Mike Elias loves a late spring training surprise.
With less than a week to go until the season starts, the Orioles made another free agent signing. Kyle Gibson, a familiar face from the 2023 team, has been signed to a one-year contract, the team announced out of nowhere on Friday night.
Gibson, 37, will presumably be delayed in actually getting into the MLB roster picture since he’s going to have to go through some minor league buildup after missing all of spring training. Whenever the team deems him ready, they will have to figure out where to fit him in to a rotation that already includes old guys Tomoyuki Sugano (35) and Charlie Morton (41). It’s a lot of old.
We already know that Grayson Rodriguez will be starting the season on the injured list. Rodriguez is back to playing catch but he doesn’t have a timetable for a return. The Orioles could have just rolled with either Albert Suárez or Cade Povich at the back of the starting rotation. It doesn’t say very much about what they think of either of those guys as a starting pitcher if they’re getting bumped aside for Gibson.
In fairness to Gibson, he has had durability going in his favor. That’s something that teams seem to value in building their rosters with current pitching trends. The Texas Rangers just recently added Patrick Corbin, who’s been the worst starting pitcher over the last four years but at the same time has started 32 or 33 games a year.
Gibson isn’t nearly that bad, coming in right around league average with the Cardinals a year ago after a 4.73 ERA innings-eating season with the Orioles in 2023. I have not had interest in a reunion with Gibson either last year or this year because I thought the Orioles should be better than Kyle Gibson by now. Mike Elias has other ideas.
MLB Network’s Jon Heyman reported that the contract guarantees $5.25 million for Gibson for 2025 with the potential for another roughly $1.5 million in performance bonuses. It is yet another instance of the Orioles spending money this offseason, just not for a guy who will excite pretty much anybody.
The corresponding roster move with the Gibson signing is that Kyle Bradish is transferred to the 60-day injured list. That’s no surprise, since we know Bradish won’t be back until at least the second half of the season as he recovers from Tommy John surgery. The Orioles just weren’t allowed to put him on the 60-day IL until there was a corresponding move. Six days before the start of the season, they finally made that move.