What has gone wrong for the Orioles' pitching? And how do they get back on track?

Yahoo

17-05-2025

BALTIMORE — As Orioles manager Brandon Hyde strode toward the hill, his pitcher, Kyle Gibson, stared off into the distance.
Hyde, also clearly worn down by a month of these walks, fixed his gaze on nothing in particular. The gray-bearded skipper and the veteran hurler did not actually make eye contact until they came face to face on the foot of the mound. When the two beleaguered individuals finally acknowledged each other — with Gibson handing the baseball to Hyde before turning toward the showers — there was no animosity, no anger, no feeling of disdain. Just two frustrated baseball men, each facing their own crossroads and running low on answers.
Signed late in spring training after an untimely injury to Orioles frontline arm Grayson Rodriguez, the 37-year-old Gibson made his 2025 debut on Tuesday. Things did not go to plan. The New York Yankees battered the soft-tossing righty for nine earned runs across just 3 2/3 innings of work. Gibson surrendered home runs to the first three hitters he faced. By the time the O's hitters came to the plate in the bottom of the first, they were already down 5-0.
Just two seasons ago, Gibson led a 101-win, AL East-champion Orioles team in innings. He was also that pitching staff's heart and soul. His return to Baltimore was supposed to be part-reunion, part-stopgap. An emergency measure but a welcome one.
Entering play Tuesday, the Orioles' rotation had a combined 5.62 ERA, the third-worst mark in MLB. Gibson, an incredibly well-respected clubhouse presence, spent most of April building up his workload. His comeback Tuesday seemed perfectly timed, a reliable veteran swooping in to Band-Aid a wounded staff.
Instead, Gibson couldn't stop the bleeding. His outing was a catastrophe, a long-ball barrage of epic proportions. It marked the first time since 2016 that a starting pitcher allowed four home runs and seven hits in the first inning of a game. And for the Orioles, the horror show evening was a crushing encapsulation of the club's complete inability to record outs.
One month into the 2025 season, the Orioles sit at a dismal 11-18 — the fourth-worst record in baseball, ahead of only the Rockies (4-25), White Sox (7-22) and Pirates (11-19). Following Tuesday's blowout 15-3 loss, Baltimore trails New York by 6.5 games in the AL East. Perhaps most striking: No team has seen a steeper decline in playoff odds since Opening Day. FanGraphs had the Orioles at 48.2% to make the postseason on Day 1; that number is currently at 14%. The season is long (and, for some, full of terrors), but Hyde and general manager Mike Elias could not have envisioned a worse start.
So what in the world is going on here? How did this front office fail so dramatically to supplement its enviable core of young hitters with even league-average pitching? And, most importantly, what happens now?
The Baltimore Orioles, it must be said, are not dumb.
Elias, who took over as president of baseball operations in November 2018, has earned a strong reputation in regard to analytics and organizational infrastructure. Under his guidance, the O's built a draft-and-development monster that has churned out a wave of impact position players such as Gunnar Henderson, Adley Rutschman, Jordan Westburg, Colton Cowser and Jackson Holliday. That core — supplemented by massive developmental leaps from big-league hitters such as Anthony Santander, Cedric Mullins and Ryan O'Hearn — propelled Baltimore to playoff appearances in 2023 and 2024.
The team's pitching, particularly its starting pitching, has been a very different story. Since Elias' first draft in 2019, the Orioles are the only MLB team to not have a pitcher they drafted reach the big leagues while still with the organization. Kade Strowd, who was promoted and demoted this week without making an appearance, would've been the first Elias-drafted pitcher to debut for the Birds.
To be fair, Baltimore has focused most of its amateur attention on position players; only the Tigers, Nationals, Giants and Astros have drafted fewer pitchers than the Orioles during the span in question. They've also acquired multiple young, quality arms via trade, including Kyle Bradish, Tyler Wells and right-handed prospect Chayce McDermott. Brandon Young, who made his MLB debut last weekend, was signed as an undrafted free agent after 2020's truncated, five-round draft. And Rodriguez, currently on the IL, was drafted by the previous regime but developed almost entirely by Elias' group.
