Author: Anthony Franco

After back-to-back excellent seasons in 2023-24, the 2025 Orioles stumbled to a last place finish. They responded with their biggest offseason of Mike Elias’ tenure running baseball operations.

Major League Signings

• 1B Pete Alonso: Five years, $155MM
• RHP Ryan Helsley: Two years, $28MM (deal includes opt-out after ’26)
• RHP Chris Bassitt: One year, $18.5MM
• RHP Zach Eflin: One year, $10MM (including buyout of ’27 mutual option)
• CF Leody Taveras: One year, $2MM

2026 commitments: $73.5MM
Total future commitments: $213.5MM

Option Decisions

• OF Tyler O’Neill bypassed opportunity to opt out of two years, $33MM
• Team exercised $9MM option on RHP Andrew Kittredge over $1MM buyout
• Team declined $5.5MM option on SS Jorge Mateo

Trades and Claims

• Acquired RHP Shane Baz from Rays for four minor leaguers (C Caden Bodine, OF Slater de Brun, OF Austin Overn, RHP Michael Forret) and Competitive Balance Round A draft pick (#33 overall)
• Acquired LF Taylor Ward from Angels for RHP Grayson Rodriguez
• Acquired RHP Andrew Kittredge from Cubs for cash
• Acquired 2B/3B/OF Blaze Alexander from Diamondbacks for RHP Kade Strowd, minor league RHP Wellington Aracena and minor league IF José Mejia
• Acquired RHP Jackson Kowar from Twins for cash
• Traded C Alex Jackson to Twins for minor league INF Payton Eeles
• Claimed RHP George Soriano off waivers from Marlins (later lost on waivers to Braves)
• Claimed OF Pedro León off waivers from Astros (later lost on waivers to Phillies)
• Claimed OF Will Robertson off waivers from Pirates (later outrighted off 40-man roster)
• Claimed C Drew Romo off waivers from Rockies (later lost on waivers to Mets)
• Claimed OF Jhonkensy Noel off waivers from Guardians (later outrighted)
• Claimed OF Marco Luciano off waivers from Pirates (later lost on waivers to Yankees)
• Claimed LHP José Suarez off waivers from Braves (later lost back to Atlanta on waivers)
• Claimed IF/OF Weston Wilson off waivers from Phillies (later outrighted)
• Acquired 3B Bryan Ramos from White Sox for cash (later lost on waivers to Cardinals, then re-claimed off waivers from St. Louis)

Notable Minor League Signings

• Jose Barrero, Hans Crouse, Thairo Estrada (granted release at end of Spring Training), Sam Huff, Enoli Paredes, Albert Suárez

Extensions

• Restructured deal with LHP Dietrich Enns to one-year, $2.625MM guarantee (including buyout of ’27 club option)

Notable Losses

• Grayson Rodriguez, Tomoyuki Sugano, Alex Jackson, Gary Sánchez, Jorge Mateo, Kade Strowd, José Castillo (lost on waivers), Dylan Carlson (outright), Daniel Johnson (outright), Shawn Dubin (outright), Carson Ragsdale (lost on waivers)

On the heels of back-to-back playoff appearances, the 2025 Orioles were 15 games under .500 by the end of May. They fired manager Brandon Hyde seven weeks into the season. The team played better under interim skipper Tony Mansolino, but they’d dug themselves a hole from which they never had much chance to crawl out.

Before making any significant roster moves, the O’s needed to decide on a manager. Guardians associate manager Craig Albernaz has been viewed as a manager in waiting for a few seasons. The O’s hired the 43-year-old to his first MLB managerial job, though he’d previously held the position at the lower levels of the Rays’ farm system.

Albernaz also has minor league playing experience and had worked on big league staffs in San Francisco and Cleveland over the past few years. Managerial changes frequently come with coaching staff adjustments. This was no exception. The O’s brought in Donnie Ecker as bench coach and Dustin Lind as hitting coach, though they stayed the course on the pitching side. Drew French is back for his third season as pitching coach; assistant pitching coach Mitch Plassmeyer and pitching strategy coach Ryan Klimek are also holdovers.

