All offseason I have been saying that the Orioles need to pretend like Grayson Rodriguez doesn’t exist when planning for the 2026 season. Well last night Mike Elias said “I can do you one better than that” and traded him to the Angels in exchange for Taylor Ward.
When I first saw the Andy Kostka post that started with “The Orioles have swung a deal trading Grayson Rodriguez…” I was a little excited. I have been asking the Orioles to stop hoarding their assets and make some outside of the box moves to improve the team in the now. I would have assumed that even with the injuries Rodriguez was someone the Orioles would only trade for an interesting package.
Then my eyes slowly but surely made their way down to the part of the post that explained that the return was Taylor Ward. My first thought was “Is Taylor Ward a lot younger and under team control for a lot longer than I thought?”
The answer was no. He’s 32 and in the last year of his contract.
This trade is a bit of a head scratcher that leaves me feeling like we don’t have all the information we need for this to make sense but that’s not going to stop me from reacting. In this blog we’ll try to capture as many sides of this trade as possible and explain what this means for the rest of the offseason.
Grayson Rodriguez
From my opening to the blog you can tell that I was ok with the idea of trading Grayson Rodriguez. The Orioles have a lot of frequently or recently injured pitchers set to be important parts of the rotation so I understand the thought process of “let’s move on from the guy we feel we’re most concerned about and replace him with someone more reliable.” That makes sense to me.
However with 4 years of team control remaining on his deal a player as talented as Grayson Rodriguez should have had more value than a rental corner outfielder.
I know people will point to the injuries but injuries are pretty normal for pitchers. Losing Rodriguez for the entire 2025 season makes it feel like his health has been a disaster but in reality he was called up in 2023 and was mostly healthy until his big injury in late 2024.
You look at the back of the baseball card for many of the best pitchers around the league and you’ll see a lot of partial seasons and missed years early in their careers. Garrett Crochet pitched less than 80 innings total in the first four years of his career. Tarik Skubal didn’t pitch a full season until his 5th year in the league.
Those might seem like lofty guys to compare Grayson Rodriguez to but if you look at the three of them through the first 3 years of their careers they’re pretty similar. When you’re talking pure arm talent Rodriguez is right there. He can throw 100 mph and he’s got multiple solid secondary offspeed pitches. There are things he needs to work on but with someone that talented with 4 years of team control there should be a solid market.
Even if Mike Elias asked every single team what they would trade for Grayson Rodriguez and this was the best they could do he still had the option to wait and see if Rodriguez could put together a healthy stretch and then trade him.
Trevor Rogers really struggled to stay healthy for years and the Marlins waited around until they managed to get a decent half season from him and then got multiple players who play everyday for them in a trade.
Rodriguez has options. If you get into next season and he’s hurt you put him on the IL and free up a 40 man spot and if he’s just bad you can demote him to Norfolk and free up a roster spot. If at any time in the next 4 years Rodriguez had put together a decent stretch you could have traded him for as much or even more than what you got.
I know that if you hold onto him there is a risk his arm turns out to be fully cooked and he never bounces back and then you’d get nothing for him but this trade is basically getting nothing for Grayson Rodriguez. 12 months from now Taylor Ward will no longer be on the Orioles and it will be essentially the same as if they had just non-tendered Rodriguez.
I’ve seen some reactions along the lines that the O’s must already know the arm is done. If that’s the case then the trade is fine but in a trade the teams get to look at medical information and if there was something in the medicals that said the arm was definitely done then why would the Angels do this? I’ve been a little dismissive of Taylor Ward but he does have enough value that it wouldn’t make sense to trade him for someone who doctors think will never pitch again. I don’t think the Angels are THAT poorly run.
Again it’s not even that I NEEDED to have Grayson Rodriguez on the Orioles. If you had told me that the Orioles were going to trade Grayson Rodriguez I would have assumed that it was part of a trade to fill a real hole on the roster. I could imagine Rodriguez being used as a sweetener in a trade for Freddy Peralta or swapped for Drew Rasmussen or if that’s pie in the sky why wouldn’t the Cardinals or another team in the tank take a flyer on him in exchange for a few years of a decent reliever that they have no use for.
