We fans haven’t seen a ton of earthshaking changes on the Orioles’ 40-man this offseason, but that’s not fazing Grayson Rodriguez. Joining the Foul Territory podcast about a month ago, he emphatically asserted, “We have the best clubhouse in baseball.” That was before Corbin Burnes signed a multi-year deal with Arizona, but whatever—no bad blood was ever reported with him and Baltimore on that deal.

But with Burnes a Diamondback, and the Orioles shelling out for no ace in particular, could that role fall on the 25-year-old shoulders of Grayson Rodriguez?

A top-30 MLB prospect for several years after the Orioles drafted him as a high schooler in 2018 (he clocked in at No. 27 on MLB’s Top 100 list in 2021, No. 6 in 2022, and No. 7 in 2023), Rodriguez made his MLB debut in April 2023. The stuff’s always been gorgeous, but the results have been up-and-down.

His first year, he made 23 starts, finishing 7-4 with a 4.35 ERA, 1.34 WHIP and .259 opposing average against. These numbers—pretty average—conceal a tale of two seasons. He got off to a rocky start, with a lat strain that kept him out of the rotation out of spring training, then got hit around in the month of May. During one three-game stretch, Rodriguez allowed 19 runs, six home runs, with opponents hitting .364 off of him with a .800 slugging percentage.

He was demoted to Triple-A on May 27, with orders to work on his offspeed control and stop heaving his fastball into the middle of the plate. It’s agreed by all that it’s a great fastball, but it’s not a high-value pitch for him when it becomes obvious that he’s going to throw it. Don’t believe me? In that challenging May ’23, opposing hitters averaged .500 on the G-Rod heater.

After a two-month reset in Triple-A Norfolk where he dominated the opposition, Rodriguez came back a different pitcher. Simply put, through the second half of the season he was one of the AL’s best starters. Over 13 starts across July, August and September, the rookie posted a 2.58 ERA and a .227 BAA and struck out 73 batters in 76.2 innings.

What changed from the first to the second half? Not repertoire, not much. Rodriguez was, and continued to be, a fastball-first pitcher. He did get rid of a cutter that wasn’t working for him, and started to lean more on his curveball, which BaseballSavant considers to be one of his most high-value pitches. And he started really deploying his sweeper as a strikeout pitch.

Let’s see if/how this continued into his second season. Year Two was tantalizing but tough for the young righthander. His numbers were excellent, but again, it was a tale of two halves, flipped the opposite way. Out of the gate, Rodriguez emerged as a dominant starter for the Orioles. The trouble, this time, was injury. He threw just 116.2 innings, down for the count after July with a lat/teres major (upper back) strain. (He suffered the same injury in 2022, for what it’s worth.) The Orioles kept teasing a G-Rod return down the stretch, but it didn’t happen.

When he did pitch last year, though, he looked really good, not like an overmatched rookie who keeps getting taken deep. His full-season numbers in 2024: a 3.86 ERA, 3.66 FIP, 10.03 K/9, and a 2.78 BB/9. Compared to his MLB pitcher peers, he was excellent (72nd percentile or better) in terms of whiff rate (30%), strikeout rate (26.5%) and chase rate (30.6%). He was also above-average (61st percentile or better) in xERA (3.78), xBA (.236), and walk rate (7.3%). He also led the AL in pitcher wins for a stretch.

There are two opposing forces working here: stuff and durability. Does Rodriguez have a problem staying healthy? Right shoulder inflammation is nothing to sneeze at these days. As Tyler Young wrote in a season-end review of Rodriguez, “the best ability is availability,” and that is true, especially late in the season, especially if the right-hander is going to shoulder a bigger role this year.

Stuff-wise, Rodriguez seems to keep getting better—refining his offspeed offerings and knowing how to use them matters a ton here. In 2024, he ranked ninth among all MLB pitchers in Stuff+ (119), between Corbin Burnes and Tyler Glasnow, and fifth of all pitchers in Pitching+. His changeup was particularly devastating, ranked by Fangraphs as the best changeup of any pitcher with 100+ innings. In his last month last season, it became his second-most thrown pitch.

Rodriguez also made some tweaks to his breaking stuff, one of several Orioles pitchers who tinkered around with the sweeper-slider-swurve thing. Technically, the pitch was a sweeper in 2023 and a slider in 2024: regardless, he threw it about 15% of the time both years. Results-wise, the pitch got worse, from his most-valuable pitch in 2023 (+8 run value) to his least in 2024 (-2 run value). Call this a work in progress, and something to monitor for the youngster.

As for his signature pitch—whatever the results say, Rodriguez is a fastball pitcher—the pitch actually got one mile per hour slower in 2024, while the results on it got better. A -8 run value pitch in 2023, back when the Rangers and Blue Jays were hitting moon balls off the young rookie left and right, it became a -1 run value pitch in 2024. This made for a great difference in results, though: batters’ expected average decreased from .311 to .247 against it, and his whiff rate increased slightly, from 24.1% to 26.9%. It’s possible that the decrease in velo is a result of him working on his delivery to ensure better control and consistency. Besides the pitch is still in the 81st percentile in velocity.

Where Rodriguez slots into the rotation with Zach Eflin, Tomoyuki Sugano, Dean Kremer, Charlie Morton, and one of Cade Povich, Trevor Rogers, Albert Suárez, and eventually, Kyle Bradish and Tyler Wells is a decision that will be made based on things like spring training performance and general vibes. Of these names, however, the one with the best chance, talent- and stuff-wise, to emerge as the Orioles’ ace is Rodriguez.

With a killer change, plus-velocity fastball, excellent curveball, and emerging slider, he showed in 2024 that, when he’s on the field, he can compete with the best of them. He says he’s healthy and ready to pitch. Stuff versus durability is what will determine Rodriguez’s ceiling in 2025. We’re watching with bated breath.