Orioles' early-season returns make one roster flaw impossible to ignore now

All offseason, the Baltimore Orioles were tied to the top starting pitchers available in free agency and the trade market. Sure, the Orioles needed depth in the rotation, but even the most uninformed Orioles fan also knew they needed another option at the top.

Mike Elias said early in the offseason that such a pitcher was at the top of the Orioles' offseason wishlist.

Despite their obvious need for top-end starting pitching, the Orioles front office failed to convince any of the top names to sign in Baltimore and were unable to come to terms on a trade for one of the top of the rotation starters that got moved over the offseason.

The Baltimore Orioles quantity over quality plan for starting pitching is already showing some cracks

The Orioles attempted to make up for their lack of top-tier acquisitions by increasing the number of starting pitchers on the roster, adding Shane Baz and Chris Bassitt, and reuniting with Zach Eflin. Having more capable starters than you need is a good thing, and it was wise on the Orioles' part to try to keep Cade Povich and Brandon Young as far away from the major league rotation as possible. However, adding lots of starting pitchers does not improve the rotation as much as adding good ones does.

Already this season, the Orioles are reaping what they sowed this offseason as their rotation has struggled out of the gate, and the team failed to take advantage of its soft early-season schedule.

Trevor Rogers has been exceptional this season for the Orioles, but outside of his contributions, the Orioles' rotation has really struggled against lineups that are not projected to be particularly good. The non-Rogers starters have a combined ERA of 6.14 as of the start of this week, and they are averaging 4.9 walks per nine innings. They're also not getting deep into games; none of the Orioles starters besides Rogers have finished the sixth inning this season.

Even with Rogers factored into the rotations stats, they are in the bottom half of the league in most of the important pitching stats: 18th in ERA, 21st in K/9, 23rd in BB/9, and 19th in fWAR. This is not the statistical profile of a contending rotation.

The most annoying part of all of this is that everyone saw it coming. All offseason, fans and media were begging the Orioles to sign a Framber Valdez or trade for Freddy Peralta, and they just didn't do it. After the way the 2025 season melted down as a direct result of their failure to put together a competent rotation, it seemed impossible that the Orioles would run back the same strategy that didn't work, and that's almost exactly what they did.