The Orioles announced this morning that right-hander Jorge Lopez has cleared waivers and elected free agency. He’ll test the open market this offseason alongside a bevy of right-handed relief options who figure to be available this offseason.
Lopez, 30, made his MLB debut back in 2015 with the Brewers and bounced around the league as a swing option for several years, struggling to a 6.04 ERA and 5.15 FIP from 2015-21 while playing for Milwaukee, Kansas City, and Baltimore. Prior to the 2022 campaign, the Orioles moved Lopez to the bullpen full time, and the early returns on that decision looked to be nothing short of revelatory: the righty was among the most dominant relievers in baseball for Baltimore in 2022, earning his first career All Star appearance while posting a 1.68 ERA with a 2.99 FIP and 27.6% strikeout rate across 48 1/3 innings of work.
On the back of those career-best numbers, the Orioles shipped Lopez to the Twins for a prospect package that included right-hander Yennier Cano and lefty Cade Povich. While the trade was a controversial one at the time thanks to the young Baltimore squad’s impressive run to that point in 2022, the move proved prescient. While Cano has broken out as an elite set-up man for the Orioles in 2023 and Povich is one of the club’s best pitching prospects, Lopez regressed with the Twins last year, posting a 4.37 ERA and 4.35 FIP in Minnesota that was 10% worse than league average by measure of ERA+.
While the Twins brought Lopez back to open the 2023 campaign, his struggles grew even worse this year. After 35 1/3 innings of 5.09 ERA baseball, Minnesota agreed to a change-of-scenery swap with the Marlins that sent Lopez to Miami in exchange for veteran righty Dylan Floro. Lopez continued to struggle in Miami to the point where the club designated him for assignment, leading him to return to the Orioles. His return to Baltimore saw his 2023 struggles continue, and he ended the season with a 5.95 ERA and 5.76 FIP in 61 appearances.
While Lopez’s huge success with the Orioles last season will surely pique the interest of clubs, his struggles this season figure to give even the most intrigued clubs some level of pause. It’s certainly possible he’ll be limited to minor league offers this offseason and have to earn his way back onto a major league roster for 2024 during Spring Training.
Such a great trade by the O’s. The narrative that they are only good now because they picked at the top of the draft for a couple years is laughable.
Tampa has the Rep for winning trades. Not the O’s. The Bucs and A’s have long histories of signing Vets to trade off at the deadline, not the O’s. The O’s took the Astros path. Draft and develop from within. The Braves and Dodgers do what works for their markets.
O’s are renowned for shrewdly finding value in others trash via waiver wire, Rule V and under the radar trades.
waiver wire (Felix Bautista and Lopez, Urias, Mateo, Hicks, Cionel Perez, O’Hearn, Kriehbel, and that’s just the current team off the top of my head)
Rule V draft (Wells, Santander – again, just current roster)
under the radar trades (Cano, McCann, Coloumbe, Bradish, Kremer and 3 more pitching prospects).
Reality is that their current roster “only” includes 10 or so drafted and developed guys (Mullins, Hays, Mountcastle, Means, Adley, Gunnar, Westburg, McKenna, Baumann, DL Hall – current roster, off the top of my head).
We haven’t really see many Elias picks aside from Gunnar, Adley, and Westy.
There’s a lot more on the way. Only one top 5 pick is currently on the squad.
Bautista was minor league free agent, I think.
You really said Kramer like he wasn’t apart of the machado trade
That’s “Rule 5 Draft.” MLB doesn’t pompous it up like NFL does with superbowls
Trading Manny Machado does not qualify as an “under the table trade.”
To date, the Orioles have built their farm system through the draft, but the MLB team through pick ups from other organizations. They have exactly zero pitchers drafted by Elias. He has been humilating other organizations in the trade market.
Elias is outsmarting 95% of the GMs out there. We’d better either promote and/or sign him to a lucrative extension so he’s not tempted to leave.
Grateful that when it comes to the baseball operations part of the Orioles, John Angelos is hands off. IMO, his old man just could not stay out of it.
Not so sure about John being a savior. He is making Peter look like a Saint.
O’s should frankly resign him. With Bautista out in 2024, any possibility Lopez could return to form would be hugely beneficial. I expect this will happen.
Maybe on a minor league deal, but given that he sucked upon his return to Baltimore, I doubt they’ll just hand him a role. It would be foolish to bank on a bounceback season when he’s only had one good one his entire career.
Minor league deal is what I expect. He didn’t suck – he had two outings where he have up homers, including a back-to-back set of bombs. His stuff looked good, and he had more decent appearances than bad, but also in a small sample size so not really enough time for the pitching staff to make full adjustments. Hence, I’d want to see what they can do with an offseason and two months of MiLB.
On a minor league contract, perhaps. I beg to differ on his performance in Baltimore, however. I see 6 of 12 outings as unacceptable. Just because an outing didn’t result in runs doesn’t mean it was a good outing, IMO. FIP thought he was even worse than his ERA. Over 47% of struck balls were hard hit and he had a -0.4 WPA in Baltimore. Idk, I just don’t see it. I think he’s back to who he really is.
No reason to isolate his performance in Baltimore on its own. His stops in Minny and Miami back up that he isn’t performing solidly anymore.
6 bad appearances in context is not bad at all. Baltimore does better with Lopez than anyone else with Lopez, that’s a Fact.
6 bad appearances in the context of 12 total appearances is still very bad. No relief pitcher that has a bad outing 50% of the time should be employed by an MLB team. He would be a bottom 25th percentile reliever and not even a top 3 RP on teams like Oakland (May, Pruitt, Erceg, Jimenez) and KC (Cuas, Yarbrough, Hernandez) by stats and peripherals.
