November is supposed to be the slumber of the offseason, with qualifying offers and 40-man roster shenanigans being the main focus. There are some fun surprises this year, though. First, Josh Naylor returns to the Mariners on a five-year deal that’s surprising not so much in terms of destination but in terms of timing — these types of contracts typically aren’t signed until December. Now, we have a real challenge trade: the Orioles sending Grayson Rodriguez to the Angels in exchange for Tyler Ward.
Rodriguez was one of the best pitching prospects in baseball a few years ago and one of the hardest players to evaluate in the majors. The potential is there. He’s got multiple on-base secondaries, a lively fastball that he can command multiple parts of the zone, and he’s athletic enough to get his command from fringe to average, a trajectory that makes you expect more to come. If you’re looking for an ace, you’re probably looking for someone whose skills go something like this.
Unavailability, on the other hand, is the worst ability, a slight twist on the old adage. Rodriguez has struggled to stay on the field during his time in the majors, and that’s an understatement. He missed most of 2022 with a strain, his final minor league season. He then missed half of 2024 with two separate shoulder injuries, while another lat strain and elbow bone spurs sidelined him for all of 2025. To this point, three of his past four seasons have been severely shortened by major injuries, including recurring shoulder issues.
That means a lot of these deals depend on medical imaging that we can’t see, and even if we could, we might not be able to read it. There’s no disputing that Rodriguez has the ability to be one of the best pitchers in baseball when healthy. He has solid major league numbers and great peripherals, and it’s clear from watching his performance that he still has more room to grow. But the rate multiplied by volume volume aspect of the value proposition is undeniably horrendous. Will Rodriguez pitch complete innings in 2026? Definitely not. Will his strength improve by 2027? That seems more likely, but given recent history, it’s hard to count on it happening.
From Baltimore’s perspective, this is a significant problem. The O’s have two starters locked in at the top of the rotation, Trevor Rogers and Kyle Braddish, but the rest are up in the air. Dean Kremer leads the team in innings pitched in 2025, but his career 4.35 FIP and 4.26 ERA don’t give me a lot of confidence. All in all, the team’s top priority this offseason will be to add multiple reliable starters to extend the rotation.
As tempting as Rodriguez’s promise was, he didn’t fit the puzzle. Even if he doesn’t deal with any injuries, he’ll certainly be on a strict innings limit next year. He might even be a good candidate to move to the bullpen at least temporarily. Additionally, the “no injury” assumption is a risky one given his history. In other words, Baltimore needs more starters and can’t count on Rodriguez to cover many of those innings.
So why switch him to an outfielder? Baltimore’s outfield situation is as inconsistent as its rotation. No current Orioles outfielder has posted 1.0 WAR in 2025. Of course, if Colton Cowser and Tyler O’Neal hadn’t dealt with injuries, maybe they would have posted a 1.0 WAR. Maybe Dylan Beavers will get more playing time, or Heston Shelstad will get…well, no, he was terrible on the field. The point is, they can’t truly exit the offseason without meaningful outfield additions.
Enter Ward, who has rebounded from a slow start to his career to become a reliable power bat. It’s been a good season for him – he’s batting .228/.317/.475 with a 117 wRC+ and 2.9 WAR in 157 games. From that perspective, it’s like what he’s been doing in recent seasons. Since finally finding his feet in the majors in 2021, he has a WRC+ of 118. He walked, struck out more than you’d expect, and hit a lot of home runs. He’s even right-handed, which is a great help for the Orioles since they have left-handed hitters.
In other words, Ward looks a lot like Baltimore’s free-agent fix for the outfield. In fact, they tried a similar signing last winter, but O’Neal, a right-hander with power, didn’t check the available box. Ward, on the other hand, is pretty durable. He’s only played on the IL once in the past three years, and that was because he was hit in the face by a ball and required reconstructive surgery. Stability is important for a team with a lot of moving parts and a lot of uncertainty, and Ward provides just that. Wouldn’t it be ideal if he could play in midfield? Definitely, as Cowser is probably better suited at corner and Leddy Taveras is nothing more than a depth option. While it’s not a perfect solution, it’s a pretty good one and sacrificing some outfield defense for offense feels like a reasonable trade-off to me.