It just seems odd to punt on someone that a year ago you were ready to go into the season with as your number 1 starter and the return is such that it doesn’t feel like you HAD to do this.
Taylor Ward
I’ve hinted that I’m not very high on Taylor Ward a couple of times. It’s not that I don’t think he’s good, I just think 4 years of Grayson Rodriguez for 1 year of Taylor Ward is unbalanced.
As far as the 2026 season goes though Ward is a solid but awkward addition to this Orioles team.
Solid in the sense that nobody on the Orioles hit over 17 homers last year and Ward hit 36 last year and 25 the year before. He’s got good splits against lefties which is something the Orioles have been desperate to have for a couple years. His .792 OPS would have been the highest on the Orioles out of anyone that finished the season with the team. He’s also been durable which is something the Orioles outfield has lacked recently.
In a vacuum he’s a productive and useful player and there’s a reason that every year the Angels have turned down trade offers for him.
After the trade the Orioles outfield is Colton Cowser, Tyler O’Neil, Dylan Beavers, Taylor Ward and Leody Taveras with an Enrique Bradfield Jr debut at some point in the season.
We knew before this trade the Orioles needed another right handed outfield bat but I had assumed/hoped that that right handed bat would be able to play center and so that the planned outfield rotation would be Cowser, Beavers, O’Neil and right handed center fielder X with Taveras as the break glass in case of emergency option in the minors. Now Taveras’ role appears to be much larger (not great!).
With this group it’s worth noting that the defense will be bad. I assume against lefties the plan would be for Ward and O’Neil to play the corner outfield spots and that’s a lot to ask Colton Cowser to make up for. It feels like what you gain in the lineup from their platoon splits you might give right back in the field.
Of course it’s fair to expect that Tyler O’Neill will get hurt at some point and then it will be good to have someone who can slide into his role, but trading 4 years of a starter for a Tyler O’Neil insurance policy feels steep.
Basically Mike Elias has spent 26 million dollars and Grayson Rodriguez on the role of right handed corner outfield platoon bat in 2026. Is that a good use of those resources?
Why did the Orioles do this now?
I read Ben Clemens’ article on Fangraphs about the trade and his point was that the Orioles might take a loss in the long term on this trade but that it was so important to improve the team now that they had to do it.
I would say that would be true if they made this trade in February after striking out in free agency. If spring training was about to start and the headlines were that the Orioles are going to go into 2026 with the exact same offense that failed in 2025 I would feel like it’s time to make an aggressive move like trading Grayson Rodriguez for a bat.
But right now in November with everyone except Josh Naylor still unsigned and supposedly free reign to spend 100+ million dollars this offseason it feels like you could have made the team better without having to trade away a young promising pitcher with 4 years of team control for a rental.
It’s like last year when Scott Boras said the Orioles jumped the market on O’Neill. Why are we in such a rush to get our hands on these 2 WAR outfielders?
Making Sense of the Trade
It feels like we are dealing with an incomplete picture. Like the front office has some piece of information that we don’t have and that informed the decision to make this trade. Here are some possible explanations that I think would help make sense of this deal.
Grayson Rodriguez is way more hurt than we know
I mentioned this in passing earlier and I said that I don’t think that there is some career ending injury that is imminent for Grayson Rodriguez. But I could see a situation where they’re looking at the medicals and determining he’s likely going to need another major surgery in the next year that would knock him out for a season+.
If that were the case it would make more sense to bail on him for whatever you could get because at that point you’re looking at multiple missed seasons in a short time followed by a rehab/load management season and then MAYBE you get something in the last year of his team control. If that were the case I could see the argument for we need to get what we can get and we won’t feel bad if he managed to turn it around in 2029 season because we need to take advantage of the current window.
I don’t think that fully excuses the return because there are always teams willing to take risks on talented but injury prone pitchers especially if they cost almost nothing.
