It happens every spring. Pitchers and catchers report to camp and begin working out… and getting hurt. Sometimes they find out they’re already seriously injured, and sometimes the injury is just one that becomes public knowledge as spring training gets underway. The last scenario appears to be the case for the Orioles’ Kyle Bradish, who will start the season on the injured list due to a sprain of his right ulnar collateral ligament that he suffered in January. He’s not Baltimore’s only starter who’s down, either; John Means is behind schedule because his offseason throwing program was delayed in the wake of the elbow soreness that knocked him off the postseason roster.

On the strength of an effective sinker and a couple of nasty breaking pitches, Bradish broke out in 2023, emerging as the staff ace in his second major league season and helping the Orioles surprise the baseball world by winning an AL-best 101 games, their highest total since 1979. Batters slugged just .165 against his curve and .272 against his slider. Both pitches generated whiff rates above 35% and graded among the best pitches of their kind in the majors; the curve was worth 15 runs above average, which ranked third, while his slider (14 runs) ranked 11th. The 26-year-old righty finished third in the AL with a 2.83 ERA in 168.2 innings, accompanying that with a 3.27 FIP (fifth in the league) and 3.8 WAR (eighth, as well as third with 4.9 bWAR). Bradish finished fourth in the AL Cy Young voting behind Gerrit Cole, Sonny Gray, and Kevin Gausman.

Bradish earned the start in the Division Series opener against the Rangers, and acquitted himself well by striking out nine while allowing just two runs. Even so, he departed with two outs in the fifth inning, down 2-1. The Orioles lost that game, 3-2, and were swept by the eventual World Series winners.

Just as Bradish began his throwing program in January, he experienced irritation in his elbow. According to general manager Mike Elias, after being diagnosed with a UCL sprain, Bradish received an injection of platelet-rich plasma in an effort to stimulate enough healing to avoid Tommy John surgery. One can understand why the Orioles kept a lid on this development during the winter, as it could have affected their leverage in trade and free agent discussions. The timeline does suggest they were aware of Bradish’s issue by the time they acquired Corbin Burnes from the Brewers in exchange for DL Hall, Joey Ortiz and a Competitive Balance Round A pick at the beginning of February.

Unfortunately, the Orioles are well acquainted with the UCL sprain/PRP sequence, having gone through it late last season with closer Félix Bautista, who was sidelined in late August and wound up undergoing Tommy John surgery in October. There’s no indication yet that Bradish’s sprain is as severe as that of Bautista, though even The Mountain’s injury offered hope of rehabbing without surgery. According to Elias, Bradish is scheduled to begin a throwing program on Friday, and he’s still hopeful that the pitcher will avoid surgery and be part of this year’s team. Per MLB.com’s Jake Reel:

“Everything is pointed in the right direction and going well right now at this time. But I’m not at a point where I want to start putting a timeline on when we’re going to see him in Major League action,” Elias said. “Right now, we’re prepping him for a lot of action in 2024, and we’re getting him ready for that as expeditiously and responsibly as possible, but there’s going to be some time involved.”

More via the Baltimore Sun’s Jacob Calvin Meyer:

“Pitching is a dangerous business nowadays,” Elias said. “You never like to hear anybody have elbow or shoulder or wrist injuries or what have you. There are a lot of people who have [PRP injections] and never get surgery, and rest and other treatments do the trick. So, hopefully, that’s where we’re at with this one.”

As for Means, the former All-Star and rotation stalwart underwent Tommy John surgery on April 27, 2022, and returned to the majors last September, making four starts totaling 23.2 innings, with a 2.66 ERA but just an 11.4% strikeout rate and a 5.24 FIP. Just when it looked he might be fit to make a postseason start, the Orioles shut him down due to elbow soreness. He began his offseason throwing routine a month later than usual, hence Elias’ statement that he’s a month behind the team’s healthy starters. Elias acknowledged that a spot on the Opening Day roster for Means would be unlikely.

With those two pitchers out, Baltimore’s rotation to start the season will most likely include righties Burnes, Grayson Rodriguez, Dean Kremer, and Tyler Wells, and lefty Cole Irvin. The 29-year-old Burnes is coming off an underwhelming season by his standards, with a 3.39 ERA, 3.80 FIP, and 3.4 WAR — all of it respectable but far removed from his dominant 2021 campaign, for which he won the NL Cy Young. The most concerning thing is that his strikeout rate has dropped by about five percentage points in each of his past two seasons, falling from 35.6% in 2021 to 30.5% and then 25.5%; meanwhile, his walk rate has climbed. He still projects to be one of the game’s 10 most valuable starters, and instead of being nickeled and dimed by the Brewers, he’s got a massive free agent contract on the other side of this season if he pitches well.