The focus then turned to the roster. President of baseball operations Mike Elias hinted at the possibility of a big offseason, saying they were open to pursuing free agents who had declined qualifying offers. Starting pitching was the natural target with the team not having replaced Corbin Burnes at the top of last year’s rotation. The O’s would be tied to Framber Valdez and Ranger Suárez as frequently as any team throughout the offseason.

They didn’t come away with either pitcher, though they reportedly did offer Suárez a five-year deal in the $125MM range. Baltimore’s biggest free agent splash would instead come on the position player side. The O’s were involved on the top power bats available both in free agency and trade.

Kyle Schwarber and Pete Alonso were the preeminent free agent sluggers. The Orioles pursued both, with Schwarber seemingly their top target. They reportedly offered him a five-year, $150MM deal around the Winter Meetings. Unfortunately for Baltimore, Schwarber preferred to return to Philadelphia if all else was equal. The Phillies matched, and last year’s NL MVP runner-up will spend another five years in the City of Brotherly Love.

Undaunted, the Orioles moved quickly to Alonso. One day after Schwarber’s agreement with Philly, the O’s hammered out a five-year deal to slot Alonso into the middle of the order. He signed for $155MM — it’s probably not a coincidence that his camp topped Schwarber’s deal by $1MM annually — and will be the everyday first baseman. Alonso was not eligible for the qualifying offer, so he didn’t require draft pick forfeiture. He rebounded from a slightly down 2024 season to hit .272/.347/.524 with 38 homers in his final season as a Met.

The deal raised some eyebrows around the league. It’s a lot of money for a player in his 30s whose game is built almost entirely around his bat. (The same can be said for the Schwarber deal, to be clear.) Alonso is as durable as any player in the game and will surely upgrade the offense. His first base defense has never been great and has declined over the past two seasons — to the point that the incumbent Mets were seemingly only interested in bringing him back on a shorter term that involved more work as a designated hitter.

It’s easily the biggest investment of the Elias era. They’d made nine-figure offers to other players — the ones to Burnes, Schwarber and later Suárez have all been publicly reported — but this is the organization’s first nine-figure signing since the Chris Davis extension a decade ago.

Alonso was one of seven right-handed hitters who hit at least 35 homers last season. He’s one of two whom the Orioles acquired over the winter. Taylor Ward popped a career-high 36 longballs with a .228/.317/.475 slash over 157 games for the Angels.

Ward was entering his final season of arbitration and felt a little superfluous to a Halos team loaded with right-handed power bats and lacking starting pitching. That arguably describes the Orioles as well, but the teams nevertheless lined up a one-for-one trade. Baltimore gave up four years of control over Grayson Rodriguez for one year of Ward, who’ll make $12.175MM.

It’s frankly difficult to imagine the O’s would have made that move if they had any faith in Rodriguez staying healthy. Formerly the top pitching prospect in the entire sport, Rodriguez pitched at a mid-rotation level between 2023-24. He has battled shoulder and elbow injuries over the last two seasons and didn’t pitch at all in ’25. Rodriguez was healthy at the time of the trade and has shown mid-90s velocity this spring, but a “dead arm” will again send him to the injured list to begin his Angels tenure.

The Ward trade preceded the Alonso signing by a couple weeks. Yet even at the time, it made for a bit of an odd roster fit. Baltimore’s top free agent signee of the previous offseason, Tyler O’Neill, is a right-handed hitting left fielder with huge power and modest on-base skills. O’Neill’s first season in Baltimore was a disaster, as he landed on the injured list three times and didn’t perform over 54 games when he was able to play. He made the obvious call to forego an opt-out and wasn’t going to be easy to trade with two years and $33MM remaining on his contract.

Baltimore presumably hopes to salvage something from the O’Neill investment, but the corner outfield picture is cluttered. He and Ward each fit best in left field. Dylan Beavers had a huge year in Triple-A and is coming off an impressive 35-game MLB showing. He should get regular playing time in right field, at least against righty pitching. Colton Cowser is coming off an injury-plagued season and stretched defensively up the middle, but they’ll need to play him in center field to get him regular playing time.

