2 Orioles players who should be non-tendered, and 1 who shouldn't

MLB's non-tender deadline is 6pm this evening. Teams must choose to either offer contracts to arbitration-eligible players or cut bait and remove them from the 40-man. The Orioles have 12 such players this year, and most of them are easy decisions.

Guys like Adley Rutschman and Keegan Akin will undoubtedly receive contract offers and work with the Orioles to come to terms for 2025. However, there are a couple guys on the list that are questionable and could wind up as free agents this weekend.

The first of those players is Emmanuel Rivera. While the infielder was a rockstar after the O's claimed him off waivers from the Marlins, that performance was a departure from who Rivera had been for his entire career. Prior to 2024, Rivera had hit .247/.304/.380 in 217 career games. In his 73 plate appearances with Baltimore this summer, the righty mashed and put up a .313/.370/.578 line with strong plate discipline.

Cot's Contracts has Rivera projected to get $1.5 million in arbitration, so it's not that he's expensive. The problem is that the Orioles have both Jorge Mateo and Ramon Urias settled into backup infield roles, and seemingly have plans to get Heston Kjerstad reps at first base. Add in top prospect Coby Mayo and the field is just too crowded to bring Rivera back, especially when he outperformed his career numbers so drastically.

The Orioles have a couple difficult choices to make at this year's non-tender deadline

Speaking of Urias, the Orioles really ought to bring him back for 2025. He's projected to earn roughly $3 million in arbitration but his performance to this point warrants the investment. Urias has been a solid backup infielder for the O's, providing versatility as a defender while holding his own with the bat.

A .254/.320/.423 line with 11 homers and strong plate discipline in 100 games was a big part of the Orioles' success in 2024. Urias has both the skillset and the clubhouse experience to be a positive value add for the Orioles in 2025. He's good enough to be helpful and will help fill the gap at least until Coby Mayo is truly ready to go.

While there are a couple other potential choices here, we can make an unpopular statement that the O's should non-tender RHP Tyler Wells. It may seem a bit off the board, considering that the O's have already said they expect Wells to be part of the mix in 2025. Wells underwent elbow surgery early last summer and is on track to return sometime around mid-season, pending a successful rehab timeline.

The upside with Wells is that he posted a 3.64 ERA in 2023 and has done an excellent job limiting walks throughout his career. However, he's never thrown a full season's worth of innings. He was limited to just 118.2 innings in 2023, and his next best effort is 103.2 IP the year prior.

Despite the results in 2023, he actually pitched to a 4.98 FIP, and the advanced data didn't like how he looked in limited time in 2024. Wells is projected to get $1.9 million in arbitration and it's likely that the Orioles bring him back. However, he's never been quite as good as we'd like to think and with the fact that he'll be out for most of 2025, it'd be reasonable for the Orioles to cut bait now and focus their efforts elsewhere.