However, there is one glaring problem with my analysis so far. Ward, who is about to turn 32, will become a free agent after the 2026 season. Rodriguez, 26, has four more years of team control. You don’t need an analytical consultant Count Von Count to know that four is greater than one, hahahaha. Even if our future projections for Rodriguez are heavily discounted due to uncertainty, there’s a good chance he’ll provide more total value than Ward in a team-control year.
Why would the Orioles, of all teams, make this trade? They are a team that protects its prospects rather than trade them for rent, a team that tries to get as many years of team control and future value as possible in trades. It’s simply not in character for them to trade a young player, let alone trade a player when his value is at an all-time low. But I think it’s basically a money issue, and I sympathize with the situation they’re in.
Mike Elias didn’t mince words when it came to laying out his offseason plans. “My stated goal is to see if we can add someone who fits that class,” Elias said of adding one of the top starting pitchers on the market. “That’s going to be Plan A for our rotation.” He also added that he hopes to find an experienced closer and an experienced hitter. Finally, he suggested the Orioles would spend up to 2025 on payroll, but maybe not more. That would give the O’s about $65 million to reach their goal, according to RosterResource.
But $65 million is not what it used to be. A top starter and a mid-round starter could cost you around $45 million through 2026, with plenty of future commitments. And closers don’t come cheap; even if Elias plans to sign a reclamation project like Devin Williams or Ryan Helsley, they’ll command eight-figure salaries in a weak elite arms market. A batsman like Ward? There aren’t many options, and none will accomplish the same goal for as little money as Ward — he made $7.8 million last year and is entering his final year of arbitration.
Could the Orioles execute some bargain-basement version of that plan without trading anyone? Maybe, but I don’t think it will do their chances any good in 2026. When you need to add pitching like they did, doing it halfway isn’t going to cut it. If they go all-in on pitching and don’t add any outfielders, they’ll have glaring holes in their offense, which isn’t optimal for the toughest division in baseball.
Some teams may try to work around this by making trades through their farm systems. But that’s not the Orioles’ way. They like to trade for depth rather than dealing for top prospects, and prospect depth may not make you a good hitter all year right now. That kind of return might be easier to come by before the trade deadline, but two-thirds of the season happens before the trade deadline. Sitting out until late July is not a reasonable response to the O’s roster situation.
So, I understand why Baltimore made this trade, and I also think it’s clear they “lost” it by giving up more residual value than they got back. By the way, this explains the angel aspect of the deal pretty well: they’re getting more value than they’re giving up, so why wouldn’t they say yes?
Sure, Rodriguez is a mystery box, but the Angels need Mystery box. If all of their players performed exactly as predicted, they wouldn’t be doing very well. They want variety, they want unexpected advantages, they want people who can do better than their average expectations. That’s an almost accurate description of Rodriguez. I think he’s more likely than Ward to be out of baseball in three years just because of the inherent wear and tear of an arm injury, but he’s also a a lot of More likely to compete for major hardware.
In the end, I think I like this trade between the two teams, although I do think it’s a symptom of the Orioles’ previous behavior that they find themselves in this position. Years of inaction, hunting for bargains in the outfield, and starting rotation have put them in a position where they must act decisively. Years of fighting for the future means that now, they must sacrifice expected value to support the present. What’s interesting to me is that the Orioles are a team that takes a win-now approach while the Angels build for the future, but that doesn’t change the fact that this is the kind of deal that contenders and rebuilders make all the time. I’d go with Los Angeles, but I think Baltimore is more or less forced to do this, and while this trade alone may be a net loss in the long run, making the team better now is so important that I think overpaying is smart.
