Trey Gibson returns to the big leagues in head scratching new role

When Cade Povich hit the IL on Friday afternoon, the Orioles had a lot of relievers in Triple-A that they could have called up, but instead they chose to recall their top pitching prospect, Trey Gibson. This was an interesting development because Trevor Rogers is set to return on Monday, in time to fill the rotation spot they lost when Povich went down.

The way the Orioles decided to use Gibson in his first appearance back with the big league team raised further questions. Even though Bradish was cruising through his start, the Orioles had Gibson up warming early and often before eventually calling him in to pitch in the eighth inning of a one-run game.

The Orioles set their top pitching prospect up to fail

This was an odd spot to use Gibson. Gibson came out of the bullpen only one time last season. He does not have the kind of arsenal that screams high-leverage reliever. For his second big league appearance to be against the heart of the Athletics order in a high-leverage late-game spot is a tough ask. Somewhat predictably, it was too much to ask, and Gibson gave up what ended up being the game-winning run.

What's strange about the whole thing is that if the Orioles wanted to call someone up to pitch two high-leverage innings at the end of a game, Tyler Wells was right there and has much  experience in that role.

What it seems like happened is that the Orioles didn't think that Bradish would be able to pitch deep into the game because he hasn't been able to do that consistently, and they called up Gibson, thinking he would cover three to four innings out of the bullpen and spare them from having to use a bunch of relievers for the eighth day in a row. Then Bradish carved up the A's and pitched into the seventh on his own. The Orioles decided to try to use Gibson anyway, since he was there and more rested than anyone else in the pen, and ended up putting him in a bad spot, which produced a bad result.

Unless there is an injury, the Orioles can't call up any of their 40-man arms in triple-A until the end of next week, with the exception of Jose Espada, who they have been reluctant to call upon all year. So Gibson is most likely going to be in the big leagues for at least a week.

It will be interesting to see how the Orioles decide to use him in that span. The Orioles desperately need starting pitching in general, so it doesn't seem likely that they're going to try to turn their best pitching prospect into a reliever. But with him having just pitched two innings last night, it doesn't seem likely he'll start one of the games against the Athletics, and it would feel like once again putting him in a bad spot to have him make his second career start against the Yankees team he faced in his MLB debut last week.

It's a tough spot, which is why calling up Gibson instead of Wells was probably a mistake that put a young player in a bad spot.

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