If we get an update that Rodriguez is getting Tommy John this offseason then that changes things but if it was just “we’re tired of always dealing with the rehabbing and setbacks and we just don’t want to deal with it anymore.” consider me disappointed. To make this more quantifiable, if Grayson is healthy for the Angels either as a starter or reliever for even a 3 month stretch I’m going to be annoyed.
More moves are coming
This is perhaps the most delusional possible explanation but if it turns out this trade is just the first in a series of moves this offseason that leaves the team standing favorably going into spring training then that would soothe some concern.
Here is what I’m thinking with a series of moves:
It’s possible Elias has been hitting the phones trying to trade for a starting pitcher and everyone wants players from the major league team. They want Dylan Beavers or Adley Rutschman or Coby Mayo. Elias knows he can’t fail to bring in a top starter so to prepare for having to trade either from his outfield depth or from his right handed hitter depth he acquired a right handed hitting outfielder.
Now if he trades Dylan Beavers for Joe Ryan he still has an outfield and now he also has a healthier starting pitcher.
If the net move is Joe Ryan and Taylor Ward in and Dylan Beavers and Grayson Rodriguez out then that’s expensive but not terrible. You would feel like the team got better.
Getting Ward also makes it feel like a Tyler O’Neill trade is possible. I don’t know what that trade would look like and I doubt the Orioles would get something awesome but if Elias in spring training saying “yeah we really regretted the Tyler O’Neil signing and we knew we were bringing in multiple starting pitchers via trade and free agency so we decided to kill two birds with one stone and free up some room on the pitching staff and get a Tyler O’Neill replacement before trading him for parts.” (that’s not how he talks but you get it)
That would make some sense right? IDK I’m basically writing fan fiction at this point.
What I am saying is that if Mike Elias signs Dylan Cease and trades for another decent starter I will not be as bothered by this trade even if Rodriguez goes on to be good for the Angels.
Did Tyler O’Neill get hurt weight lifting this offseason?
I can’t rule out that O’Neill tore his bicep doing hammer curls and the front office is just getting out in front of it.
Silver Linings
Action
One of the main worries around this offseason was that the Orioles would convince themselves that with Rogers, Bradish and Rodriguez they had a good enough top of the rotation and would settle for more depth signings.
Now with Rodriguez out the door they literally have no choice but to bring in multiple starters. Like they genuinely don’t have enough people that can throw 2+ innings at a time to get through an MLB season so this trade would appear to guarantee some action.
It also points to a potential shift in mentality for the front office. Elias’ reputation is that he is guy who hoards underperforming prospects. This trade is an example of trading future value for current value which in general is something that Orioles fans have been begging for.
Maybe this example won’t go their way but Orioles fans do need to get more comfortable saying goodbye to players that they watched come up through the minors if it means that the major league club is going to improve.
EBJ
I think this move does kind of clear the way for Enrique Bradfield Jr to play an important role on the team which is fun. If the Orioles had gone ahead and signed Harrison Bader it would have appeared to block Bradfield but with nobody but Leody Taveras standing between him and the backup centerfield role it feels like he should be able to snag that job early in the season if not on opening day.
If that were the case it would alleviate some of the concerns I have about potentially have to watch a lot of Leody Taveras in 2026. Even if Bradfield really struggles to hit, his plus defense in center should make it ok for him to start and hit ninth when Cowser needs a breather.
Underrated bad parts of the deal
I’m not sure where else to put this observation so it’s getting it’s own section. Trading Rodriguez does kind of mess up the Orioles leverage when it comes to negotiating trades or with free agents or even an extension with someone like Trevor Rogers.
With Rodriguez off the roster it’s so obvious the Orioles don’t have a strong rotation that anyone negotiating with them should be able to take advantage of perceived desperation.
Maybe that’s not a big deal but it did occur to me.
Conclusion
Overall I think this is a bad move. One of my main criticisms of this Orioles front office is that besides the Corbin Burnes trade they haven’t been willing to take big swings to bring in impact players.
This isn’t a “big swing” it’s a check swing and worse it’s a check swing where the batter actually goes so it’s definitely a strike and if you do make contact you’re just going to bounce the ball back to the pitcher. I see very little upside and immense downside .
The Dishwasher 
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