In the O’s defense, it’s not as if there were a ton of alternatives in center field. They were never likely to outbid the Yankees on Cody Bellinger. After that, Harrison Bader was the best of a middling group in free agency. The trade market was led by Luis Robert Jr., a reclamation candidate who’ll play the 2026 season on a $20MM salary.

The Orioles made a pure depth add at the position by signing Leody Taveras to a $2MM deal. He has been a capable defender for most of his career but hasn’t hit at all in the past two seasons. He’s a fourth/fifth outfielder who’ll round out the bench.

The glut of corner bats extends to the infield. Baltimore’s catching tandem of Adley Rutschman and Samuel Basallo are going to take a lot of at-bats at designated hitter. They haven’t found playing time for former top corner infield prospect Coby Mayo. Meanwhile, Ryan Mountcastle’s rough 2025 season and near-$7MM arbitration salary made him a clear non-tender candidate on paper. The Orioles opted to retain Mountcastle for his final year of arbitration, an odd decision in November that seemed particularly regrettable when they signed Alonso two weeks later.

Baltimore dangled Mountcastle in trade talks into Spring Training. There was unsurprisingly a limited market for a moderately expensive first baseman coming off a .250/.286/.367 season, even though the O’s managed to secure a club option over him for the 2027 campaign. It’s always possible an eleventh-hour trade will come together. If not, he’ll enter the season without much of a path to playing time as a right-handed bench bat.

Camp injuries opened a greater opportunity for Mayo, if only because he’s nominally capable of playing third base. Jordan Westburg has battled an oblique injury and, more ominously, has a partial UCL tear in his throwing elbow. He’s trying a platelet-rich plasma injection in the hope of avoiding surgery. He’ll miss at least the first month of the season.

Mayo will open the year as the primary third baseman. The defense is a concern, but he’s yet another potentially impactful right-handed power hitter. Mayo hasn’t shown a whole lot in 340 scattered big league plate appearances, but he has been a consistent 20+ homer bat in the minors. He’s also coming off a huge Spring Training performance.

The injuries extended to the other side of the infield. Second baseman Jackson Holliday suffered a right hamate fracture during batting practice early in camp. He underwent surgery and will begin the season on the injured list. The O’s had serendipitously made a trade to fortify their infield depth just one day before Holliday suffered that fracture.

Baltimore acquired utilityman Blaze Alexander from the Diamondbacks for reliever Kade Strowd and a pair of minor leaguers. Alexander is a righty hitter with a little bit of power and some defensive versatility. He should be a serviceable stopgap at second until Holliday is healthy. He can then work in a multi-positional role or push Mayo off third base if necessary (depending on Westburg’s progress).

The O’s made a number of minor transactions on the position player side, largely in claiming players off waivers and trying to run them through waivers themselves a week or two later. They added corner infielder Bryan Ramos and outfielders Weston Wilson, Jhonkensy Noel and Will Robertson to the organization that way. They also traded out-of-options third catcher Alex Jackson to Minnesota for non-roster infielder Payton Eeles, a 5’5″ utility player with minimal power but strong on-base numbers in the minors.

Baltimore remained active in the free agent starting pitching market even after the Alonso signing. It’s likely that their offer to Suárez came towards the end of the winter, as he didn’t sign his $130MM deal with the Red Sox until late January. Valdez was unsigned into February, as were reported mid-tier targets Justin Verlander, Lucas Giolito and Chris Bassitt. (Giolito, of course, remains unsigned.)

The O’s eventually added Bassitt on a one-year, $18.5MM deal as Spring Training got underway. The veteran righty has started 30+ games in each of the last four seasons, typically allowing around four earned runs per nine with a league average strikeout/walk profile.

There are some similarities to late-career signings that haven’t worked for the O’s in past years (e.g. Charlie Morton, Tomoyuki Sugano, Kyle Gibson), but Bassitt is at the higher end of that group. They got him for one year in an offseason when Merrill Kelly commanded a two-year deal from the Diamondbacks at the same age and with a similar profile. He should raise the floor in the middle of the rotation.

