Orioles strike trade to address glaring bullpen weakness with familiar trade partner

In the wake of several end-of-spring-training cuts, the Baltimore Orioles had an open spot on the 40-man roster, and it was only a matter of time before President of Baseball Operations Mike Elias found an arm on the waiver wire to fill the void left by the most recent class of pitchers he had designated for assignment. With a virtual buffet of recently DFA'd arms, Elias honed in on Jayvien Sandridge, who was DFA'd by the Angels before the start of the season.

Out of all the pitchers recently DFA'd, Sandridge being the one that Elias pursued makes a lot of sense. The Orioles have had some success scooping up recently DFA'd Angels pitchers; notably, they snagged Jacob Webb after the Angels decided they'd had enough of him. Webb proceeded to put up a 3.09 ERA in 85 appearances over the next two seasons in Baltimore. The Orioles and Angels also came together for the Rodriguez/Ward trade this offseason, and familiar trade partners only make these things easier.

Orioles have had success with former Angels pitchers before and they are trying again with Jayvien Sandridge

It's also relevant that Sandridge is a lefty. The Orioles are very thin at both the MLB and Triple-A level when it comes to left-handed relievers, and of the few lefties they have, most of them are poor against left-handed pitchers, which is almost the whole point of having a left-handed reliever. If the Sandridge can contribute at the MLB level, he could become the Orioles' lefty specialist very quickly.

The other factor that makes Sandridge an obvious Elias target is the fact that he still has multiple minor league options. Once he's on the 40-man, the Orioles will be able to call him up and send him back down a couple times without risking exposing him to waivers. That kind of flexibility is a major advantage for a front office as they work to piece together an entire MLB season's worth of bullpen innings.

Sandridge likely won't be an immediate plug-and-play guy. He has less than one inning of MLB experience and only pitched two innings this spring training. Last year, his ERA in Triple-A was 4.55. The Orioles are going to try to do with Sandridge what they did with guys like Yennier Cano and Danny Coulombe: find a simple change they can make that will transform them from a middling minor league reliever into an effective major leaguer.

If they can pull it off, the Orioles will have a cheap lefty reliever they can strategically deploy throughout the season. If they can't, they'll just DFA him and try again with someone else until they find an arm that can help them.