With Bradish Showing Troubling Signs, Orioles Best Handle With Care

Kyle Bradish was always going to face certain challenges in 2026 after having his 2024 and 2025 seasons so heavily compromised by the unnecessarily-delayed timing of his Tommy John surgery.

The Orioles front office and coaching staff and medical staff have had a difficult time in general developing pitchers and keeping them healthy and having them return from TJ surgery in any sort of standard timeline, so dealing with their staff ace coming off a 2024 campaign in which he threw just 32 innings and a 2025 that culminated in 39 1/3 innings pitched was going to stress them, if not confound them.

No one should be surprised that Bradish, already at 73 1/3 innings logged this season, has been prone to extremes. It’s a lot to ask him to navigate since commanding Cy Young votes in 2023, and even more pressure fell on him given that the alleged upgrades to the rotation have either already crashed out (Chris Bassitt on Injured List and Zach Eflin out for the season) or been prone to wild ebbs and flows themselves (Shane Baz).

Perhaps some of what has ailed Bradish could be massaged with a different mental approach, and certainly some altered pitch sequencing (but with this coaching staff, again, I wouldn’t bank on it) seems in order. But for the second time already this season Bradish has fallen into a significant funk, and it always seemed like he might need some period where he was shutdown to get through the full season without ending up throwing five times as many innings this season as last.

Recent Struggles

Bradish has now yielded more hits than innings pitched and has surrendered 11 homers already, back to the elevated rate that plagued him as a rookie (2022). The lack of control, coupled with all the hard contact, bears serious monitoring and if it continues, backing off him could make sense (but this is the same baseball czar, Mike Elias, who allowed Bradish to pitch through discomfort into May of 2024 - what Bradish dubbed "significant pain" at one point - before finally getting the inevitable surgery.

Yeah, they still have zero feel for any of this.

A WHIP of 1.60 is a bad sign and he’s already just seven walks shy of a career high. Bradish’s season ERA is now above the league average (4.30). He has failed to pitch into the fifth inning in his last two outings, and if he gets pounded by the Mariners again this week like he did last week, Elias best not be asleep at the wheel.

Bradish has allowed six homers in his last five starts and ranks in the bottom 17th percent in overall pitching run value and bottom three percent in breaking-ball value; for someone who needs a curve and slider to offset a fastball he only wants to throw 20 percent of the time, that seems like a cry for help.

Too Much Cheese?

While Bradish doesn’t lean on the fastball, he has seemed to be hunting strikeouts with elevated velocity lately and it’s not working out for him. He has appeared over-amped at times throughout this season, like he is trying to make up for lost time or do too much; leaning into his full repertoire and being craftier rather than overly aggressive would work better for him.

Maybe someone will have that conversation with him?

It seems like he’s trying to throw the fastball less frequently – just 19% of the time versus 22% in his 2023 season – but harder.

Ramp Up The Curveball?

Bradish is throwing the curve considerably more than his breakout season (22% to 17% in 2023), but it probably merits more looks in two-strike counts. In 2023, his slider and curve and two-seamer (sinker) were all elite offerings. Here’s how his pitches are faring now:

SLIDER

2023 31% usage .168 AVG/.272 SLG 36.4% whiff

2026 27% .284/.622 31.5%

CURVE

2023 22% .142/.165 36.1%

2026 19% .214/.411 41.2%

SINKER

2023 23% .228/.356 15.3%

2026 32% .258/.361 11.7%

The swing-and-miss rate from the curveball this season is noteworthy. It’s not been unhittable but compared to the sinker he is throwing nearly a third of the time (without anyone swinging and missing) it points to a rethink being in order.

Bradish is getting crushed the second and third time through the lineup (opponents OPS goes from .713 on first sight, to .891 (.405 OBP) second time to .871 on third (.371 OBP). Switching things up could help. Changing curveball use worked wonders for Baz and the Orioles are making some strides with Brandon Young; Bradish needs help, too.

It also just might be that this was always going to be an awkward, helter-skelter season for Bradish, and the remnant of the naïve and sophomoric way in which this front office handled his original elbow injury. He’s hardly alone in that group, with the inability to develop a consistent starting pitcher one of countless blight’s on Elias’s eight-year reign.

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