Orioles brimming with talent, thin on starting pitching

SARASOTA, Fla. — The state of the 2025 Baltimore Orioles, one of enviable surplus in position-player talent and a potential deficit in the pitching department, was on display in their clubhouse Tuesday afternoon.

First, 41-year-old Charlie Morton, the second-oldest player in the majors, was scratched from his Grapefruit League start against the Toronto Blue Jays that evening without an immediate reason, briefly raising concerns that the Orioles’ rotation had experienced another setback. Within minutes, corner infielder Coby Mayo, one of the top prospects in baseball, openly expressed his displeasure to reporters about Baltimore’s decision to option him to minor league camp.

But Morton was not injured — the Orioles just chose to have him pitch in a simulated setting on a back field instead of facing a division rival. And the Orioles are not down on Mayo, who has clubbed 34 home runs with a .919 OPS in Triple-A over the past two seasons — they simply decided they did not have room for him on the big league roster.

“That’s what happens when you have good teams,” Orioles manager Brandon Hyde said.

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This year’s club features a lineup, fueled by a ballyhooed young core, that should mash even after Anthony Santander and his 44 home runs left to join the Blue Jays during the offseason. The starting rotation, however, projects as the worst in a loaded American League East — the only division in baseball that PECOTA projects will have all five teams win at least 80 games.

“The other four teams are really, really good teams,” Hyde said. “It’s going to be a dogfight every night. You’re going to be facing somebody that’s really good on a nightly basis in the division.”

The Orioles have been good enough to navigate the treacherous AL East and reach the postseason in each of the past two years. Whether they can make another playoff appearance — and finally win a game in October — will come down to their pitching, particularly the starting rotation.

The Orioles do not have a proven ace. They had one last season in Corbin Burnes, a former Cy Young Award winner whom they acquired entering his final season before free agency. Burnes had an All-Star season in Baltimore, posting a 2.92 ERA across 32 starts. Then he left. Seeking a home out West, the right-hander signed a six-year, $210 million contract with the Arizona Diamondbacks at the end of December.

The Orioles have replaced him with two veteran free agents on the wrong side of the aging curve — Morton and 35-year-old Tomoyuki Sugano — on one-year deals for a combined $28 million. To fill the hole left by Santander in the outfield, they signed veteran Tyler O’Neill to a three-year, $49.5 million deal. In the process, Baltimore, in David Rubenstein’s first offseason as principal owner, raised its luxury tax payroll from $89.4 million last season to $126.8 million, which ranks 24th in baseball, according to Cot’s Baseball Contracts.

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“I think it’s a tough thing in sports, particularly for baseball, particularly for teams that aren’t the handful of larger market teams that can run the $300 million payrolls, that you’re going to have athletes leave,” Orioles general manager Mike Elias said. “Nobody wants it any time, but a big part of our profession is scripting out what’s the healthiest way to run the organization long term and from top to bottom and sometimes that involves not being the winner on a free agent.”

The rotation took another step back earlier this month when Grayson Rodriguez, the Orioles’ projected No. 1 starter, was shut down with elbow inflammation. He started throwing again Tuesday, but will begin the season on the injured list, leaving Zach Eflin to start on Opening Day in Toronto. Dean Kremer, Cade Povich and Albert Suárez complete Baltimore’s list of options for the rotation.

Internal reinforcements could eventually bolster the group. Right-hander Kyle Bradish, who finished fourth in AL Cy Young voting in 2023, is on track to join the rotation in the second half of the season after undergoing Tommy John surgery in June. Left-hander Trevor Rogers, an All-Star in 2021 who struggled mightily upon being traded to Baltimore last summer, could be available early in the season after dislocating his right kneecap in January.

The final spot in the rotation is a competition between Povich, a 24-year-old left-hander who recorded a 5.54 ERA in 16 starts last season, and Suárez, a 35-year-old journeyman who emerged last season to post a 3.70 ERA across 133⅔ innings. Povich was given Morton’s start Tuesday and tossed five hitless innings, better positioning himself for the job. Morton, meanwhile, threw to Orioles hitters on a back field as he prepares for his 17th season.

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The right-hander launched his career as a mediocre young pitcher, became a first-time All-Star at 34 years old and is now an age-defying wonder who has outlasted most of his peers. Along the way, he’s been around successful young rosters. He was on the Pittsburgh Pirates’ last playoff teams in the mid-2010s. He won a World Series with the Houston Astros in 2017, advanced to another one with the Tampa Bay Rays in 2020 and won his second title with the Atlanta Braves in 2021.

He said these Orioles, a few of whom are nearly half his age, remind him of the Astros teams he played on.

“I think certainly you want to prove yourself on an individual level to other people, to yourself,” Morton said. “But once you start to taste winning and once you start to kind of see that you can be, as a group, better than you, then you kind of build a momentum. And that momentum becomes something that really shapes your identity. And then you start to, as a group, believe in being able to do things that are greater than what you thought you could do maybe at the beginning. I think in Houston we had that.”

The Orioles’ position-player group, while bursting with talent, is not foolproof. Superstar shortstop Gunnar Henderson, who finished fourth in AL MVP voting in his age-23 season in 2024, could miss the start of the season with an intercostal injury. Two-time All-Star catcher Adley Rutschman, the organization’s other cornerstone, is seeking to rebound from a second-half collapse in production. Second baseman Jackson Holliday, the top prospect in baseball a year ago, will look to establish himself after slashing .189/.255/.311 in 60 games as a 20-year-old rookie.

“We have guys that still haven’t reached their upside for me,” Hyde said.

If that happens — if Henderson somehow takes another step, if Rutschman rediscovers his form, if Holliday, Jordan Westburg, Colton Cowser and Heston Kjerstad, all 26 and under, play to their potential — then the Orioles will be very good. To be great, they’ll need their rotation to exceed expectations.

“We made the playoffs,” first baseman Ryan Mountcastle said of last year’s club, which was swept in the wild-card round by the Kansas City Royals. “That’s always huge. You just got to get there first. It wasn’t the end result we wanted, but I think we’ve learned from it, we’ve grown from it. Hopefully we bring it into this coming year, hopefully make the playoffs again and make a better run.”