If it were not for his lat strain injury the highly regarded GrayRod likely would have made his much-anticipated debut last season and might have even been the difference as the Orioles missed out on their first playoff appearance since 2016 by just three games. As skipper Brandon Hyde said at the winter meetings “I think he’s going to have every opportunity to make the team” and it seems like unless he just flat out has a terrible spring training he should make the rotation at the start of the season. According to MLB Pipeline, the Orioles’ 2018 first-round pick is the second-best pitching prospect in baseball and seventh overall a slight downgrade from last season where he was ranked as the fourth-best prospect and top pitcher. The 23-year-old will still have six years of team control remaining and retains all three of his minor league options and hopefully, he excels in Baltimore and never need to be sent back down.
There is much to like about Grayson as he is a 6’5” right-hander with the potential for four above-average pitches and the ability to command all of them. His two best pitches are his fastball which can touch triple digits with plenty of spin and his change-up which can be very deceptive having a lot of late life. Rodriguez’s third best pitch is probably his slider which also projects as a plus pitch at the MLB level followed by his curveball which is probably his worst pitch but it still projects as league average. GrayRod has pitched nearly 300 innings in the minors,292 overall, with a 2.47 ERA while striking out a ridiculous 13 batters per nine innings over that span. Last season at AAA he had a 2.20 ERA over 69 and 2/3rds innings striking out 12.5 per nine while allowing less than three walks per nine innings.
ZiPS currently has him projected to throw 110 innings with a 3.98 ERA striking out over 10 per nine with the Orioles next season which they project as a 1.5 WAR season. Since the birds did not go out and get an ace this offseason, they hope Grayson or DL Hall can develop into one which is possible though both are unproven at the big-league level. I think Grayson could easily go out and excel next season and should be in the mix for rookie of the year though there is a wide possibility of outcomes since he has not yet faced Major League hitters. There will be a need to limit his innings next season as he has yet to pitch over 103 in a season and only put up roughly 75 innings last season. There is a real possibility for a six-man rotation to start the season just to limit his or Hall’s innings or I would probably piggyback Hall off of Grayson’s starts giving Grayson 2-4 innings and Hall 1-3 depending on pitch counts to just build them up and allow them to get acclimated to the show. Overall I would predict GrayRod to have about 120 innings or falling somewhere in the range of 100-135 as the birds would probably not want him to pick more than 50 innings than last year. He also has a good shot at a sub-4 ERA and should strike out more than nine per nine innings which probably places him in the range of a 1.5 to 2.5 WAR player. It should be fun to see GrayRod pitch to Adley this season and while there is definite uncertainty as to how he will handle major league hitters and how easily he can adjust how well he performs will determine how high the birds fly this season.