The Orioles came into the tender deadline day with a number of decisions to make about players who are on the bubble of the roster without a lot of flexibility. In the morning, well ahead of the deadline,
they sent catcher Alex Jackson to Minnesota for a minor league infielder. When the choices were finally made, the only player not tendered a contract was Albert Suárez, with all other arbitration-eligible Orioles, including Ryan Mountcastle, tendered 2026 deals.
The official, full list of tendered players: Keegan Akin, Félix Bautista, Kyle Bradish, Yennier Cano, Gunnar Henderson, Dean Kremer, Ryan Mountcastle, Trevor Rogers, Adley Rutschman, Taylor Ward, Tyler Wells.
Suárez was set to be arbitration-eligible for the first time in the 2026 season. It would not have cost very much to keep him around for 2026, with Suárez projected for just a $900,000 salary next year. The decision not to tender him is probably more about clearing a guy who battered multiple injuries in 2025 and only pitched in five games from the roster, making room for someone else. My dream of the Orioles signing Albert’s brother Robert and uniting the brothers has been dashed. Oh well.
I think this decision can be viewed in conjunction with the choice to trade Grayson Rodriguez for Ward. This is another case of not trying to rely on a guy who didn’t contribute this year due to injury. The choice to acquire the corner outfielder Ward, specifically, is probably about another injury-riddled player, Tyler O’Neill, not being able to be counted on. The Orioles probably can’t shift off his contract to another team for lack of interest, but they can be more prepared for his inevitable injury.
Bubble players like Mountcastle, Akin, and Cano being tendered does not mean that all of them are guaranteed to be on the 2026 Orioles. The O’s could still trade any of these guys if there’s interest, or release them before the start of the season if they don’t fit on the team that Mike Elias assembles through the rest of the offseason.
It is particularly important to keep this fact in mind with Mountcastle because him being tendered does not mean the Orioles are committing to playing him and trading Coby Mayo for a pitcher. They might, though. Mountcastle probably has a better season in him than what he showed last year, when he hit just seven homers in 89 games. Walltimore 2.0 was supposed to help him out, and it didn’t do much for him. He is projected for about an $8 million salary in 2026. Dropping that expense from the payroll might have given more wiggle room to upgrade other spots on the roster. At least for now, they’ve chosen not to do it.
An Akin non-tender would have surprised me. He’s posted mid-3 ERAs in each of the last two seasons, and although he fell on his face a bit when given high-leverage spots, he’s still got some value as a lefty specialist and more generally as a “come in when the Orioles are losing 5-3 in the seventh inning and have a reasonable chance of keeping the score 5-3” kind of guy.
Cano did not prove capable of being that kind of guy in the 2025 season as he flopped along to a 5.12 ERA for the season, with a demotion to the minors in the middle there. Although he has two minor league option years remaining, I wonder if the Orioles will keep him around past spring training if he doesn’t show any sign of bouncing back by that point. We won’t be able to guess at Elias’s thought process until he does something about it, and even then, we can only guess.
