The Orioles entered Thursday’s deadline for teams and their arbitration-eligible players to either settle on deals or exchange figures on a path towards an arbitration hearing with 11 players still to settle. Hours ahead of the deadline, they’d arrived on deals with six out of those 11 players, including two key home-grown players, Gunnar Henderson and Adley Rutschman.
Players reach arbitration after three years of service with their teams, meaning that for most players, there are three years of salaries
that are settled under this process where they are steadily increasing towards what would be their likely free agent market value. A small set of players qualify with two-plus years of service time, dubbed the “Super Two” players, who will get four years of arbitration before they hit free agency instead. The Super Two group tends to get paid more by the end than the other players.
These are the players and the agreements reached on Thursday, with projections for not-yet-settled players:
Third- or fourth-year eligible players
- Taylor Ward – $12,175,000
- Ryan Mountcastle – $6,787,000 with team option for $7,500,000 for 2027
- Trevor Rogers – (projected $6,000,000)
- Tyler Wells – $2,445,000
- Keegan Akin – (projected $3,000,000)
Ward, acquired from the Angels earlier this offseason, gets the biggest salary of the group because he’s one of the Super Two players. Although he’s never been an elite player, he’s consistently been solid, which gets somebody a nice payday by year four of arbitration.
The Mountcastle agreement might be the most interesting of the bunch when considering 2026 roster implications because, now that the team and player have agreed on this contract, the salary is fully guaranteed for 2026. If the Orioles had wanted to play hardball with Mountcastle, they could have unilaterally decided to take him to a hearing and then cut him at different points in spring training with only partial season salary paid out.
Possibly the Orioles did threaten to do this in the course of the negotiation and that’s why Mountcastle agreed to accept both a lower than expected salary number (he had been estimated for about $1 million more) and a club option for 2027, delaying his free agency in the event that he does very well in 2026. The team option might make Mountcastle slightly more valuable in a trade, as any other team would know that he’s controllable for next year at a low cost as well. It could mean they want to keep him around as a bench guy and that Coby Mayo remains on the trade block.
Second-year eligible players
- Adley Rutschman – $7,250,000
- Dean Kremer – $5,750,000
- Kyle Bradish – (projected $2,800,000)
- Shane Baz – (projected $3,100,000)
Rutschman’s agreement modestly beats his MLB Trade Rumors-projected $6,800,000 million. It’s really not much of a raise over last year’s $5,500,000, though. He didn’t have a great year and so his raise is on the smaller side.
First-year eligible players
- Gunnar Henderson – $8,500,000
- Yennier Cano – (projected $1,800,000)
That’s not a record number for Henderson as a first-time eligible player, but it is reflecting a player who’s done very well for himself and figures to continue to do well in subsequent years of arbitration. Future year salaries are based on agreements reached in earlier years, so Henderson already has a high platform for years two and three; if he continues to play at a high level, he could end up doubling that salary for 2027. That’s a problem for next year’s Orioles budget.
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This article compiled reports on salary agreements on social media by The Baltimore Banner’s Andy Kostka and FanSided’s Robert Murray. It will be updated as more agreements are reported through Thursday evening.
