The Biggest Need the Orioles Must Address Before the Deadline

Above and beyond all else, the Orioles must begin fortifying a 2027 rotation and back-end of the bullpen at this year’s trade deadline.

Yeah, 2027.

This 2026 roster was cooked from the day Mike Elias constructed it - exactly in the imagine as the 2025 roster failure that prompted his deadline sale with all the same warts. Just at a slightly higher payroll. This front office thinks its smarter than everyone else (as baseball reporter and analyst Kyle Glaser pointed out on “The Daily Flock Show”) and thus keep making the same mistakes, so we must account for that and plan accordingly.

And while no reasonable Oriole fan could have any faith in this baseball operation, the sad fact is the owner seems to care more about profits than winning, and that’s right up Elias’s alley, so you have to brace for more gaslighting and excuse making (pablum about injuries) and come to grips with the fact Elias could remain empowered to continue being his worst self.

These Orioles aren’t built to win in October, everyone in The Warehouse knows it though they won’t say it out loud. And if they are going to shed salary again before the deadline, they need to at least be overwhelmingly streamlined about what they can achieve between now and 6pm Monday when MLB bars further trade activity. And we start counting down the days to a lockout.

Why The Arms?

We’ve come to realize that despite what was sold to Birdland when Elias boasted about his farm system that was loaded with bats and was the envy of baseball, this "liftoff" indeed failed. They aren’t any good at developing even allegedly close-to-ready college bets, let alone teenagers, but they are going to keep doing that in the draft and shunning pitching (it just happened again two weeks ago).

And we know, from letting Corbin Burnes walk and years of using the media to pretend they came oh-so-close to signing real pitchers (Framber Valdez, Ranger Suarez, whomever), they won’t do more than sign broken starters in the mid-30s for $18M a year or overpay for innings eaters in trade (Cole Irvin, Shane Baz). That ain’t changing folks and if we’re stuck with Elias, we need workarounds.

And in 2026 – what was supposed to be the year his slugging core dominated the AL – it’s somehow their rotation that has kept them at least on the fringes of the Wild Card race (and not because of any vets brought in from outside the org, either). Furthermore, beyond 2025 second-round pick Joseph Dzierwa (who just got to AA) even the top pitching prospects in this farm system appear fringy and suspect to many evaluators.

Trey Gibson can’t throw strikes consistently enough in AAA and was all over the place in MLB and there are serious questions about how Nestor German will play at the highest level; those are the next two most polished guys who might be pen arms at best. There is never enough THERE THERE with Orioles pitchers and we also know with 10 elbow injuries this season and with their medical team in question around the league (as Buck Showalter and Jim Duquette and Mike Bordick and others have alluded to on “The Daily Flock Show”), more is more when it comes to arms.

When you factor how little is here, how little of worth is under contract beyond 2026 in terms of high-end pen arms with swing-and-miss (I don’t see anything do you?) and proven starters (Kyle Bradish and Baz), this is a massive hole. Even when you think you have enough, like Elias crowing about being nine starters deep this winter, he needed Brandon Young, an afterthought, to save his season. When Elias was under fire for selling at the 2022 deadline he talked up Cade Povich as “a potential front-line starter” and a steal of the deadline and we know how that went.

They need quantity and quality.

Elias is risk averse and petrified of making a long-term commitment to arms, and is more likely to spend for everyday bats. That needs to be more of the new model moving forward (they need a real CF from outside the org for 2027), with a renewed staple of projectable arms in Norfolk who could be better than what Chris Bassitt or Tomo Sugano or Kyle Gibson or Zach Eflin or Charlie Morton have been (really low bar to clear).

This by no means is to downplay Elias’s innate ability to make most every top prospect he gets to MLB drastically worse that any projection. Having that as your true superpower - turning Gunnar Hendson into a lost cause for a full year - is really something, and it’s going to take a stockpile of pitching to get around it.

Looking Ahead

The numbers (of bodies and potential bodies) are going to be there from a line-up standpoint moving forward from what he spends on bats and how much draft capital and international capital go into bats. You could talk me into a Henderson revival in 2027 and Jordan Westburg actually playing baseball and Blaze Alexander being a winning player and Dylan Beavers being a legit corner OF and Samuel Basallo being one of the top slugging catchers on the planet and Alonso being what he’s been this year.

Jackson Holliday (if he’s still here) turning over the order and getting on base a lot? I’m intrigued. But I’m not buying the ’27 Birds if Elias runs this rotation back sans Rogers and with his current pitching prospects and thinks he’ll slug enough to overcome it. And I’m not buying Bradish, Baz, Young, Kremer (gulp) or old guy to be signed later and Gibson/German/Dzierwa. No thanks.

The Orioles must go into 2027 spring training with 5-7 arms not currently in his system – already developed elsewhere in AA or higher (preferably from orgs like Dodgers, Rays, Brewers, Guardians who specialize in pitcher performance). Some of them should already have MLB innings. That’s a baseline, and if they want to re-sign Rogers as a UFA, great (they need to deal him first, however). But Elias focusing on having to figure out CF without having to rebuild a rotation on the fly, is the only fighting chance we’ve got.

Telling me you are making all these strides on the farm and the calvary of arms is coming from within and your 2023 draft class (lot of injuries there already) will be the next wave, that’s BS you’ll have to pay to read elsewhere. The industry isn’t buying it, and I’ll take the field over Elias when it comes to pretty much anything. And especially pitching.

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