Ranking The Orioles Rotation From Most Trustworthy To Least

The Orioles’ starting rotation is incredibly limited, lacking a true ace and with their best pitcher still dealing with ramifications of an unnecessarily delayed elbow surgery and their aging innings eaters already a lost cause.

So for this to be the strength of this baseball team, somehow, as we head to July is simply another damning indictment of the people who built this roster again. It’s shameful, honestly, but true. And it explains a lot about why Baltimore has bene terrible for two years and is teetering on going back to a season’s low eight below .500 potentially this week while hosting a frisky White Sox team that has passed them by in two years after being maybe the worst team in MLB history.

For while this group has been stellar in June, they aren’t going to rack up huge strikeout totals and most don’t pitch that deep that often and they simply have limitations. But compare to an overhyped lineup and a bullpen that was always going to be horrible, it’s the one thing you can feel good about, kinda, with the 2026 Orioles.

Of course, atrocious fielding undermines this group too, and lags on them and brings them down. But that’s what Mike Elias does in nine years running baseball operations into the ground here, and that’s The Elias Way.

It’s as good a time as any to take stock of what’s left of the rotation – with Zach Eflin done for the season and Chris Bassitt in no threat on pitching again soon and Dean Kremer still coming back from long-term injury. Here’s where they rank:

Brandon Young

We told you weeks ago that we buy the fastball profile and how they play off one another. Young hasn’t been scared or timid and he has been their most consistent starter and it hasn’t been close. He might be their lone All Star. He regularly pitches deep into games. His 3.11 ERA is far and away best among their starters and his 1.30 WHIP is tops as well.

He doesn’t have the staff to be a frontline guy, but he maximizes what he has and much like Trevor Rogers run from last year, ride it as long as you can. If he sticks around and profiles the way a guy like Kremer has in his tenure here – stretches of sub three production but basically a league average starter – that would be the biggest homegrown pitching win of the entire Elias era. I don’t think he is going to fall off a cliff in the second half.

Trevor Rogers

He’s a mid-rotation guy. Last year was a mirage. Deserves a lot of credit for putting himself back together because he was shattered in May and he knew it and the Orioles knew it while they tried to pretend he was “close.’ Rogers said again after his last stellar outing that he’d lost his confidence, which has been an issue in the past, too.

I don’t think his fastball is going to play this well forever, especially up in the zone. But he’s the second most trustworthy right now, I believe, If he can feature the fastball to then re-establish the change over multiple outings he could go on another crazy run.

Shane Baz

He is going to tease. Consistency always eludes him and if the Rays couldn’t fix him – HYPER EXTRA TRADE – the O’s sure as hell are not. Too many meatballs and too much hard contact. He cannot avoid the big inning – basically allows on average three runs or more in an inning once a start – and the league is slugging .462 off his fastball.

He is in the bottom 33 percent of all MLB pitchers in just about every meaningful metric there is (peep his baseballsavant.com if you dare). He can look filthy here or there but nearly often enough. Expect a second half just like the first.

Kyle Bradish

The innings situation better be freaking them out in The Warehouse. He is now well over twice the innings he posted from 2024-2025. A six-man rotation when Kremer comes back makes all the sense in the world. Trying to get 180 innings out of him would seem to be too silly even for Elias, but then again you never know.

Color me significantly concerned the Orioles handle this with care.

Trey Gibson

This is a lost season. Let this kid pitch. We are starting to see some of the swing-and-miss than helped him make a name in the minors show up. His command is a major problem; kid can’t throw strikes 60 percent of the time. He has a lot to prove. But there is some interest stuff in there as well and with Elias failing to ever establish a homegrown starter this deep in his brutal tenure, they need to give Gibson a runway both in starts and in this rotation.

I’m far from convinced this isn’t a bullpen arm when its all said and done but they need to commit to him (or a Nestor German or another prospect like that) at the backend of this rotation.

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