Orioles get a lift from one of their slumping stars

One of the unfortunatly defining aspects of the Baltimore Orioles 2026 season has been that many of their best players have been the ones struggling the most. On the offensive side of the ball, Gunnar Henderson and Pete Alonso have not lived up to the lofty expectations placed on their shoulders, and on the pitching side, Trevor Rogers and Kyle Bradish have not been the 1-2 punch at the top of the rotation that the front office was clearly hoping they'd be.

Having their best players scuffle to start the season has played a big role in the team being well under .500 one month into the season, and if it were to continue, there would be little hope that the Orioles could pull themselves out of the hole they've dug themselves. Fortunately for the Orioles, Bradish seems to be turning a corner and, over his last two starts, has looked much more like the pitcher he was before Tommy John surgery.

Kyle Bradish looks like he's turned a corner just in time to help save the Orioles' season

Over his last two starts, Bradish has pitched 13 innings, racking up 17 strikeouts and walking just four batters. Because scorekeepers are generous when it comes to tagging players with errors, the three runs the Athletics got off him were "earned," but if the Orioles' defense were even average, he would have had back-to-back shutout starts.

His command has looked much sharper, the walks are way down, and he hasn't left his breaking stuff hanging in the middle of the zone where it was getting punished. He's also been remarkably efficient, cruising deep into the game in each of his past two starts.

Some of this progress is just becuase the further away he gets from his surgery, the better he's going to feel, but it is notable that in these last two starts he's leaned much more on the curveball than the slider, which has long been one of his most thrown pitches and probably the single pitch he's most known for.

Even the best breaking pitches in the world will get hammered if they're left hanging out over the plate so to avoid the walks and hangers that had been haunting him moving from the slider to curveball as his main put away pitch makes a lot of sense. The slider still has the potential to be a great pitch so hopefully once Bradish gets the feel for it again he can reincorperate it.

Bradish also had the issue early in the season of losing velocity on his pitches as the game went on. In today's game against the Yankees, the last two batters he faced were Ben Rice and Aaron Judge, and between those two plate appearances, both his four-seam and his two-seam fastballs were sitting right where they should be at 94 mph.

Two dominant outings against two of the best offenses in baseball feels like enough evidence to officially declare that Kyle Bradish is back. He can't start everyday so the Orioles still need the other 4/5ths of the rotation to pitch a lot better than they have if they want a shot at turning this seaon around but Bradish pitching like the version of himself that was a Cy Young candidate means that at least once a week the Orioles are going to have a chance to win a low scoring game which just hasn't been a thing for them for the majority of the season.

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