Hembekides wrote on Friday<\/a>.<\/p>\n\u201cBaltimore has already committed $195 million to four free agents \u2014\u00a0Pete Alonso,\u00a0Ryan Helsley,\u00a0Zach Eflin\u00a0and\u00a0Leody Taveras\u00a0\u2014 ranking sixth in spending thus far. But general manager Mike Elias, entering the final year of his contract, has one more haymaker left:\u00a0Framber Valdez.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWith Ranger Su\u00e1rez landing $130 million over five years in Boston, Valdez projects to get around six years and $180 million \u2014 a deal that would vault the O\u2019s past the Dodgers and Blue Jays as baseball\u2019s top free agent spenders.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Valdez had a solid 2025 season as the Houston Astros\u2019 reliable left-handed hurler. In 31 starts, he posted a 13-11 record with a 3.66 ERA over 192 innings pitched. He struck out 187 batters while walking relatively few, finishing with a 1.24 WHIP and strong ground-ball tendencies that kept opponents in check.<\/p>\n
His performance placed him among the league\u2019s top starters in several categories, including innings logged and strikeouts (20th in MLB). Despite some early-season struggles, Valdez delivered consistent outings to help anchor the Astros\u2019 rotation.<\/p>\n
Career-wise, since debuting in 2017, Valdez has compiled an 81-52 record across 188 games (166 starts), with a 3.36 ERA, 1,053 strikeouts, and a 1.204 WHIP over 1,080 2\/3 innings. He\u2019s earned two All-Star selections, finished as a Cy Young contender in prior years, and contributed to the Astros\u2019 2022 World Series championship.<\/p>\n
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The 32-year-old remains a free agent after declining Houston\u2019s qualifying offer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Baltimore Orioles have had a heck of an offseason already, but ESPN\u2019s Paul Hembekides believes that Baltimore…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":427482,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[87208,363,99],"class_list":["post-427481","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-framber-valdez","tag-mlb","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/427481","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=427481"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/427481\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/427482"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=427481"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=427481"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=427481"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}