It is not often the Baltimore Orioles have been willing to spend in free agency, but with new owner David Rubenstein, that may be changing.
With ace Corbin Burnes a free agent for the first time in his career, the club’s history when it comes to spending must change if it has any inclination to replace the production Burnes provided them last season.
Burnes departing for another club would leave a hole the size of 194 1/3 innings over 32 starts with a 2.92 ERA. The veteran helped lead the Orioles to a 3.77 rotation ERA, good enough for fifth in Major League Baseball.
All will not be lost if the ace departs., Or, at least one writers believes that will be the case. Zachary D. Rymer of Bleacher Report lists Baltimore as a top 10 landing spot for another ace, Max Fried, with the club falling at fourth. He wrote about why Baltimore might be a good landing spot for the two-time All-Star.
“As an Oriole, Fried would fit nicely into the rotation spot left vacant by Burnes. And chances are he would enjoy pitching at Oriole Park at Camden Yards. The left field dimensions are getting changes for 2025, but Michael Baumann of FanGraphs makes a case that the park will still be unfriendly to right-handed hitters. That would be good for the left-handed Fried, who doesn’t have much of platoon split anyway.”
In 2024 alone, Fried pitched to a 3.25 ERA across 174.1 innings in 29 starts with 166 strikeouts and a 128 ERA+. The ace has quietly been one of the more consistent pitchers in baseball throughout his career, pitching to a 3.07 ERA across 884.1 innings in 168 games (151 starts) with 863 strikeouts and a 140 ERA+.
Fried flying under the radar has led to a surprisingly low contract projection for the veteran, as Spotrac projects the lefty to land a six-year, $136.3 million deal for an AAV of $22.7 million. That falls much lower than Burnes’s projected six-year, $180.8 million deal for an AAV of $30.1 million.
The veteran’s pitching profile plays well at Camden Yards, too, as he is one of the quintessential groundball pitchers in the game. His 53.7 percent career groundball rate sits well above the Major League average of 42.7 percent.
Fried can easily fill in for the potentially departing Burnes in the rotation, without much, if any, drop in production. And he can do so with a much cheaper price tag, which any team would love.
