Seranthony Domínguez was solid if not great, and Gregory Soto improved after a rough first impression. But the less said about Trevor Rogers, the better.
The Orioles have now had two straight years of being buyers at the MLB trade deadline, and in both seasons Mike Elias has completed multiple deals to try to bolster the O’s pitching staff. Even after his 2023 acquisitions (Jack Flaherty and Shintaro Fujinami) fell short of the mark, Elias was undeterred in 2024, adding four veteran pitchers at the deadline.
One of those additions, Zach Eflin, was a huge success, and we’ll discuss him in a separate post later in this series. But for now let’s focus on the other three, who ranged from mostly useful to utterly disastrous.
Seranthony Domínguez
The first new pitcher to arrive was right-hander Seranthony Domínguez, acquired from the Phillies for lifelong Oriole Austin Hays on July 26, four days before the deadline.
The trade of Hays — who had lost his starting job to Colton Cowser — wasn’t a shock, but Domínguez hadn’t been on anyone’s radar as a potential O’s acquisition.
The 29-year-old from the Dominican, once a vital part of Philadelphia’s bullpen, had fallen out of favor after struggling to a 4.75 ERA in 38 games. The Orioles, in dire need of right-handed relief help, took a chance that his big arm could help them down the stretch.
And it did, for the most part. Within two weeks of joining the Orioles, Domínguez became a key high-leverage reliever and then the club’s de facto closer after Craig Kimbrel’s collapse. Beginning on Aug. 10, when he notched his first O’s save, Seranthony pitched 12 consecutive games in which it was either a save situation or a tie game.
He ultimately earned 10 saves in 11 opportunities, posting a 3.97 ERA and 28 strikeouts in 22.2 innings for the Birds.
There’s little doubt he has the stuff to succeed. Domínguez is one of the hardest throwers in the majors, ranking in the 96th percentile of MLB pitchers in fastball velocity. He averaged 98.1 mph on his sinker and 97.7 on his four-seamer in 2024, mixed mainly with a slider but also the rare changeup.
When he’s on, he looks every bit the part of a closer, a role he held off and on during his Phillies career.
He also came to the Orioles as an accomplished postseason pitcher — a 1.13 ERA in 15 games, including a big October role for the 2022 Phillies who made it to the World Series — and made two scoreless appearances for the O’s in the Wild Card Series this year.
Still, Domínguez never fully gained the trust of Orioles fans for one big reason: his trouble with dingers. Seranthony was tagged for six home runs in his 22.2 Orioles innings, an average of one every 2.4 frames, and in one particularly brutal series against the Mets he coughed up walkoff homers in two of the three games.
He has just a 1.1 career HR rate, so it’s not as if he’s always had huge problems in that department, but it was a definite issue in his small sample with the Orioles.
The Orioles hold an $8 million option on Domínguez for next season. On paper he pitched well enough to be a candidate for setup man for the returning Félix Bautista next year, but are the O’s willing to spend that kind of money for a non-premium reliever? It’ll be one of the Orioles’ more interesting option decisions this winter.
Gregory Soto
Four days after acquiring Domínguez, the O’s landed his former Phillies teammate and fellow 29-year-old Dominican, Gregory Soto, as part of a flurry of trade-deadline deals.
Those two, along with Kimbrel, gave the Orioles three members of the 2023 Phillies bullpen for a time, all of whom had fallen out of favor in Philly for various reasons.
For Soto, those reasons were obvious: he simply walks too many dudes. The left-hander carried an ugly 5.1 BB/9 rate with the Phils through 43 games this year, pretty much in line with his career rate of 4.8. In fact Soto averaged more than five walks per nine innings in every season of his career except 2023.
Still, like Domínguez, Soto was another guy who boasts an electric arm (averaging nearly 98 mph on his fastball) that the Orioles hoped to harness into a late-inning weapon.
And Soto certainly had the pedigree. Despite his wildness, he was a two-time All-Star closer for the Tigers in 2021 and 2022 before his trade to Philadelphia. The O’s deemed him worthy of trading one of their better pitching prospects, Seth Johnson, along with intriguing low-level righty Moisés Chace.