Still, the lack of homegrown arms is striking, particularly when the club also hasn't committed long-term dollars to secure elite pitching in free agency.
The blockbuster acquisition of ace Corbin Burnes in January 2024 was an encouraging splash, a rare moment of transactional aggression from the typically long-term-oriented Elias regime. Even though Burnes departed in free agency after just one season, that deal, which sent pitching prospect DL Hall, shortstop prospect Joey Ortiz and a compensation pick to Milwaukee, could not have turned out better. Burnes was dynamite in his one year in Baltimore, which included a sensational, though ill-fated, postseason start. Meanwhile, Hall has battled injuries since joining the Brewers, and Ortiz, after a promising 2024 season, has been one of the game's worst hitters this year.
A deal last deadline for Zach Eflin, too, has been a massive victory. Eflin was wonderful for Baltimore down the stretch in 2024 and was throwing well this season before he was sidelined by a minor lat issue.
Yet even with how well those trades played out, the Orioles did not replicate that strategy this past winter after Burnes left. They were not seriously connected to current Red Sox ace Garrett Crochet, the best pitcher moved in the offseason. Nor were they players for southpaw Jesús Luzardo, who went from Miami to Philadelphia and currently ranks fourth among starters in fWAR.
Instead, the Orioles dipped a toe — not a foot — into the free-agent pitching waters. They spent, but they did so poorly, cautiously, conservatively. New billionaire owner David Rubenstein signed off on the largest year-over-year percentage payroll increase in the sport. But Baltimore misfired when flexing its newfound financial muscle.
They handed a one-year, $13 million contract to 35-year-old Japanese righty Tomoyuki Sugano, a long-time NPB soft-tosser finally making the stateside leap. Soon after, they gave 41-year-old Charlie Morton a similar one-year, $15 million deal, banking on experience over long-term upside. Baltimore also inked reliever Andrew Kittredge to a one-year, $10 million pact — though he has since landed on the injured list. And when Rodriguez, slated to slot behind Eflin in the rotation, went down late in camp, the team turned to Gibson on a one-year, $5 million deal.
And now, the Birds are left with a team ERA of 5.52 and a mountain to climb.
Besides Sugano, who has a 3.00 ERA through six starts, Baltimore's offseason plan already looks, at best, woefully insufficient and, at worst, like abject baseball negligence. Morton pitched to a 10.36 ERA across his first six outings before an encouraging showing Tuesday in relief of Gibson. Gibson, even at his best, is not some kind of magic salve. Rodriguez, now on the 60-day IL, is still months away. Bradish and Wells, both recovering from Tommy John surgery, could return by midsummer, but the club will be wary of leaning on either right away.
That unfortunate rash of injuries, which can be expected to happen to every club, exposed Baltimore's dearth of reliable depth options. And at the top of the staff, there's no dependable shutdown arm. That's why, even once Eflin returns, the outlook for Baltimore's rotation remains hazy. The best-case short-term scenario involves a step forward from inexperienced left-hander Cade Povich and a stabilization from established workhorse Dean Kremer, whose 7.04 ERA is well above his career mark.
A rotation composed of that duo, a healthy Eflin, a purring Sugano and something, anything, from either Gibson or Morton could crawl its way back to average. But unless Rodriguez, Bradish and Wells all come back with a vengeance, it's difficult to see how Baltimore's starting staff elevates itself to join baseball's elite.
This organization is not in full disaster mode — not yet. Not for this season and not for this rebuild. Things might well turn around. But the margin for error in Baltimore is disappearing quickly.
That's a large part of what has made the first month of the 2025 season so frustrating and, potentially, foreboding for the Orioles. With their window of contention open, each year that goes by without a playoff run is a chance wasted. And before the calendar has even turned to May, 2025 is looking like a huge missed opportunity.