One way that a team like the Orioles that’s in need of starting rotation help could address their problem is to just sign a pretty good starting pitcher who is, as much as can be believed about any pitcher, a decent bet to continue being pretty good. Mike Elias has steadfastly refused to do this even when it seemed absolutely necessary to the Orioles fortunes, attempting a variety of other schemes. There’s one that he hasn’t pulled off yet: Signing a reliever and turning that guy into a starting pitcher.
This winter affords the opportunity to do that in the form of recent Padres pitcher Adrián Morejón.
If old rumors were to be believed, the Orioles had some interest in trying to pull off this caper after the 2024 season. That winter, then-Yankees closer Clay Holmes became a free agent and ended up signing a two-year, $26 million contract with the Mets, who turned him into a starting pitcher. The results went well for the Mets, with Holmes going on to a 3.44 ERA in 51 games; they traded him for a prospect when they were out of the race at the deadline this year.
Morejón enters this winter as one of the game’s potentially elite relief free agents. He’s on a three-year heater in terms of his results with the Padres, dropping a 2.58 ERA and 1.088 WHIP over the past three seasons combined. In 2026, this included a number of multi-inning relief stints – he threw 86 innings, which isn’t exactly a starting pitcher’s workload but is closer to the way there than a lot of relievers. He had been a starting pitcher in the past, before early 2021 Tommy John surgery.
In contrast to most of the high-end pitchers on the free agent market this offseason, Morejón is still fairly young. He’ll only be heading into his age 28 season next year, so the fear of decline in the back years of a contract will be less than it might be for some others. He should be able to keep up what he’s got for a few more years.
The Statcast page for this player is a thing of beauty. Look at all that red! He throws the ball hard. He’s got a great changeup. He gets batters to chase, he gets them to whiff, he gets a lot of ground balls, he doesn’t give up hard contact. Atypically for a reliever, he has a four-pitch mix – which is another part of why there are those who imagine him as a starting pitcher. Morejón has done it before. He might have the ability to do it again.
A willingness to convert Morejón into a starter could be something that will give a bidding team an edge over others, assuming that’s something that he wants to do. (I don’t know if it is.) It’s unlikely the Orioles will really outbid the field – but they do have opportunity in their rotation that other bidding teams may not. They don’t have an ace, they didn’t have a #2 caliber starting pitcher in 2026, and they don’t have a major league-caliber lefty ready to step into the rotation in any capacity.
There are varying opinions about just how much Morejón will cost. At MLB Trade Rumors, the projection is a five-year contract worth $80 million. That’s between Kyle Bradish and Shane Baz money. Those are big bucks for a reliever, especially one who isn’t even racking up saves. Not bad at all to get a good starting pitcher. FanGraphs projected three years and $72 million – a shorter deal with a much higher AAV. That makes him either a cheaper AAV than guys like Trevor Rogers, Michael King, and Freddy Peralta, or a much shorter contract term, lessening the back end risk.
On top of the money, there will be a draft pick penalty tied to signing Morejón. The Padres extended him a qualifying offer, one of two relievers to receive one heading into this offseason. That means that if the Orioles sign Morejón, they’d also give up their third-highest pick in next year’s draft, which would most likely be a mid-second round selection. The likely departure of Rogers will give the Orioles a compensation pick at the end of the first round.
I’d rather see the Orioles just get Rogers. The thing about that is, as we are all well aware in Birdland, that Elias hasn’t spent at the high end of the free agency market for pitching before. Even after making the big splash for Pete Alonso last offseason and making a couple of modest splashes with those Baz and Bradish extensions, it’s tough to imagine him ponying up for the Rogers level.
It’s not as hard to imagine Elias trying one of his galaxy brain ideas – signing Morejón because he’ll be cheaper or take fewer years than Rogers or Peralta or King – and turning him into a starting pitcher. If he doesn’t want to pay up for a proven starter, if he doesn’t want to bundle a bunch of prospects for a speculative upside play that doesn’t hit the upside while one of the prospects dashes from Low-A to Triple-A in one year, Morejón is there.
This wouldn’t be some completely out-of-nowhere idea on Elias’s; Morejón is bandied about as a possible starter conversion in basically any article about this year’s free agent class. There are also analysts out there, such as FG’s Michael Baumann, who think Morejón retains more value as a multi-inning reliever. Whether the Orioles need one of those is debatable, but I don’t think they’ll be spending $16-20 million per year for one in any case. Getting a discount off the market rate for a roll of the dice where if it doesn’t work out, any idiot could have told him ahead of time that this would be a bad idea? Now that’s speaking Elias’s language.
