After Tuesday night’s divisive trade of Grayson Rodriguez, the Orioles’ biggest need is now bigger and more obvious than ever before. If Mike Elias has a Charlie Day board with his plans for the offseason, starting pitching was already plastered all over it in bold-lettered sticky notes. Those notes have now been taken down, underlined several times and slapped back up on the board.
There’s a consensus around baseball that starters Ranger Suárez, Framber Valdez, Dylan Cease and Michael King form the
A Tier of pitching free agents. However, given the depth of the Orioles’ need and Mike Elias’ propensity for “creative solutions” in the offseason, Baltimore may be looking to do more business in the B Tier and below. And arguably the most attractive name in that second tier is former Red Sox and White Sox Lucas Giolito.
How Giolito would fit with the Orioles
Most put Giolito at or near the top of the second tier of starting pitcher free agents. Spotrac ranks him fifth in expected Market Value, just behind the four A Tier pitchers. MLB.com ranks the right-hander 30th on their Top 30 Free Agents, group with fellow starting pitchers like Chris Bassitt, Merrill Kelly and Shota Imanaga. ESPN ranks Giolito 24th in their rankings and 10th among available starters.
Throughout his nine-year MLB career, Giolito has had stretches of dominance. From 2019 to 2021, with the White Sox, Giolito posted a 3.47 ERA over 427.2 innings, with an 11.1 K/9, .207 batting average against and .645 opponent OPS. He finished top 11 in Cy Young voting each of those three seasons, earning his lone All-Star bid in 2019.
After that promising stretch, the big righty struggled during stints in Chicago, Anaheim and Cleveland across 2022 and 2023, and missed the entire 2024 season after undergoing Tommy John surgery. That rough patch left him with a second-chance deal from Boston last season, where he finally returned to his previous form. Serving as the Red Sox’s No. 3 starter, Giolito put up a 3.41 ERA (matching his career-best from 2019) over 145 IP while holding opposing hitters to .239 average and .685 OPS. The 31-year-old saved his best efforts for his outings against the Orioles, pitching 15 scoreless innings with 14 Ks in two starts against Baltimore.
If Giolito can repeat his performance from his time in Boston in black and orange, he would provide the Orioles’ rotation with much-needed quality and depth. However, there are reasonable concerns about just how repeatable that performance is. None of his Statcast metrics from last season ranked above the 45th percentile, and most ranked in the bottom third of MLB pitchers. Add on top of an injury history that includes multiple UCL tears, several hamstring strains and a lat injury, and Giolito is far from a sure thing as a free agent.
What it would cost to acquire Giolito
Assessing what kind of contract a pitcher one season removed from a UCL injury can expect on the free agent market is tricky business. The Red Sox gave him a two-year, $37M deal right after he injured his elbow, and he earned $19M in his lone healthy season last year. After declining a $19M option with Boston, Giolito will surely be looking for a multi-year deal at a similar rate.
Spotrac projects Giolito’s value at just over $20M/year, just above what he was earning in Boston. Last offseason, only seven pitchers received multi-year contracts with an Average Annual Value above $20M per season. After his successful 2025, Giolito could be looking for a deal in the range of three years, $65M—similar to what Yusei Kikuchi and Luis Severino received from the Angels and Athletics last offseason.
Mike Elias has never given out a multi-year deal to a free agent pitcher, meaning he’d need to both break the bank and break with tradition if he wants to secure Giolito‘s services. After handing out $28M combined to Charlie Morton and Tomoyuki Sugano last offseason, the salary might not pose a problem for Elias & Co., but committing to a multi-year deal may be too big an ask for a pitcher with Giolito’s injury history.
Should the Orioles sign Giolito?
For most of Birdland, the priority this offseason is adding a pitcher who can truly compete with Kyle Bradish and Trevor Rogers for the top spot in the Orioles’ rotation. Giolito is not that pitcher. Just like we saw in Boston last year, his upside at this point in his career seems to be a high-end No. 3 starter.
With Bradish, Rogers and Dean Kremer seemingly penciled in to next season’s rotation, adding Giolito would be a good step toward assembling the rotation Baltimore needs. But it’d be just that, a step; one that’s in the right direction but far from the final step.
If Elias can land Giolito and one of the A Tier free agent pitchers, it’s a great offseason for the rotation. If the Orioles sign Giolito and another pitcher in his same tier, the front office would still earn passing grades. If Giolito is the best Orioles sign this winter, most will see it as another failure to substantially address the team’s pitching deficit. Given the salary Giolito is likely to demand, the O’s should proceed with caution regarding the former All-Star.