The 24-year-old Rodriguez is coming off an impressive turnaround in the middle of his rookie season. Cuffed for a 7.35 ERA and 5.91 FIP in 10 starts totaling 45.2 innings in April and May, he did Cy Young-caliber work upon returning from Triple-A Norfolk, abandoning his cutter and posting a 2.58 ERA and 2.76 FIP with a 24% strikeout rate in 13 starts (76.2 innings). The 28-year-old Kremer improved in-season as well, following a 4.78 ERA and 4.92 FIP first half with a 3.25 ERA and 3.98 FIP the rest of the way, while also shaving his home run rate from 1.84 per nine to 0.84. Like Bradish, both pitchers logged their highest innings totals in their professional careers (163.1 for Rodriguez, 172.2 for Kremer).

The same is true for the 29-year-old Wells, who spent the first four months of the 2023 season in the rotation, putting up a 3.80 ERA, albeit with 1.98 homers per nine and a 5.14 FIP. He had already set a career high in innings when the Orioles optioned him, first to Double-A Bowie and then Norfolk. He returned to the O’s in late September as a reliever, and he trimmed those numbers a bit, finishing with a 3.64 ERA and 4.98 FIP in 118.2 innings; in fact, in 13.1 relief innings between the regular season and postseason, he didn’t allow a run and yielded just one hit and one walk while striking out 11. He was expected to compete with the 30-year-old Irvin for the fifth spot in the rotation this spring, but for the moment it appears there’s room for both. Irvin split last year between the rotation and bullpen, making 12 appearances in each capacity and totaling 77.1 innings, with a 4.42 ERA and 4.43 FIP.

Should the Orioles need to dip any further into their depth, 29-year-old lefty Bruce Zimmerman and prospects Cade Povich, a lefty, and Chayce McDermott, a righty, appear to be next in line in some order or another. Zimmerman made a combined 26 starts for the Orioles in 2021 and ’22 but was rocked for a 5.54 ERA and 5.74 FIP in the process. He spent most of last year at Norfolk, where he put up a 4.42 ERA and 3.25 FIP; amid being optioned the maximum of five times, he made seven appearances for the Orioles, all in relief, for a total of 13.1 innings.

Povich and McDermott both split last season between Bowie and Norfolk. Povich, a 2021 third-round pick who rated as a 45 FV prospect as of last year’s midseason update, is a pitchability type with a low-90s fastball and a cutter that’s become a swing-and-miss weapon. He struck out an impressive 31.1% of hitters last year but put up a 5.04 ERA and 4.21 FIP in 126.2 innings. McDermott, a 2021 fourth-round pick acquired from the Astros in the Trey Mancini trade, rated as a 40 FV prospect in the aforementioned update. Wiry and long-levered at 6-foot-3, 197 pounds, McDermott throws a 93-95 mph fastball with two breaking pitches that are at least above average and a cutter, which he added last year. Command issues, though, may limit him to a bullpen role; he walked 13.8% last year while striking out 30.9%, accompanied by a 3.10 ERA and 3.67 FIP in 119 innings.

The Orioles could dip into the trade or free agent market for reinforcements, but at this juncture, it seems unlikely that they’d sign either Jordan Montgomery or Blake Snell, or revisit trade talks for Dylan Cease. According to the New York Post’s Jon Heyman, the prospects dealt to the Brewers for Burnes were the ones Baltimore offered the White Sox. Lefty Hyun Jin Ryu and righties Mike Clevinger, Michael Lorenzen, and Zack Greinke are the top unsigned free agents in terms of their 2024 projections, though they are hardly the only options.

So long as the O’s retain the hope of a Bradish return this season, odds are they won’t go overboard with an immediate impact move. The most likely scenario is that they’ll push through with their in-house options with an eye toward a midseason addition if they’re in contention again — which is expected to be the case given their 53.2% playoff odds at this writing. Still, this injury is a downer for taking one of the game’s recent breakouts out of circulation. We can only hope it’s not for the whole season.

Under John Angelos, son of Peter Angelos, who took the team to the verge of the World Series in the 1990s, the Baltimore Orioles have been hamstrung by a lack of investment, uncertainty over potential relocation, and a lawsuit over control of the family fortune that contains allegations straight out of the Book of Genesis. A 100-win team with a once-in-a-generation core of up-the-middle talent has had its wings clipped by an owner whose picture should be on the Wikipedia page for Hanlon’s Razor.

Well, the O’s are finally getting out of purgatory. Angelos has agreed to sell the team to a group fronted by billionaire David Rubenstein. The new owners will reportedly purchase 40% of the team now, with Rubenstein replacing John Angelos as the Orioles’ control person once the sale goes through. His group will then have the option to buy full control at a later date.

