Grayson Rodriguez will not be in the Orioles Opening Day rotation mix next year. He won\u2019t be in the organization at all. The Orioles announced a surprise trade of the once-top prospect pitcher on Tuesday night, shipping Rodriguez to the Angels for outfielder Taylor Ward.<\/p>\n
Rodriguez has not thrown a pitch in an MLB game since July 31, 2024. He battled dueling elbow and lat injuries that recurred through 2025, eventually getting surgery for bone chips in his throwing elbow. Mike Elias didn\u2019t sound like he was planning to have Rodriguez in his rotation and now he surely won\u2019t. As a quick, knee-jerk reaction, I think the Orioles are way more down on Rodriguez bouncing back from that surgery and overcoming his past lat injuries than we ever realized.<\/p>\n
The reason why it\u2019s clear they\u2019re down on Rodriguez is because of what they got for him. Ward is an outfielder who turns 32 years old next month and has one year remaining before he becomes a free agent. He\u2019s kind of an interesting late-bloomer of a player, a one-time first round pick all the way back in the 2015 draft by the Angels who didn\u2019t really break out until his age 28 season.<\/p>\n
That was 2022, and in the four years since, Ward has compiled 10.2 bWAR while hitting .251\/.332\/.451. He\u2019s played in more than 150 games each of the past two seasons. The righty batter OPSed .918 against lefties in 2025 and has an .824 OPS against southpaws for his career. What\u2019s nice about these splits is he didn\u2019t do too bad against righties either, at least this past season.<\/p>\n
This is an addition that could make a real difference compared to what the Orioles had already. Does this mean they\u2019re going to be mostly done with outfielders, and they\u2019ll plan for Colton Cowser as the center fielder? Or is something else going to happen with my assumed corner outfield group of Dylan Beavers and Tyler O\u2019Neill? To these questions, one thing I will say is this: Do not make the mistake of assuming that this move is setting up another move. Elias doesn\u2019t work that way. It should be evaluated on its own terms and maybe they will end up planning a new move based on this new normal.<\/p>\n
One year of a kinda-old outfielder for Rodriguez! That\u2019s all, after all that time. It\u2019s a shocking move in that regard. We\u2019ve been waiting for him to be the next big thing for years, ever since the Orioles drafted him in 2018. He dominated his way up through the minors and was a consensus top 10 prospect in the game heading into the 2023 season. We haven\u2019t seen that potential for more than a game or two at a time here in MLB yet.<\/p>\n
Rodriguez finishes with a 4.11 ERA in 43 starts with the Orioles. He is only 26 years old, and he will not be a free agent until after the 2029 season. I think of Jake Arrieta, and I hope that Mike Elias is smarter than Dan Duquette.<\/p>\n
While I was writing this reaction to the news, my Camden Chat colleague Stacey messaged me and said: \u201cI didn\u2019t think he\u2019d do much, but I wasn\u2019t ready to be done with him.\u201d Nor was I.<\/p>\n
Elias, on the other hand, was ready to move on. Now, the Orioles have one year of Taylor Ward at what is projected to be around a $13 million arbitration salary. It is, very early in this offseason, a continuation of the money strategy he employed last year, getting guys for one-year deals that weren\u2019t exactly cheap individually and as a group really took up a lot of money. I hope he will not exclusively pursue that strategy again this winter.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Grayson Rodriguez will not be in the Orioles Opening Day rotation mix next year. He won\u2019t be in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":300957,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[156558,363,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-300956","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mlb","8":"tag-baltimore-orioles-news","9":"tag-mlb","10":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/300956","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=300956"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/300956\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/300957"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=300956"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=300956"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=300956"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}