On the opposite end of the risk-reward spectrum, the Orioles made their biggest rotation add via trade. Baltimore packaged four prospects and a 2026 Competitive Balance draft pick (No. 33 overall) to the Rays for Shane Baz. The righty is entering his age-27 season and under arbitration control for three years. Baz is a former top prospect who still has plus stuff. He averages 97 mph on his fastball and has a trio of secondary pitches (knuckle-curve, cutter and changeup) that can miss bats.

There’s a path for Baz to become a high-end No. 3 starter who can slot behind Trevor Rogers and Kyle Bradish in the top half of the rotation. There’s work to do if he’s to reach that ceiling, however. Baz had seven scoreless starts last year; he also had 10 outings in which he allowed five or more runs. The O’s are chalking up some of the inconsistency to Baz’s struggles at Tampa Bay’s 2025 temporary home field, where he had a near-6.00 ERA and allowed 18 of his 26 home runs. Baz had a 3.86 ERA over 84 innings on the road.

They paid a hefty prospect cost to take the swing. The headliners of the return, Caden Bodine and Slater de Brun, were respectively selected 30th and 37th overall last summer. They parted with a similarly high pick in the upcoming draft. It’s also a bet on Baz to stay healthy, as last year was his first full season at the MLB level. Baz had undergone Tommy John surgery at the end of the 2022 campaign and was sidelined for nearly two years.

The new additions will respectively land third and fourth in Albernaz’s rotation. The Orioles round out the group by bringing back Zach Eflin on a one-year, $10MM deal. The righty had a nightmare of a 2025 season, allowing a near-6.00 ERA over 14 starts. He went on the injured list three times due to lat and back injuries. Eflin underwent a season-ending lumbar microdiscectomy in August but will be ready for Opening Day. The O’s are placing a moderate bet that he’ll return closer to the mid-rotation form he showed between 2023-24.

Baltimore’s three rotation moves pushed right-hander Dean Kremer to Triple-A to begin the season. He’s overqualified for a sixth starter in Triple-A, though an injury is sure to reopen a rotation spot before long. The Orioles will use Tyler Wells out of the bullpen. He can work in long relief but might be needed more often in leverage situations given the uncertainty in the late innings.

The Orioles lost Félix Bautista to rotator cuff surgery as the 2025 season was winding down. It was a massive blow to an already thin bullpen. Baltimore responded by making a pair of high-leverage pickups early in the offseason. They reacquired setup man Andrew Kittredge from the Cubs, picking up a $9MM team option that Chicago evidently wasn’t going to exercise. Kittredge is effective when healthy but missed time last season with a knee injury and will start this year on the 15-day IL due to shoulder inflammation.

Baltimore’s bigger relief add came in the ninth inning. The O’s dipped into a robust free agent closing market to sign Ryan Helsley to a two-year, $28MM guarantee that allows him to opt out after one season. A two-time All-Star with the Cardinals, Helsley has a triple digit fastball and a wipeout slider that can make him one of the best relievers in the game. The end to his 2025 season couldn’t have gone any worse though.

Helsley was rocked for a 7.20 ERA over 22 appearances after being traded from St. Louis to the Mets at last year’s deadline. His strikeouts dropped, the walks increased, and his home run rate skyrocketed. It’s believed that Helsley was tipping his pitches and unable to correct the issue in-season. The Orioles clearly agree, betting on the track record and stuff over the most recent results. Helsley had an encouraging spring, firing six scoreless innings with eight strikeouts against three walks.

Yennier Cano will get some high-leverage assignments, as will Kittredge and Keegan Akin once they’re healthy. Baltimore restructured their contract with lefty Dietrich Enns, who missed a decent number of bats after being acquired from the Tigers in a minor deadline trade. They took a flier on former supplemental first-rounder Jackson Kowar, who is out of options and trying to win a middle relief role.

It was the busiest offseason of Elias’ eight years running baseball operations. It didn’t take the form many expected, as the Orioles emphasized adding power bats over a clear top-end starter. They invested a lot of trade capital and a decent amount of money to build out the middle of the rotation, hoping that’ll be enough to support a high-powered lineup. Can they follow the path of the 2025 Blue Jays in going worst to first in the AL East?