{"id":55092,"date":"2025-07-10T21:12:09","date_gmt":"2025-07-10T21:12:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/55092\/"},"modified":"2025-07-10T21:12:09","modified_gmt":"2025-07-10T21:12:09","slug":"orioles-trade-bryan-baker-to-rays","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/55092\/","title":{"rendered":"Orioles Trade Bryan Baker To Rays"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Rays are getting some bullpen help, acquiring right-handed reliever Bryan Baker<\/a><\/strong> from the Orioles in exchange for a 2025 Competitive Balance (Round A) draft selection, No. 37 overall. Both teams have announced the swap.<\/p>\n

Baker adds a power arm with potent bat-missing ability to the Rays\u2019 bullpen. The 30-year-old righty has pitched 38 1\/3 innings for the Orioles this season and turned in a 3.52 ERA with an even more encouraging 32.5% strikeout rate and 6% walk rate. Baker sits 96.7 mph with his four-seamer, per Statcast, and he\u2019s sporting a strong 13.1% swinging-strike rate on the season thanks in no small part to a changeup that\u2019s graded out brilliantly thus far. Opponents are hitting just .154 and slugging a putrid .205 against Baker\u2019s changeup.<\/p>\n

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This year\u2019s numbers are skewed a bit by Baker\u2019s outing just two days ago, when the Mets jumped him for four runs. He didn\u2019t record an out and was tagged for a pair of home runs. Baker\u2019s ERA ballooned from 2.58 all the way to its current 3.52 mark.<\/p>\n

Baker has had some home run troubles (1.88 HR\/9), but he\u2019s also seen a fluky 20% of the fly-balls he\u2019s allowed turn into home runs \u2014 well north of the 11.4% league average and nearly triple his career mark entering the season. Metrics like xFIP (2.78) and SIERA (2.37) \u2014 which normalize HR\/FB to account for potential small-sample spikes like this \u2014 feel Baker has been vastly better than his earned run average would indicate. The Rays, presumably, are confident that the home run troubles will prove anomalous while Baker maintains his ability to miss bats and limit free passes.<\/p>\n

In parts of four seasons with the O\u2019s, Baker has a 3.73 ERA over the course of 176 1\/3 innings. He currently boasts career-best marks in strikeout rate, walk rate, fastball velocity, swinging-strike rate and opponents\u2019 chase rate. On top of that, he\u2019s not yet into his arbitration years, having only amassed two-plus years of service time prior to 2025. He\u2019ll cross the three-year mark this season and be eligible for arbitration for the first time this offseason. Tampa Bay can control him through the 2028 campaign.<\/p>\n

Adding another reliever is typically a goal for all contending clubs, but it\u2019s quite prudent for a Rays club that currently has Manuel Rodriguez<\/a><\/strong> (2.08 ERA in 30 1\/3 innings) and Hunter Bigge<\/a><\/strong> (2.51 ERA dating back to last summer\u2019s MLB debut) on the injured list at present. As noted just yesterday in our Trade Deadline Outlook on the Rays<\/a>, Tampa Bay tends to prioritize under-the-radar pickups of just this sort of controllable reliever, as opposed to making plays for more obvious trade candidates with dwindling club control.<\/p>\n

Baker has regularly worked in high-leverage spots for Baltimore this season. He\u2019s tallied a pair of saves and 10 holds on the year already. He\u2019ll now join a late-inning mix for the Rays, pairing with Garrett Cleavinger<\/a><\/strong>, Edwin Uceta<\/a><\/strong> and (once healthy) Rodriguez as a setup option for excellent closer Pete Fairbanks<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n

For the Orioles, they\u2019ll add more firepower to what\u2019s already a large draft pool. Draft picks awarded in Major League Baseball\u2019s Competitive Balance lottery are the only picks eligible to be traded and may only be traded one time, so Baltimore will hang onto this pick and carry it into Sunday\u2019s draft.<\/p>\n

The Orioles, who gained compensatory picks at the end of the first round when Corbin Burnes<\/a><\/strong> and Anthony Santander<\/a><\/strong> signed elsewhere after declining qualifying offers, now have four of the first 37 selections in this year\u2019s draft. In addition to that pair of comp picks, Baltimore also has a pick in Competitive Balance Round B (between the second and third rounds of the draft). That gives them a staggering seven picks in the first 93 selections of this year\u2019s draft and a massive bonus pool worth more than $19MM \u2014 the largest of any team in MLB.<\/p>\n

The O\u2019s are selling Baker at close to peak value, but they won\u2019t get any short-term help that could impact the team this year or next. Baltimore is 10 games under .500 and seven back of a Wild Card spot in the American League, so it\u2019s not necessarily a shock to see them begin to sell off some big league pieces for future value. The question is whether this will end up as a one-off for now, with the O\u2019s staying the course until closer to the deadline in hopes of a late surge back into the Wild Card chase, or whether this is the beginning of a larger sale.<\/p>\n

Presumably, if the O\u2019s ultimately end up trading off a larger slate of veteran players, they\u2019ll begin to prioritize young talent that\u2019s closer to MLB readiness. The O\u2019s have rental players like Cedric Mullins<\/a><\/strong>, Ryan O\u2019Hearn<\/a><\/strong>, Seranthony Dominguez<\/a><\/strong>, Tomoyuki Sugano<\/a><\/strong>, Gregory Soto<\/a><\/strong>, Charlie Morton<\/a><\/strong> and Zach Eflin<\/a><\/strong>, plus older veterans with reasonably priced 2026 club options like Andrew Kittredge<\/a><\/strong> and Ramon Laureano<\/a><\/strong>. General manager Mike Elias could field offers on that group while still keeping the core of Gunnar Henderson<\/a><\/strong>, Jordan Westburg<\/a><\/strong>, Colton Cowser<\/a><\/strong>, Adley Rutschman<\/a><\/strong>, Jackson Holliday<\/a><\/strong> and Grayson Rodriguez<\/a><\/strong> together in hopes of retooling for another run at contention in 2026. In that scenario, adding some young big leaguers or on-the-cusp prospects in Triple-A would be a sensible goal.<\/p>\n

Robert Murray of FanSided first reported<\/a> that Baker was being traded to the Rays. Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic first reported<\/a> the return.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Rays are getting some bullpen help, acquiring right-handed reliever Bryan Baker from the Orioles in exchange for…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":55093,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[40641,40642,62,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-55092","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-bryan-baker","9":"tag-richie-palacios","10":"tag-sports","11":"tag-united-states","12":"tag-unitedstates","13":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114831002384827023","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55092","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=55092"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55092\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/55093"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=55092"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=55092"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=55092"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}