Grayson Rodriguez<\/a>, whose November trade to the Los Angeles Angels for outfielder Taylor Ward kicked off this uncharacteristic Orioles offseason. Right down to their origin stories \u2014 Baz was a pop-up Texas prep arm a year before Rodriguez was \u2014 those parallels are fair, though Baz\u2019s injury uncertainty was presumably resolved with Tommy John elbow surgery while Rodriguez\u2019s path back to the mound is less clear.<\/p>\nAnd Baz, like Rodriguez, has real front-half upside in terms of where he can slot into a rotation. He locates his upper-90s fastball well, is constantly evolving his arsenal and had an xERA (3.85) over a full run better than his actual one (4.87) last year. <\/p>\n
He misses bats well (9.52 strikeouts per nine) and limits baserunners, and he has done so pitching in this division.<\/p>\n
Adding him now also maintains the Orioles\u2019 flexibility to enhance their rotation in free agency. Baz easily could be the pitcher Elias and company count as a companion to Kyle Bradish and Trevor Rogers as part of their rotation for the first weekend of the season. <\/p>\n
That would allow them to pivot cash resources in free agency to more of a quality depth arm than one of the top starters remaining on the market \u2014 but trading for Baz doesn\u2019t preclude that, either. He can comfortably be an overqualified back-half starter if David Rubenstein, Michael Arougheti and ownership fund another massive free agent splash such as Framber Valdez or Ranger Su\u00e1rez.<\/p>\n
That cost is one the Orioles can stomach, as we\u2019ve heard many times in this offseason that\u2019s included the additions of Ward, free agent closer Ryan Helsley and slugger Pete Alonso. So, too, is this prospect haul, as large as it is.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s largely because of the depth the Orioles have built in the areas they traded from. Forret is their highest-rated prospect in the deal \u2014 No. 8 in my most recent Baseball America rankings \u2014 for his broad and dynamic arsenal, his performance (a 1.51 ERA and 0.82 WHIP in 74 innings in 2025) and his youth, given he doesn\u2019t turn 22 until April. <\/p>\n
He\u2019s one to worry about coming back to haunt the Orioles \u2014 all of them are, really. But there are plenty of pitchers in the organization who can be contributing as much or more as Forret would have in a few years time: Trey Gibson, Luis De Leon and Esteban Mejia among them, with a strong next tier of Braxton Bragg, Nestor German, Boston Bateman, Juaron Watts-Brown and Levi Wells.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have to forget everything we knew about this front office and learn to live in a new reality.\u201d<\/p>\n
Similarly, de Brun and Overn are athletic outfielders who can impact the game a lot of ways and have the tools to be offensive forces as they develop. But, with Nate George emerging as an elite prospect and the Orioles still high on Enrique Bradfield Jr., they felt comfortable trading from the outfield, especially with Colton Cowser and Dylan Beavers already in the big leagues. <\/p>\n
Bodine was a value pick on his own as the 30th selection of this draft, an advanced defensive catcher with discipline and contact ability from both sides of the plate whom the Orioles were surprised to have fall to them. <\/p>\n
There\u2019s a lot to like there, but Samuel Basallo and Adley Rutschman are locked in for the next few years. If the Orioles believe 2025 first-round pick Ike Irish can catch and that 2024 first-day pick Ethan Anderson was among the game\u2019s most improved backstops in his first full pro season \u2014 both of which they do \u2014 then it\u2019s another area of surplus to trade from.<\/p>\n
When Elias had to sell off the pending free agents at the 2025 deadline, the results \u2014 combined with this summer\u2019s draft \u2014 meant, despite the Orioles\u2019 lack of volume of true impact prospects that they boasted in the first half of this decade, there were a lot of good players in the top 20 or so to make a deal like this more feasible than it would have been if parting with a player you view as a potential franchise cornerstone. <\/p>\n
Combine the four players and the 33rd pick in next year\u2019s draft, and this is clearly the most the Orioles have given up in one trade under Elias. They can continue to deal from depth, but it\u2019s hard to make trades like this often. That speaks to the level of conviction the Orioles have in Baz and the shifting parameters of their value system, which seems skewed a lot more toward the present than the future. <\/p>\n
Altogether, it\u2019s another reason we have to forget everything we knew about this front office and learn to live in a new reality.<\/p>\n
The Orioles have been transactional, that\u2019s for sure. It\u2019s just the adding kind, and it\u2019s all toward the goal of making this team a contender in the AL East and beyond. Just like Helsley and Alonso, adding Baz is an impactful transaction, not a marginal one. And there\u2019s a lot of value to that, too. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In 2020, when the Orioles were rebuilding with a vision toward being a sustainable homegrown contender rather than…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":358818,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[367,1558,363,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-358817","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mlb","8":"tag-american-league","9":"tag-baseball","10":"tag-mlb","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/358817","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=358817"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/358817\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/358818"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=358817"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=358817"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=358817"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}