Orioles now hold the best rental arm available in the wake of the Tarik Skubal trade

The topic of a potential Tarik Skubal trade carried the discussion around the trade deadline for months. Unlike many overly discussed topics, this one was worthy of the attention. Skubal is such a good pitcher that it felt like the results of this year's World Series depended in large part on where he was going to end up. After months of speculation, Skubal ended up where everyone most feared he'd end up, on the Los Angeles Dodgers. Now that the biggest trade deadline domino has fallen, all of the teams that were hoping to have maybe a shot at getting Tarik Skubal have the next 36 hours to figure out what they are going to do to try to compete with the Dodgers.

The Baltimore Orioles have claimed they are going to try to buy and sell, but everything they've done so far and all the rumors about the team indicate that they are going to end up much more on the selling side than the buying side of the street. With that being the case and one of their starting pitchers already sent packing, Trevor Rogers suddenly becomes a fascinating character at this year's deadline.

With Tarik Skubal no longer available Trevor Rogers should be a popular trade target

With Skubal off the board, the market for the rental relievers is thin. Skubal's Tigers teammates Casey Mize and Jack Flaherty will likely be on the move (assuming Flaherty is healthy enough), as well as a pair of Mets starters in Freddy Peralta and Clay Holmes. Other potential rental starters include Robbie Ray and Brady Singer.

All of those pitchers present reasons to be concerned. Mize, Flaherty, and Clay Holmes all have health questions. Freddy Peralta is having the worst season of his career and looks more than a simple tweak away from being an effective starter. Ray and Singer present the issue of their underlying metrics suggesting their ERAs should both be close to five.

If you are a contender, it would be hard to feel that if you traded for any of these guys, you could hand them the ball in a playoff game and get good results.

Rogers has had a couple of bumps this season that make his overall season numbers look a little suspect. Still, if you look at what he's done over the last two seasons and ignore the four starts around when he went on the IL and was clearly being impacted by an illness, he's got a strong track record of preventing runs and pitching deep into games, even against high-level competition.

If the Orioles were willing to make Trevor Rogers available, he would instantly rise to the very top of the rental starting pitcher market and be potentially the only rental starter available that teams could acquire with the mentality that they were getting a playoff starter.

Looking around the league, here are all the teams competing for the playoff spot where Rogers would slot into their three:

The White Sox
The Astros
The Twins
The Rays
The Rangers
The Diamondbacks
The Braves
The Cubs
The Brewers
The Padres

That's a lot of teams that could really use Trevor Rogers. Even if some of those teams view Mize or Ray as better options, that still leaves a large market for the Orioles to deal Rogers; if they play their cards right, they could potentially recoup the value they gave up to get Rogers in 2024. With the Orioles going into the deadline with "no biases" about buying or selling the packages that they should start getting offered for Rogers, it is going to be hard to ignore.

That being said, the Orioles might be wise to ignore them. Currently, they sit just 1.5 games out of a playoff spot. You know what a team sitting 1.5 games out of a playoff spot could really use for the rest of the season? A pitcher like Trevor Rogers.

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