Even before the sale is official, the Orioles have solved their no. 1 glaring weakness by acquiring Corbin Burnes for a draft pick and two players they didn’t really need. It’s as if the mere mention of Rubenstein changed the omens around the ballclub. Read the rest of this entry »

Late last night, the Milwaukee Brewers sent Corbin Burnes to the Baltimore Orioles for two 25-year-old players – left-handed pitcher DL Hall and infielder Joey Ortiz – as well as a Competitive Balance Round A pick in the 2024 draft (pick no. 34 overall). Milwaukee’s active roster is worse today without Burnes, who has been one of the best pitchers in baseball since moving into the rotation full-time in 2021. But the player portion of return for one year of Burnes, who is slated to hit free agency after the season, succeeds in threading the small market needle by providing both short- and long-term reinforcement to the big league club, as both players are major league ready and also under club control for the next six seasons. Burnes was unlikely to re-sign with Milwaukee, and the Brewers get a comp pick similar to the one they would have received had they extended him a qualifying offer after the 2024 season, plus two good, young players.

Let’s talk about those players, starting with Ortiz. A fourth rounder in 2019, Ortiz has a career .286/.357/.449 line in the minors and reached the big leagues in 2023. With so many other infielders, chiefly Gunnar Henderson and Jackson Holliday, also in the upper-level mix for playing time, the Orioles had a surplus of players like this in their system. Ortiz was a top 100 prospect last offseason and ended the 2023 season as my 57th overall prospect. His profile was initially rooted in his plus combination of defense and feel for contact, but in 2023, he traded some of that contact for meaningfully more power. Ortiz’s underlying contact quality took a leap across the board, most notably his hard-hit rate, which rose from 31% in 2022 to 46% in 2023. This was coupled with a noticeable shift in his physicality, as Ortiz looked bigger and stronger. Ortiz’s contact rates, both overall and in-zone, dropped a tad compared to 2022 and he’s a bit chase-prone, but his well-rounded offensive output should clear the relatively low bar for middle infielders. Read the rest of this entry »

It just didn’t make sense. There was no way that the Orioles were really planning on heading into the 2024 season with so little top-end pitching. I’m not saying Kyle Bradish, Grayson Rodriguez, and company are bad, but they were on the lighter side of potential playoff rotations, and that made very little sense to me given the composition of the rest of the team. It’s not every day that I take a team to task for something they didn’t do, but this one was just too illogical.

It turns out that the Orioles agreed with me on that one. Thursday night, they acquired Corbin Burnes from the Brewers in exchange for DL Hall, Joey Ortiz, and a Competitive Balance Round A pick, as Ken Rosenthal, Jeff Passan, and Mark Feinsand first reported. You know it’s a big trade when all the news-breakers are sharing it. Read the rest of this entry »

I’m a biased observer. I watch the offseason hoping something will happen, and not just because I’m rooting for one particular team to get better. My job is to write about baseball, and it’s a lot easier to write about things changing than things staying the same. “This just in: Yankees roster same as yesterday” is not a story that I’d be very excited to write, and it’s also probably not a story that many people would be excited to read. Change is imperative for content, especially in the offseason.

With that intro in mind, I have a bone to pick with the Baltimore Orioles – a bone that, coincidentally enough, Meg and Other Ben discussed on today’s Effectively Wild. The Orioles won the AL East last year and finished with 101 wins, second-most in baseball. They seemingly ran out of gas in the playoffs; they didn’t hit or pitch particularly well in their ALDS loss to the Rangers. They followed that up by doing – well, a whole lot of nothing. It’s not just that they’re making my job harder. They’re making their own job harder, and doing so while the clock is ticking on their young, cost-controlled team core.

The AL East is always a competitive division, and it’s gone exactly according to type so far this winter. The Yankees went out and got a star – Juan Soto, not Alex Verdugo, if you’re keeping score at home. The Rays traded six nickels, two dimes, and two pennies for a quarter, three dimes, and a nickel. The Blue Jays shored up their infield depth, though they still need to find a replacement for Matt Chapman. (The current leader in the clubhouse for that position? Matt Chapman.) The Red Sox – well, the Red Sox are certainly making moves, even if I can’t quite figure out the end goal. Read the rest of this entry »

The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2024 Hall of Fame ballot. For a detailed introduction to this year’s ballot, and other candidates in the series, use the tool above; an introduction to JAWS can be found here. For a tentative schedule, see here. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball-Reference version unless otherwise indicated.

For a seven-season period from 2010–16, nobody in baseball hit more home runs than José Bautista. The Blue Jays slugger led the American League in dingers in back-to-back seasons, with 54 in 2010 and 43 a year later, and with those soaring totals began a streak of six straight All-Star selections. Remarkably that run didn’t begin until Bautista was in his age-29 season, after he spent most of the first six years of his major league career (2004–09) barely hanging on to a roster spot while passing through the hands of five different teams. He turned the page on that difficult stretch of his career thanks to a swing change, one that prefigured the launch angle revolution that would come into vogue a few year later. With it, “Joey Bats” helped drive the Blue Jays back to relevance, an effort capped by one of the most memorable postseason home runs of the era.

