Orioles offseason gamble is already raising questions as former arm thrives elsewhere

Nobody was surprised when the Baltimore Orioles did not pursue a reunion with Tomoyuki Sugano this offseason. Out of all the starting pitchers on the 2025 Orioles, Sugano may have been the least culpable for the Orioles season going down the drain, but his final line on the season gave him just 0.1 fWAR in 157 innings, and his second-half ERA was 4.99. Obviously, the Orioles needed to add a better pitcher than that, right?

By better pitchers than Sugano, most people meant an ace or someone who the Orioles could start in a playoff game. It was widely expected that the Orioles would land one of the top free agents in this year's class, either Framber Valdez or Ranger Suarez. The Orioles didn't go that route; instead of signing a top free-agent pitcher to a multi-year deal, they targeted cheaper veteran players willing to sign one-year deals.

The Baltimore Orioles approach to free agent pitchers isn't working

They signed Chris Bassitt for $18.5 million and Zach Eflin for $10 million and shed no tears when Sugano signed with Colorado for just $5.1 million. Now, just two weeks into the season, it seems like the Orioles' free-agent pitching strategy was a mistake. Eflin lasted just 3 innings before hitting the injured list, and Chris Bassitt has been both ineffective and inefficient, showing poor stuff and even poorer command. It looks like his time as an effective starter may be over.

Sugano, on the other hand, has been very effective for the Rockies. He's pitched to a 1.69 ERA, allowing just 2 runs in his first two starts. He's been the starter in two of the Rockies' four wins, and both games were against teams that came into the season believing they were contenders. He dropped a quality start against the Phillies in Colorado.

The point of bringing all of this up is not to say that the Orioles should have signed Sugano. The point is that they needed to aim higher when it came to their own pitching needs. The fact that the Orioles' two free agent signings are going to be outproduced by Sugano, who they happily let walk out the door, is embarrassing. After the season they had in 2025, they should have been aggressive and made it impossible for their free-agent acquisitions to be brutally mogged by Sugano.

The Orioles weren't aggressive enough in fixing their rotation. They prioritized avoiding a bad contract over making sure that their rotation wouldn't sink them, and as a result, their rotation might sink them. What's frustrating about this is that it's not going to change. If the Orioles miss the playoffs and it's in large part because their starting pitching didn't hold up, they won't go out and sign one of the top free agents next offseason. They're going to try to find pitchers who will sign short-term deals and keep repeating this cycle.