The Orioles announced that right-hander Kade Strowd has been recalled to the big league club. He will be making his major league debut as soon as he gets into a game. Left-hander Grant Wolfram was optioned to Triple-A Norfolk as the corresponding move.
Strowd, 27, was added to the club’s 40-man roster in November to keep him out of the Rule 5 draft. A 12th-round pick from 2019, he has been a reliever throughout his minor league career. He does have three starts but they were all at the lower levels and of the opener variety.
At the upper levels, he has generally been able to get decent amounts of strikeouts and ground balls, but with some control issues. From the beginning of 2023 to the present, he has 116 2/3 innings pitched between Double-A and Triple-A. He has a 5.55 earned run average and 11.9% walk rate in that time but a 29.1% strikeout rate and ground balls on about half the balls in play he’s allowed.
So far this year, he has ten innings pitched at Triple-A with an unsightly 8.10 ERA. However, his .481 batting average on balls in play and 36.1% strand rate are both far to the unlucky side in that small sample. He has struck out 36% of batters faced this year and kept his walk rate down to 8%.
For Baltimore, the pitching staff got a lot of usage recently. Their game on Friday was postponed by rain to Saturday, meaning they played three games in the past two days. Wolfram pitched on both days and might not have been available for tonight’s contest, so Strowd comes up to give them a fresh arm. It could be a brief stay for Strowd, since the O’s don’t have a starter listed for tomorrow and Kyle Gibson is on the taxi squad, per Jake Rill of MLB.com. If Gibson gets the ball, then someone will need to be bumped off the active roster.
Image courtesy of Nathan Ray Seebeck, Imagn Images
This has to be the fastest any team ever has started “throw something at the wall hope it sticks”. Usually you get to May June July before teams start running everybody and their grandmother out there. Orioles really hurting to find rotation production. Just wasting years on cheap guys.
Wouldn’t be surprised if the orioles spend the 20 draft picks all on pitchers at this point
They didn’t do enough to improve the pitching staff in the offseason, plain and simple. Yes, they’ve been hit hard by injuries, but there is no denying they didn’t do enough to improve in the offseason.
Can’t do worse than Morton.
“Can’t do worse”..Two years ago I couldn’t understand why the Atlanta Braves valued Charlie Morton so highly.
Apparently the O’s weren’t watching his Atlanta days of 3-5 inning starts and getting blown up fairly regularly.
Morton avg 5+ innings while starting at least 30 games all 4 seasons for ATL. 2 of those seasons he had a sub 4 ERA, one of those was 2 years ago.
Well, he went on the IL.
Arnold – That’s what he does.
1) Hits homeruns on Opening Day
2) Works out
3) Goes on the IL from working out
I love the guy’s consistency, I really do ;O)
Front office won’t sign pitchers long term for fear of injury, but they gave O’Neil a hefty contract and he’s never stayed healthy.
That 8+ ERA will cause many MLB teams to salivate.
At this point, just seeing “Baltimore” on the schedule makes them salivate. They aren’t doing anything right currently.
“He will be making his major league debut as soon as he gets into a game”. Uh, yeah. That applies for everyone..
let – One of my favorite sports headlines that I saved a snapshot of:
“Horse wins Kentucky Derby”
Makes me smile every time I look at it :O)
I was going to say, So will I…
This is what happens when you have a front office that relies completely on computer algorithms. When the computer fails, you have no idea what you’re doing, and Elias sure seems lost in the weeds. He has no feel for the players or the game action.