José Antonio Bautista was born on October 19, 1980 in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. His father, Americo Bautista, was an agricultural engineer who ran a poultry farm while his mother, Sandra Bautista, was an accountant and financial officer. Both had graduate degrees, and so theirs was a middle-class family that could afford to send José and his younger brother Luis to a private Catholic school. A good student, José excelled at math and science, and took extra classes to learn English beginning when he was eight years old. In the evenings, he played baseball with friends, and though undersized — he was nicknamed “The Rat” because he was small and had big ears — he excelled. Read the rest of this entry »

Yes, this is the clickbaitiest headline I could think of for this premise. It’s the first week of January, the free agent market has seized up due to lack of routine maintenance, and the sun hasn’t come out since the Aquaman sequel was released, perhaps as divine punishment for humanity’s crimes. So let’s find pizazz where we can.

Though in all honesty, it shouldn’t be that difficult, because Gunnar Henderson and Bobby Witt Jr. are pretty exciting all on their own. We just saw a Rookie of the Year campaign from the former and a breakout season from the latter. Here’s something that might sound like hyperbole, but really isn’t: Both players are on a Hall of Fame track now. Read the rest of this entry »

Billy Cook is flying well below the radar in the Baltimore Orioles organization. That’s understandable. The 2023 American League East champions continue to boast one of the top farm systems in baseball, and Cook is a soon-to-turn-25-year-old outfielder/infielder out of Pepperdine University who lasted until the 10th round of the 2021 draft. Moreover, while he went deep a team-best 24 times this past season with Double-A Bowie, it’s easy to be overshadowed when your teammates include high-profile first-rounders such as Jackson Holliday and Heston Kjerstad, as well as highly regarded slugger Coby Mayo and, at year’s end, fast-rising backstop Samuel Basallo.

Those things said, Cook has a lot to prove. His numbers with Bowie were solid but unspectacular, posting a .251/.320/.456 line and a 110 wRC+. Moreover, while his 25% strikeout rate was an improvement from the previous year, he’ll likely need to further hone his contact skills if he hopes to beat the odds and wear a big league uniform. Given his age and utility profile, he remains more project than prospect — especially within a system with no shortage of blue chippers.

Cook discussed his game, and dark horse status, at the tail end of the Arizona Fall League season, which saw him log an .818 OPS with the Mesa Solar Sox.

———

David Laurila: You hit 24 home runs this year, but outside of that, I don’t know a lot about you. How would you describe your game?

Billy Cook: “I’m working on my complete game. I think the power has always been there, and then there are the stolen bases [30 in 33 attempts in 2023]. I have speed. When I don’t get into my power, I can get away with a little soft contact here and there by beating out a groundball. But I do want to hit the ball in the air. This offseason I’ll be working on turning the hard groundballs into doubles, putting them into the gaps instead of hitting super low line drives. That’s pretty much it with the offense. Defensively, I’m trying to be that utility guy, someone who is able to play anywhere to keep the bat in the lineup.” Read the rest of this entry »

The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2024 Hall of Fame ballot. For a detailed introduction to this year’s ballot, and other candidates in the series, use the tool above; an introduction to JAWS can be found here. For a tentative schedule and a chance to fill out a Hall of Fame ballot for our crowdsourcing project, see here. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball-Reference version unless otherwise indicated.

The fourth and final multi-candidate pairing of this series is by far the heaviest, covering two candidates who have both been connected to multiple incidents of domestic violence. Read the rest of this entry »

All things considered, Craig Kimbrel’s sole season with the Phillies was pretty productive: 71 appearances, 69 innings, a 3.26 ERA, and a strikeout rate of 33.8%. Kimbrel saved 23 games in the regular season, plus the All-Star Game, plus three more in the playoffs. But the last meaningful impression he made in red pinstripes was an abject and total loss of command that cost the Phillies at least Game 4 of the NLCS, and probably Game 3 as well. Given that context, it’s not surprising Dave Dombrowski’s outfit is moving on.

Kimbrel’s new home? A team that, in Game 2 of the ALDS, scored eight runs and lost because its pitchers walked 11 batters — one short of the record for a nine-inning playoff game.

The Baltimore Orioles will be Kimbrel’s eighth stop on a road that will likely terminate in Cooperstown, and it’s fair to expect that by October this will be the sixth team for which Kimbrel will have appeared in the playoffs. At $13 million, the one-year deal represents a significant investment for the low-payroll Orioles. Not just in salary for Kimbrel, but because any trip from Philadelphia to Baltimore involves paying a fortune to drive the Delaware Turnpike. Read the rest of this entry »