In the eight years that Mike Elias has been the head of baseball operations for the Orioles, he has been continually trying to find major league-caliber starting pitchers by loading up in bulk on 11th round-or-later draft picks, undrafted free agents, and the recent 3rd-5th round picks that other teams are willing to trade. Until the 2026 season and the surprise emergence of Brandon Young, this effort yielded no positive results to the MLB club. Others from this group will try to follow in Young’s
footsteps. The next to get a chance might be Nestor German.
When the Orioles drafted German in the 11th round in 2023, there was absolutely nothing in his college track record that might suggest that Orioles fans would still be interested in the 6’3” righty three years down the road. He pitched three years for Seattle in the Western Athletic Conference, not exactly one of the powerhouse conferences of NCAA baseball. His results were bad: His best ERA in his college career was a 5.97, and he wasn’t firing off the sorts of gaudy strikeout numbers or K/BB ratios that really get you attention.
The Orioles saw something they liked, and German’s 2024 season across both A-ball levels, where he struck out 90 batters in 73.2 innings and pitched to a 1.59 ERA and sub-1 WHIP, showed they were right to believe they could develop him into something much more interesting than his college results suggested.
German followed this up with a 2025 campaign where most of his action was at the Double-A level, where he posted a 3.76 ERA and 1.099 WHIP in 18 games as a 23-year-old at the level. That’s not “rush this future ace to MLB right now” numbers, but it’s good enough to keep an eye on and see how he does at Triple-A. He entered the season as the #11 prospect in the system in our composite top Orioles prospect ranking, and was in the top 10 in some early-season lists, including at FanGraphs, where they wrote in May:
Like many hurlers in this system, (German is) a downhill thrower with a high slot, above-average extension, and a lot of vertical break on his fastball. He sat 92-94 and touched 98 with it last season while reliably pumping strikes to both sides of the plate. All four of his secondaries missed bats … there are platoon-neutralizing traits here and enough ingredients to get through a lineup multiple times.
This report summarized that for those who believe in his command potential, he has the upside of a #4 starter.
That’s pretty close to what kind of results German got this season. He spent the year in Triple-A Norfolk’s rotation, finishing up with a 4.08 ERA and 1.325 WHIP in 24 games. German struck out more than a batter per inning and had a walk rate that neither will make you celebrate nor vomit.
It’s fine. Offense in the minors exploded this season; the overall ERA in the International League was 4.82 and pitchers in the league had a HR/9 of 1.2. German’s numbers look better than a surface glance once taking this into consideration: He only allowed 10 homers in 117 innings. That’s not because he was getting a lot of ground balls, though. He’s a fly ball pitcher. Maybe it was luck, or maybe he was doing something well. That is the thing I will probably be watching the most for German in 2027.
German actually had better Triple-A results this year than Trey Gibson, an undrafted free agent from that same draft year who the Orioles did give a shot at the major league level this year. Gibson entered the season with much more prospect hype than German on the strength of better results at Double-A a year ago, so that’s probably why he was in line to get the chance in May and June.
As a 2023 draft pick out of college, German becomes eligible for the Rule 5 draft this offseason. The Orioles will have to add him to the 40-man roster or risk losing him in the draft. An on-the-cusp-of-MLB starting pitching prospect who just did fine at Triple-A is the kind of guy you want to protect from the draft, if for no other reason than so you can trade from the depth that he is a part of rather than lose him for nothing.
This should not be a difficult choice for the Orioles. That’s not to say that he has an easy path to major league playing time in the organization. At the MLB level, the O’s are committed for multiple years to Shane Baz and Kyle Bradish, and Young pitched more than well enough to get a rotation spot going into next season. Elias is going to sign or trade for some kind of veteran, because that’s what he does. That leaves one spot for a group that includes a few players who’ve already debuted with the Orioles: Gibson, Luis De León, and Cade Povich. Elias also went out of his way to re-acquire Michael Forret, who ended the season with Norfolk.
The other thing for German – and anybody else who’s at Triple-A – is the wave of pitching prospects who are charging up from beneath. The Double-A rotation at season’s end included Joseph Dzierwa, Caden Hunter, and Anthony Eyanson. Dzierwa should easily open up in Norfolk’s rotation next year and the other two may not be far behind him. It’s a crowded picture, which is exciting for Orioles fans but challenging for the guys who might get squeezed out.
Are people going to get traded? Moved into the bullpen? Elias has not really done either of those things with the pitching prospects that he has brought along close to MLB. German is caught right in the middle of all of this. If there are one or more rotation injuries before next season, he might get a chance early on. If the wave of prospects that’s newer to the organization catches up to him, he might never get the chance. All he can do is keep pitching as well as he can and see what happens. Continuing to pitch like he did in 2026 will probably get him a chance somewhere.
