The Orioles sending Cole Irvin down to Triple-A on Friday was a surprise.
Should it have been?
Irvin, who the Orioles acquired in the offseason, was off to a bad start to the season. He didn’t make it through five innings in any of his three starts, allowed 15 runs in just 12 2/3 innings and uncharacteristically struggled with command and walked eight batters.
The reason the move was a surprise, though, is because it’s the type of decision a team makes if its main goal is to win games — the type of mindset that is new to the Orioles under the current regime.
The organization’s self-stated goal is to make the playoffs this season for the first time since 2016. But actions speak louder than words, and Irvin’s demotion could be seen as the first in-season roster move that signals the Orioles are, actually, in win-now mode.
The decision to send Irvin, a 29-year-old who was last a true minor leaguer in 2019, down to Triple-A isn’t one that a rebuilding club — like the Orioles for the previous four seasons — would likely make. Irvin, who the Orioles acquired in a trade with the Oakland Athletics in January, entered 2023 with just one minor league option left and a two-year track record as a league-average starting pitcher.
It’s early in the season — still too early to make assumptions on most players because of the unreliability of small sample sizes. The Orioles could have easily used that as a reason to continue having Irvin take the mound every fifth day.
But Baltimore is 1-2 in Irvin’s three starts, with the only victory thanks to an eight-run output from the offense and a walk-off home run from Adley Rutschman. With a playoff race that’s expected to be tight, the Orioles (8-6) couldn’t afford too many ineffective, bullpen-taxing starts from Irvin.
Manager Brandon Hyde said Friday that the Orioles want to see Irvin “get right” in Norfolk before coming back to the big leagues.
“He’s got a lot better command than he has showed his first few starts,” Hyde said. “We think he’s going to be a huge part of our rotation going forward, but we’d just like to see him get some starts under his belt in Triple-A. Get his confidence back a little bit, get his command back and hopefully see him back up here soon.”
On the other hand, Irvin’s poor start — 10.66 ERA, 1.97 WHIP — is, in part, a consequence of the route the Orioles chose this offseason.
Instead of making splashes in free agency, Baltimore elected for modest, cost-effective moves to acquire veterans, most of whom were coming off down 2022 campaigns. The team’s payroll has jumped 40%, but it’s still just $60.8 million and the second-lowest in the sport, according to Cot’s Baseball Contracts.
The trade for Irvin, which sent infield prospect Darell Hernaiz to the Athletics, was seen by some as a redundant addition. A month earlier, the Orioles signed veteran right-hander Kyle Gibson, who has a similar profile to Irvin as a strike-throwing innings eater, to a $10 million contract. Unlike Irvin, the start to Gibson’s career has been just what the Orioles would have drawn up, with the 35-year-old sporting a 3-0 record through three starts.
Irvin’s early demotion does raise the questions of how the Orioles’ biggest post-rebuild trade went belly-up (so far) and why they went after Irvin instead of a top-tier starter. The latter would have been more expensive. It also would have been better for the 2023 Orioles.
However, it would be hindsight bias to say the way Irvin’s Orioles career began was predictable. His performance in his three starts was largely uncharacteristic of who Irvin was when he established himself in Oakland. In 2022, Irvin walked just 4.9% of the batters he faced and pitched five or more innings in 27 of 30 starts. In 2023, his walk rate ballooned to 12.7% and he failed to record 15 outs in any of his three outings.
“Just overall better command,” Hyde said when asked what he wants to see out of Irvin in Triple-A. “[The] command that he showed in spring training and command that he’s shown the last couple years in the big leagues.”
During the offseason, executive vice president and general manager Mike Elias declared the end of the Orioles’ grueling rebuild, which began when he was hired to lead the club’s baseball operations in November 2018. He said it was “behind us,” and that making the postseason was the organization’s goal.
But when he chose to start top pitching prospect Grayson Rodriguez in the minors rather than in the major league rotation, it made some question what the Orioles’ priorities were this season and whether the youngster’s service time was a factor. Despite the optics, Elias said at the end of spring training the decision to start Rodriguez in Triple-A was because the Orioles wanted to open the season in the best position to win.
“We’re out of that mode, and we’re going to go with the best guys and put ourselves in the best position to win these games,” Elias said in late March.
Now, that decision was made moot a week later when Kyle Bradish was placed on the injured list, opening up a spot in the rotation for Rodriguez. With Irvin down in the minors, it looks as if Rodriguez will stay in Baltimore for at least a few more starts.
But Elias’ same logic of being “out of that mode” can be applied to the Irvin demotion. The Orioles are in a post-rebuild world now.
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