If the Orioles’ 2026 season is anything like 2025, when they used 16 different starting pitchers, then they’re going to need an all-hands-on-deck approach to keeping their rotation afloat. That will surely
entail dipping into the minors for MLB-ready arms throughout the season. One such candidate, Levi Wells, emerged from the woodwork in a breakout minor league campaign this season.
If you hadn’t heard of Levi Wells at this time last year, no one could blame you. There was very little about the right-hander’s pro debut in 2024 that made him stand out as a prospect. Wells, who spent that entire season at High-A Aberdeen after the Orioles selected him from Texas State in the fourth round of the 2023 draft, put up numbers for the IronBirds that were….well, abysmal. His 0-9 record stands out as a particular eyesore, though that’s a little misleading; the Orioles, handling him carefully, never had Wells pitch more than four innings in any start, making him ineligible to win any games even when he pitched well. But Wells’s other numbers were no better. He was rocked for a 6.71 ERA, and he averaged more than a runner and a half per inning. He walked 30 batters, plunked four, and threw 14 wild pitches in his 60.1 innings. It was just a big ol’ mess.
You’d never have guessed from that performance that, one year later, Wells would be on the doorstep of the major leagues. But when last offseason arrived, Wells wasted no time making some adjustments. He worked out with 14-year MLB veteran and fellow Houston native Nathan Eovaldi over the winter, and by the time he arrived at spring minor league camp in Sarasota, Wells looked like a brand new pitcher.
His fastball, which topped out at 95 mph in college, gained noticeable velocity. MLB Pipeline noted that the heater now “averages better than 96 and has touched triple-digits, while it can have carry up in the zone or some sink down.” Also vastly improved was Wells’s breaking ball of choice. He “now has a really nasty mid-80s sweeper, rather than the below-average bullet-style slider he had in 2024,” wrote FanGraphs’ Eric Longenhagen.
Armed with his revamped arsenal, Wells began the 2025 season with Double-A Chesapeake and quickly put his miserable IronBirds experience behind him. In 20 games for the Baysox (16 starts and four bulk relief appearances), Wells posted a 3.12 ERA, cutting his previous season’s mark by more than half. He also slashed his H/9 rate from 10.3 to 8.4 and his BB/9 from 4.5 to a more manageable 3.1. Wells was suddenly a prospect worth noticing.
And while the Orioles’ farm system is littered with pitching prospects who suffered serious injuries, Wells stayed mostly healthy all season. He did briefly land on the IL in June with right shoulder inflammation, but that cost him only 11 days. By the end of August, Wells earned a promotion to Triple-A Norfolk, where he made his final five starts of the year. The first one was rough — a 1.2-inning, five-walk misadventure — but he got better as he went along.
His final start of the year was the best of his professional career. Against Jacksonville on Sept. 19, Wells worked six full innings, tying his career high, and held the Jumbo Shrimp scoreless while allowing just one hit. The one blemish was his four walks, which gave him 13 free passes plus three HBP in his five games at Triple-A. Still, it was a strong note on which to go out.
The 24-year-old Wells is on track to make his MLB debut sometime next season, but in what role? Both FanGraphs and MLB Pipeline champion the idea that Wells could thrive in the big league bullpen if he were converted to a reliever, “potentially of the high-leverage variety,” writes Longenhagen. Pipeline adds that “his premium fastball and solid breaking stuff could be nasty in a bullpen role.” That possibility has to be awfully tempting to the Orioles, who currently need to fill pretty much every spot in the bullpen for next season.
Still, the conventional wisdom is that you should keep a pitching prospect as a starter until he proves he can’t handle it, and at this point Wells is holding his own in that role. Expect him to begin the 2026 season in the Tides’ rotation. If he can hone his command a bit more and continue to refine his repertoire, Wells could emerge as a solid back-of-the-rotation candidate for an Orioles team that needs all the help it can get.