I agree, this was a small sample, but it’s also looking increasingly likely that his great half of ball with Baltimore was a fluke.
I’m with “myaccount”
Over Lopez’s body of work it appears Baltimore 2022 stint is where he did put it together. Walk rate down, K rate up, and in that stint had a hard hit ball percentage 10% below any other time in his career and 12% below his average. Career average hard hit ball by the way 42.3%, 3.5% worse than MLB average.
He hasn’t been able to reproduce 2022 BAL form yet and never had it before in his career. Although only 12 appearances his Baltimore 2023 stint is much more aligned with his career averages. Only 71/480 career innings (his 2022 Baltimore #’s) show excellent #’s, the rest show a below average pitcher and that’s been the results. 81 ERA+ career sounds about right.
Was 2022 a fluke or could Baltimore unlock that again? That’s probably what they’d hoped for. It hasn’t happened yet, it was a low risk signing and no reason not to do it, and why not bring him back on a minor league deal to see if he finds it again. A lot of relievers never have a 2022 stint, he did it once, he may be able to do it again.
We can’t go off of how good a pitcher looks like for too long. Daniel Cabrera LOOKED like Randy Johnson. Big 6 foot 9 imposing guy with long arms who threw 100 MPH. But he didn’t PITCH like Randy Johnson; the Orioles wasted 3 seasons trying to figure that out.
I expect this to not happen unless it’s on a minor league deal. Plenty of other options internally and externally that should be explored.
No, not really. Not like Lopez. Five pitch fireballer, multi-inning weapon… for cheap. Can’t even take you seriously with that username.
Can’t really take your posts seriously because, well, they usually suck. Like this one.
Lopez somehow managed -0.7 bWAR while only pitching 23.2 innings this year. 3 HR/9 and 5.79 FIP while with the Orioles and career FIP of almost 5. He had one great half a season and that’s been about it. Next.
Ironic coming from a guy who ignores Washington’s renaming and doesn’t leave DFW while whining incessantly. Hilarious!
Everything I said is perfectly reasoned. Anyone claiming the O’s have better options than a multi-inning former all star with a fastball at 96-98 and four pitches to back it up knows nothing about the O’s or relief pitching in general. Next.
If you really think I’m going to give a rats a** about someone’s opinion…of a screnname…on a sports website…on the internet…by some incessant wacko who crazily comments about it every chance they get (yep, that’s you), I’m just going to keep on giggling over here at your expense. There are far bigger fish to fry…
Anyway, back to Lopez. As I said, I’m good with a minor league deal. That’s all he deserves until he proves he can actually benefit a team and put that arm to use.
The fact that all other teams passed on him when we was on waivers tells you all you need to know. No one wants to waste a roster spot on him. Can’t say I blame them.
I agree with you, @KingOmar and hope that his comments regarding he and his family feeling most comfortable back in BAL weigh heavily in his decision.
I get the business decision to declare free agency for the most opportunities for a team to overpay you but I do hope that he regains his confidence and control and that we see circa 2022 Lopez next year when he could help hold the fort down for another strong season.
@Mac Omar
Declaring FA was just a formality. The orioles were not going to offer him arbitration. You can tell that Hyde is very fond of Lopez. I don’t think this has any bearing on whether or not he comes back.
I think it’s a worthwhile gamble to bring him back also. Low risk move
Agree 100%.
“…comments regarding him and his family.”
Seth Johnson might end up being the prize of that trade. Ridiculous. Elias is the man.
Seth Johnson was part of the Mancini and Siri deal.
The Orioles received Yennier Cano, Cade Povich, Juan Nunez, and Juan Rojas for Jorge Lopez. They received Seth Johnson and Chayce McDermott for Trey Mancini. Many were critical of these trades. McDermott, Povich, Johnson are top 15 prospects for the Orioles. Juan Nunez is 28th.
Seth Johnson was part of the Mancini trade, not the Lopez trade. That being said, your overall point still remains valid.
Cano has been a huge bonus on a package that was truly centered around Povich. If Povich can progress into a #3-4 starter guy and Cano has 1 or 2 more years of even decent bullpen work, now we’re heading towards “most lopsided trades” territory.
McDermott and Johnson back for Mancini is looking like it could go way in the Orioles favor too based on early results. If even one of those two guys hit, Elias worked his magic on two teams in one deadline.
That was a brilliant deadline for Elias. Juan Nunez was in the Cano trade too. I don’t expect him to be a high impact player but there’s a chance he contributes at the major league level in 2025.
His buys this year weren’t so hot but he mostly moved blocked prospects. Rom is a depth arm & I don’t think Prieto will amount to much. Hernaiz looks more valuable than Irvin but wasn’t going to get ABS on this squad.
If we lost anything—it’d be Showalter. We won’t know for a few years on that. We didn’t get anything out of Flaherty though. Can’t hit a HR everytime.
Prieto looks like a real MLB hitter. Quite like Connor Norby. That they had both and seem to deem both expendable is mind blowing
Somebody gonna give him a minor league deal, when he’s on he got the stuff to be one reliable guy out of any bullpen.
Has anyone else ever played for three playoff teams in the same season?
I don’t know but the one I remember mostplaying on multiple post season teams is bengie molina who in 2010 played for both teams in the WS
Obviously, Jorge Lopez played for the Twins, the Marlins and the Orioles this year.
It’s also easier to accomplish the feat now with the additional playoff teams.