Unfortunately, Soto’s first impression in Baltimore couldn’t have gone worse. In his debut outing with the Orioles he gave up four runs, three hits, and two walks while retiring only one batter.
Two games later, he suffered another four-run implosion, turning a late 1-0 O’s lead in Toronto into a decisive loss. With a 54.00 ERA through three outings, Soto was, understandably, not making any friends among the O’s fandom.
To his credit, Soto improved dramatically from there. He rattled off 10 straight scoreless appearances, racking up 11 strikeouts and, most impressively, walking only two. From Aug. 8 through the end of the season, he was scored upon only twice, posting a 1.10 ERA and a .559 opponents’ OPS in 20 games.
Brandon Hyde began to trust him more often in high-leverage spots rather than mop-up duty, and Soto responded well. Perhaps the Orioles did manage to unlock something in Soto, particularly in terms of throwing more strikes. His walk rate with the Orioles — again, in a very small sample — was a not-terrible 3.6, a vast improvement over his Phillies mark.
Soto, a year away from free agency, is arbitration eligible for the final time this offseason. He made $5 million in 2024 and MLB Trade Rumors projects him for a $5.6 million salary for next year. If the Orioles are convinced his late-season improvement is for real, they could tender him a contract with designs on having him play a more important relief role in 2025.
Trevor Rogers
Oof. Here we go. Of the seven trades the Orioles pulled off at the deadline, one stands out above all others as an absolute dud so far.
We needn’t belabor the point. The Birds’ swap of Connor Norby and Kyle Stowers for Marlins lefty Trevor Rogers went instantly wrong. The O’s hoped that Rogers, a 2021 All-Star and runner-up for NL Rookie of the Year, could replicate his impressive early-career form despite injuries that have sapped his effectiveness since then.
He was, at least, plodding along as an exactly league average pitcher for Miami this year, with a 100 ERA+ in 21 starts. Continuing that kind of performance would have made him a perfectly acceptable back-end starter for an injury-riddled O’s rotation.
As soon as Rogers joined the Orioles, he was, uh, no longer average. He suffered through four grisly starts — giving up 16 runs, 25 hits, and 10 walks in 19 awful innings — before the O’s banished him to the minors to overhaul his mechanics.
For a team in the heat of a pennant race, there was no time to be patient with a project like Rogers. He never saw the majors again, not even a token outing in that meaningless final weekend of the season after the Orioles had clinched.
Not helping matters was that Norby went on an absolute tear for Mami after the trade, slashing a ridiculous .329/.372/.671 with six home runs in 18 games, setting a Marlins record with six extra-base hits in his first six games.
Every huge game by Norby would elicit howls of anger from Orioles fans, befuddled that the O’s swapped a scorching hot young hitter for a pitcher who was so terrible he was sent to the minors almost immediately.
(Norby did eventually cool off, batting .164 with a .481 OPS in his final 18 games, while Stowers was a non-entity with a .556 OPS in 50 games for the Fish.)
And what of the Orioles’ minor league reset with Rogers? In his first start for Triple-A Norfolk, the southpaw was hammered for 10 runs in 4.1 innings, presumably as the O’s had him make an unspecified adjustment to his mechanics.
He was better after that, throwing three quality starts in his last four, though not exactly dominant.
When the O’s acquired Rogers, they considered it an advantageous point that he’s under team control for two more years. Now one can’t help wondering if he’ll even make it two more years in the organization or whether he’ll go the way of Cole Irvin.
The Orioles presumably will toss Rogers into the competition for a rotation spot or long relief role at spring training. He’ll need to show a lot more than he did in 2024 to make this trade look salvageable for Mike Elias and the Orioles.
Previous 2024 player reviews: Keegan Akin, Cionel Pérez, Cole Irvin, Ryan O’Hearn, Craig Kimbrel, Cade Povich, midseason position player acquisitions, Jackson Holliday, injured starting pitchers, James McCann
Source: https://www.camdenchat.com/2024/10/21/24275277/the-orioles-trade-deadline-pitcher-acquisitions-were-a-mixed-bag
