Immediately after trading Kyle Stowers and Connor Norby to the Marlins for Trevor Rogers, a few things happened to the Orioles. Those few things were multiple starting pitchers getting injured, including Zach Eflin, who came over from the Rays at the deadline. Rogers' injury was almost immediate, and as Stowers took off in September, and went on a tear this year, it did look like the O's completely bombed that trade.
However...the Orioles have had a season where Kyle Bradish, Tyler Wells and Grayson Rodriguez have been injured the whole time, Eflin and Povich have struggled with injuries, and their depth starters, Albert Suarez and Cody Poteet, both lasted 1 game in the bigs before getting injured. And while Dean Kremer, Tomoyuki Sugano and, while he was here, Charlie Morton have provided stability, the single best starter in Baltimore since his activation has been Trevor Rogers. In 11 games back, he has a 3.8 WAR, a 5-2 record, a 1.43 ERA and 60 Ks. Not only is this good for the Orioles, it'd be good anywhere.
The thing about Rogers, and this has been clear since his come up in 2020, is that he's capable of excellent starts, but they happen in between rough stretches. Normally, whenever Rogers is struggling, he's either responding to or recovering from an injury. The Marlins had years where he was back but not fully healthy, and thus sported a 5 ERA. Last year he was decent enough for them in the first half, hence the trade, but he was juuust overexerting himself enough to be unusable as an Oriole. And after missing about half of 2025, he comes back and he's better than ever...at the exact moment there's really no use of any good starting pitching in Baltimore.
The absolute worst thing that could happen, which is likely, is that Rogers could have this comeback season, and then next year when Bradish, Rodriguez, Wells and Eflin are back and fully healthy, Rogers gets hurt again because he overexerted himself during the crap season. It's happened before. Chris Paddack overworked himself in 2019 and missed the Padres' come-up. Jacob deGrom went 33 games during the depths of the Mets' inconsistency, then once he got to Arlington and played for a competitor he blew himself out midway through. He could do it again this year.
The Orioles, like usual, have everything in place to succeed with and just don't have the luck. Or the GM. Rogers very well could find that groove and stay healthy enough to help the O's compete next year. He could also get hurt immediately when they need him [like Bradish and Rodriguez did]. I really hope there's better luck in store for this team, but it won't happen if the organization acts powerless as this keeps happening.
Coming Tomorrow- A reliever so good that other guys are getting booed solely because they're not him.
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