The Orioles are going to call up right-handed pitching prospect Kyle Bradish to start tomorrow’s game, reports Roch Kubatko of MASNsports.com, as Baltimore will be hosting Boston for a weekend series. The 25-year-old will be making his major league debut. He is already on the 40-man roster, so the club will just need to create a spot for him on the active roster.
Bradish was selected by the Angels out of New Mexico State University in the fourth round of the 2018 draft. He made his professional debut in 2019, throwing 101 innings in High-A with a 4.28 ERA. In December of that year, he was one of four prospects sent from the Angels to the Orioles in the Dylan Bundy trade.
Of course, a few months later, the pandemic wiped out the 2020 minor league seasons, preventing Bradish from making an official debut with his new team for a year. In 2021, he began the season with the Double-A Bowie Baysox. In three starts, he threw 13 2/3 scoreless innings with 26 strikeouts against just five walks. After that clearly dominant performance, he was moved up to the Triple-A Norfolk Tides. In 21 games, 19 of them starts, he tossed another 86 2/3 innings with a 4.26 ERA, 27.8% strikeout rate and 10.4% walk rate.
In November, the club added Bradish to their 40-man roster to protect him from the Rule 5 draft (which never ended up happening due to the lockout). He’s off to a great start on the year so far, throwing 15 innings over three Triple-A starts with a 1.20 ERA, 29.8% strikeout rate, 5.3% walk rate and 50% groundball rate. He has climbed up to the #9 position among Orioles’ prospects, according to Baseball America, with their report noting that he has a fastball that can touch 97 MPH and a plus slider that stands out as his best secondary offering. Eric Longenhagen and Kevin Goldstein of FanGraphs had Bradish in the #7 slot among Baltimore farmhands, with both their report and BA’s remarking on his unique delivery, which helps him add a deceptive element to his game.
Bradish will now get a chance to join a fairly wide-open rotation on a rebuilding Orioles team. The club recently lost the most reliable and effective member of their starting staff, John Means, for the next year-plus due to Tommy John surgery. Aside from veteran Jordan Lyles, the rest of the group is lacking in experience, with Bruce Zimmermann, Tyler Wells and Spenser Watkins all coming into this season with about one year of service time, give or take. If Bradish can provide serviceable innings for the club, he should be able to stick around. This is likely the first of several prospect promotions for the O’s rotation, though, as hurlers such as DL Hall, Grayson Rodriguez and others could soon work their way up to the bigs as well.
oriole
Heck yea
JEAPUGraduate99
Start printing playoff tickets…
theathlete
There’s always one…
Ra
Was old then, even older now.
Jason Calvert
Yes! LFG!
downeysoft42
Cant wait to watch this tomorrow see what he’s got against my Sox.
bobtillman
Right now, the Sox aren’t much of a challenge.
DarkSide830
already their ace with Means out.
Ra
Lyles and Zimmerman ahead of him. But he might become #1 in the future.
Brennen
Prospect season has begun! I would start calling them all up and let them take there lumps this season. Bradish, G-Rod, Stowers, Diaz, and Bannon. Let’s gooo!
jbigz12
I’d like to see anyone over the Odor/Kelvin Gutierrez platoon.. Bannon/Jam Jones/Tyler Nevin/Vavra
Hopefully we get some combination of them in the near future.
DarkSide830
still cant believe someone paid Odor
Ra
Texas did, a while ago. Bal;to. is paying him MLB minimum
CHS O'sFan
I think within the next two weeks we will see Odor and Owings off the roster with Gutierrez entering the block next. I think you have to give that Bannon tier a shot cause you hope Gunnar and Westburg are competing for a spot in 2023. Excited that Bradish is kicking things off tonight.
mrperkins
Can we get a description of his “unique” delivery? Sidearm, jump toe tap, hide it behind glove, baseball teleportation…?
jbigz12
Zim’s gonna be a solid backend starter for us.
Too bad Means went down. Hall, G-Rod, Bradish, and Zim are the 4 with the best shot of being LT rotation members.
Beyond that there isn’t a whole lot. Drew Rom is probably the best of the rest. I can’t see Elias getting away with ignoring pitchers in the early rounds of the draft this year.
Ed "The Mythical One"
You are basing this on what? This season with guys that haven’t even pitched 50 innings yet?
DarkSide830
i dont see what’s so absurd about this take. looks about in line with most analysis of this team I’ve seen lately.
Ed "The Mythical One"
Yeah, by other people that don’t understand how baseball works.
Ra
That is you.
C Yards Jeff
I like the take too. One caveat, Elias came from an organization (Astros) where they got just as much quality pitching from outside the organization as from within. That said, I’m thinking he’ll continue to stockpile quality position players and use them in trades to acquire pitching talent from elsewhere. And at the risk of being ridiculed (tee hee) by others on this thread, I believe the Angelos sons and their consultants will pony up cash, if required, to make these transactions happen. Cheers.
CHS O'sFan
I think they will too but not sure that ponying up starts this off-season. I do see a world where the team deals from the position player surplus for a controllable arm this winter, especially if there’s 3 starters besides Means that look good. On top of that, if some of their first few picks are hitters again, the position player stock will likely be pretty strong even after a big deal.
jbigz12
I hear you on Elias. BUT the Astros have developed a lot of arms.
Valdez, McCullers, musgrove, Garcia, Urquidy etc.
They really hit the Latin markets for arms but they definitely didn’t avoid drafting pitchers as much as Elias has done thus far. You’re right about the core strategy but the level to which Elias has done it thus far looks more like Theo Epstein in Chicago.
That core sunk pretty quick. I really hope we build up a pipeline of arms.
Ed "The Mythical One"
There is reason to believe the opposite. It is called history.
C Yards Jeff
A “pipeline of arms”. I like the sound of that!
Thornton Mellon
Should be interesting, I wish him luck.
Hopefully the guys behind him can catch and throw the ball better than they did yesterday.
I take it we’ve gotten past the line of where service time is successfully manipulated, I mean, another year of team control has been applied?
C Yards Jeff
“Should be interesting” definitely! He is here through an Elias regime move. The other top pitchers, Rodriguez + Hall, Elias inherited from Buck and Dan. Bid deal for both Bradish and current management. I wish them BOTH luck.
CHS O'sFan
I think they’ve passed the deadline but not sure. I’m not sure if Bradish is a guy they’re too worried about service time manipulation versus a ready arm that deserves his shot right now.
jbigz12
Past the service time threshold & Bradish has to stick almost all year to get super 2. but like CHS said—I don’t think Bradish is one of the prospects where that’s the #1 concern.
C Yards Jeff
He’ll be 26 in September. Yes. Time for his shot. I wish him the best.
Ron Tingley
Not a bad debut. Well see how letting Bundy walk in free agency will pan out for the Angels this year.