Trevor Rogers Will Soar (Because He’s an Oriole Now)

Maybe the Orioles just like shopping for pitchers in Florida. Days after Baltimore acquired Zach Eflin from Tampa Bay, Ken Rosenthal reported that the team has traded for Marlins left-handed starter Trevor Rogers in exchange for Connor Norby and Kyle Stowers. The Orioles have selected the contract of Terrin Vavra, who is running a 112 wRC+ with Triple-A Norfolk this season, to take Norby’s place on the big league roster. (Shortly after this article was filed, Jeff Passan reported that the Orioles have also acquired Eloy Jiménez from the White Sox, while C. Trent Rosecrans reported that Austin Slater is headed from the Reds to the land of Old Bay; Michael Baumann will write up those transactions shortly.)

On its face, this seems like either a great get for Miami, or a sign that the price for starting pitching is sky high. Last April, Rogers suffered a biceps strain that ended his season after just four starts. This season, he’s stayed healthy and thrown 105.1 innings, but the results haven’t exactly been there. Following his breakout rookie campaign in 2021, Rogers is 7-22 with a 4.92 ERA and 4.36 FIP. This season, those figures are 4.53 and 4.42.

Eric Longenhagen and Travis Ice had Norby 19th as a 40 FV prospect when they ranked Baltimore’s top prospects in June. Stowers no longer qualifies as a prospect, but this season he ran a 115 wRC+ in Triple-A, followed by a BABIP-fueled 119 wRC+ over 19 games with the Orioles. If that price feels steep, you’re not wrong, but there’s a lot to keep in mind. First, Baltimore has great organizational depth, and there wasn’t necessarily a place for Norby and Stowers. Second, Rogers is just 26 years old, has two more years of team control, and was as recently as 2021 an All-Star who finished second in National League Rookie of the Year voting. Still, this is the sort of trade that makes you think the Orioles must have seen something they thought they could fix. The only bars on Rogers’ Statcast sliders that aren’t a scary shade of blue are the ones for his 47% groundball rate and his 6.7-foot extension (which tends to happen when you’re 6-foot-5). So far this season, 82 pitchers have thrown at least 100 innings. Here’s how Rogers ranks among them in a handful of metrics. I’ve gone ahead and highlighted every stat where he ranks in the bottom 10:

So yeah, that’s a lot of yellow. Right off the bat, you might notice that Rogers ranks dead last in WHIP and in the bottom 11 everywhere but FIP. He’s been better of late, with a 3.17 ERA over his last nine starts, but we shouldn’t take that as a sign that he’s suddenly figured things out. His 4.23 FIP over that stretch is just a hair below his season mark, and his 4.75 xFIP is actually higher.

In Rogers’ fantastic 2021, he was throwing his four-seamer nearly 58% of the time, and according to Baseball Savant, it was worth 16 runs, making it the 10th-most valuable pitch in all of baseball. He was also throwing it 94.5 mph. This year, he’s throwing it 92.0 mph and it’s been worth -2 runs. As such, he’s throwing it less than a third of the time and has ramped up his sinker usage to take its place. One interesting thing: Rogers’ velocity isn’t down across the board. While his fastballs have lost a few extremely important ticks, he’s actually throwing his slider and his changeup harder. Rogers’ changeup grades out well by stuff models, but hasn’t had the results to show for it. Having just 6 mph of separation between his fastballs and the changeup might very well be hurting him:

When a team acquires a struggling pitcher like this, the easiest way for them to effect a change is to simply adjust his pitch mix. It’s not immediately clear to me what the Orioles might change, but it’s entirely possible that they don’t want Rogers to keep throwing his slider, his best bat-missing pitch, less than his three other offerings.

We shouldn’t be asking ourselves whether or how the Orioles can get Rogers back to his 2021 form. For one thing, that was three years and a few injuries ago. For another, Rogers ran a 5% HR/FB rate that season, which meant that his 2.64 ERA came off a 3.54 xFIP that’s much closer to his career mark. It would be unreasonable to expect him to run a 2.64 ERA again. Eno Sarris posited that the Orioles are either simply looking for innings, or that they’ll try putting Rogers in the bullpen, where his fastball could tick up closer to his season-high of 95.8 mph. The former path would presumably push Albert Suárez into a bullpen role, where he has excelled so far this season. Suárez has a 0.90 ERA over 10 innings as a reliever and a 4.03 ERA in 67 innings as a starter, though we’re talking about small samples, and BABIP seems to be playing a large part in that particular split.

It also seems possible that the Orioles are playing the long game here. If they see something they can fix in Rogers, mechanical or otherwise, then they just gave up two prospects who are likely blocked for a 26-year-old who’s just entering his arbitration years. Maybe they expect Rogers to help them this season, or maybe they think that they can get him to the pitching lab during the offseason and add some velocity or help his slider regain some of the drop that it had in recent seasons. If he doesn’t improve, he’s still a relatively cheap back-of-the-rotation starter, in exchange for two prospects who were likely blocked.

I mentioned earlier that Eric and Travis had Norby ranked 19th as a 40 FV prospect when they published the Orioles list in June. You might notice that he was ranked 10th last season and that he’s currently ranked fifth by MLB Pipeline. Eric is low on Norby, largely because of defense. “He is a very rough second base defender, with fringe range, hands, and actions,” he wrote back in June. Norby has only played second base with Baltimore, but in Norfolk, he actually spent more time in the outfield this season. He’ll be a lot more valuable if he’s capable of playing second rather than being limited to a corner outfield spot. Norby is 24 with 1,050 Triple-A plate appearances to his name. His bat may well be big-league ready right now, but Miami could be a rough park for him. “He has pole-to-pole power,” Eric wrote in June, “pulling hanging breaking balls and spraying fastballs to the opposite field. Norby doesn’t have huge raw juice — in fact, his measurable power is somewhat underwhelming. He’s more about consistently creating playable in-game power with swing loft.” Spacious loanDepot Park may not be the greatest fit for a player with that profile.

As a slugging corner outfielder, the left-handed Stowers has long been an odd man out in the extremely talent-rich Orioles organization. He reached Triple-A in 2021 and got his first taste of the majors in 2022, but he’s now 26 years old and has made just 168 major league plate appearances despite running an .870 OPS in 1,047 Triple-A PAs. This season, he’s been hitting the ball very hard, but he’s also been whiffing nearly a third of the time both in Baltimore and Norfolk. Stowers only has two options left, and moving to a team that has room to let him play every day might be just what he needs. He may well end up as a platoon bat or a Quad-A player, but he’s likely as ready as he’ll ever be for a real chance.