30+ starts. However if the Orioles signed any of these guys and the buzz around the signing was that they thought they could “unlock something” I would be intrigued.

Griffin Canning 

Canning looked like he might have unlocked something for the Mets early this season but his season was cut short before he could really prove that he had really turned a corner. A 70 inning sample size isn’t enough to convince the entire league you’re a new man but seeing him pitch well for the Mets after struggling so much on the Angels does suggest there’s some untapped potential there. 

Dustin May

Not that long ago Dustin May was set to be an important part of the the Dodgers future and it just never quite came together for him. His first few years with the Dodgers he looked good when he was healthy but he could never stay healthy. 

This year was the healthiest he’s ever been but he pitched quite poorly. So the question with May is; have injuries sapped him of his potential? Or does he just need a fully healthy offseason where he isn’t rehabbing something to get back on track? 

I watched a few of his starts this year and it did not look good. The velo was way down, he walked a bunch of guys and got hit hard. A trifecta of bad. BUT if the Orioles signed him and then we saw some wobbly footage of him hitting 100 mph at a Driveline batting cage this offseason I could get into it. 

The hair/uniform combo would be rough.

German Marquez

Marquez put up a historically bad pitching season for the Rockies this year so it’s hard to sell that acquiring him would be interesting but hear me out. 

It’s impossible to measure the psychological damage that pitching in Colorado for almost a decade would do to a pitcher. 

Besides the altitude the Rockies are decades behind the rest of the league in terms of using analytics to help their pitchers figure things out and perform. One offseason with a modern organization and who knows what Marquez might unlock. 

Jordan Montgomery

The past two season have gone about as poorly as you could possibly imagine for Jordan Montgomery and he did just get Tommy John earlier this year so he wouldn’t even be able to pitch for the first half of 2026. 

However I still believe in Montgomeries talent. He was very consistent from 2017-2023 with the Yankees, Cardinals and Rangers and then he signed with the Diamondbacks and had a season from Hell. 

The Red Sox and Brewers have both had some success giving injured players 2 year deals to rehab with them and then get their next full healthy season for cheap. The issue is that the Brewers traded for Montgomery so they might be cooking something like that up already and who could blame Montgomery for wanting to hang around Milwaukee to get his career on track.

Justin Verlander 

Verlander pitched well enough this season that he maybe deserves to be in a higher tier but he’ll be 43 next year and I don’t think the Orioles should be seeking out another opportunity to have an old pitcher look incredibly washed in their jersey. 

Baltimore is the only orange team that Verlander is missing so maybe they have no choice.