The Orioles are in a position where they must improve the top of their starting rotation. If they aren’t willing to trade prospects or young players to do it, spending money is the only way. That’s a bad place to be. High-end free agent starting pitchers are expensive and risky bets. They might get hurt. You might pay for their decline, or for erratic year-to-year performance. Mike Elias has to make one of these bets because otherwise the bet will be, “The mix of incumbent Orioles starting pitchers will be enough
to get them at least to the 2026 trade deadline.” That would be the worst bet of all.
Over the next few weeks, Camden Chat writers will be making their cases for free agent or trade targets who would improve the Orioles. On the list of players are high-end starters, lower-end starters, relievers, and veteran hitters. We engaged in a similar exercise last offseason. The only one of “our” players Elias ended up signing was Tyler O’Neill, which, you know. We hope that adding to the team in free agency goes better this time around, which will probably require Elias spending more money, though even that doesn’t guarantee anything.
I open with the free agent pitcher who is likely to command a $100+ million guarantee on his next contract who had the best actual results in the course of the 2025 season: Ranger Suárez, until lately a member of the Philadelphia Phillies. Over the 2025 season, Suárez started 26 games and ended up with a 3.20 ERA and 3.21 FIP. That was worth 4.7 bWAR or 4.0 fWAR. Having a pitcher of that caliber instead of Charlie Morton would have closed at least a third of the gap between what the Orioles were and a playoff team.
Suárez, a lefty who will be heading into his age 30 season, gets the edge for me over the other of the “big three” starting pitchers this winter – Framber Valdez and Dylan Cease. I recognize that in feeling this, there is passing on what is probably higher upside as well as more likely innings-eating from both Cease and Valdez. Each has a best season better than Suárez’s best season, and each has topped Suárez’s career high in innings pitched in a season at least four times.
It’s horribly uncool of me to hold Cease’s 4.55 ERA from 2025 against him, an attitude that is teased at FanGraphs, where they write, “Cease’s free agent case will be assessed by today’s front offices, not those of 1995.” Valdez, who is two years older than these other guys, also saw a substantial ERA increase in 2025, he just started from a lower point in 2024 than Cease did. If Elias doesn’t sign these guys, that won’t be why he doesn’t. I will have to live with being uncool, like when I was in elementary school and couldn’t get even the other nerds to watch Battlestar Galactica reruns. I’ve had a lot of practice.
This is not to say that I am blind to the warts there are in Suárez’s profile. You don’t have to look very hard to see those either. The most innings he’s pitched in any season was 157.1 that he reached just this season. Over the past three seasons, he has started 22, 27, and 26 games. The track record is that he is going to miss time. He won’t miss much time, relatively speaking, but he will miss time.
Suárez has also seen his velocity decline in recent seasons, such that he’s already in “crafty lefty” territory even though he’s barely even entered his 30s. Two years ago, Suárez was averaging 93.5mph on his fastball, already a slow pitch by league standards, just 33rd percentile. This past season, Suárez came in at a 91.2mph average, or 7th percentile. He’s not spinning his pitches very much either, rating in literally the second percentile for fastball spin. MLB Trade Rumors notes:
It’s nevertheless an unconventional profile for a pitcher who is likely to command a nine-figure deal. In an age of power pitching, he’s getting by with a sinker that averaged 90 MPH. His swinging strike rate has landed between 8-10% in all four seasons as a full-time starter, below the 10.6% league mark for starting pitchers.
In spite of the lack of swing-and-miss, Suárez did incredibly well at limiting hard contact this past season. He’s always been better than the average pitcher at this and that has improved over the past few years. If Elias is going to hand out his biggest contract by a wide margin, he’ll have to be confident that this will continue.
Maybe it will continue! ESPN’s summary of the free agent class noted that for Suárez, the story of 2025 improvement could be seen in better performance from both his changeup and his cutter, with a slider going from seldom-used to being a positive pitch in what is now a five-pitch mix. There’s the “crafty lefty” archetype appearing there. Keep you guessing so you never know what he’ll throw. At least, assuming he can successfully keep you guessing. He’s trending in the right direction.
Suárez, Valdez, and Cease are all among the 13 players who received a qualifying offer from their old teams before going into free agency. We can safely assume that Suárez will decline the one-year, $22.05 million deal in favor of a substantial multi-year contract. What this means for the Orioles is that to sign Suárez (or Valdez, or Cease) it would cost them their third-highest draft pick in the 2026 draft. That would be their second-round pick, which will probably come in the mid-to-late 40s overall. The Orioles can’t let that stop them from signing a pitcher to improve the starting rotation. It just means they’d better be right.
The predicted free agent contract for Suárez from each of the three outlets I’ve quoted from here:
- FG: 5 years, $130 million ($26 million AAV)
- MLBTR: 5 years, $115 million ($21 million AAV)
- ESPN: 4 years, $92 million ($23 million AAV)
In each of these lists, the number comes in below the projected deal for Cease and for Valdez. That’s a happy coincidence. Much like with the draft pick penalty, the Orioles can’t let money be an obstacle in this endeavor. They must improve the starting rotation. They’ve just got to choose wisely and then hope the injury luck works out mostly in their favor.
If Suárez’s velocity continues to decline into his 30s, the slim margin for error that the crafty lefty guys usually have may swing against him. The possibility is there that even from the get-go, Suárez would still really only be the #3 Orioles starter, with the team counting on Kyle Bradish and Trevor Rogers to duplicate recent past results ahead of him. They could drop $20+ million per year without solving the “need a top of the rotation pitcher” problem. At least for Suárez, there’s a fun postseason track record, as he’s pitched well in 11 career playoff games across the past four seasons.
If Elias likes Cease or Valdez better than Suárez, great. Go get the one you like the most.
