Kyle Bradish’s return to the Orioles rotation has reached the point where the numbers and the eye test are saying the same thing.
On Saturday at Rogers Centre, the right-hander was tagged hard by the Blue Jays on his 30th birthday, lasting just three innings and allowing five runs on eight hits and two walks. Toronto rolled to a 7-3 win, and Baltimore’s already thin playoff hopes took another hit with 13 games left. The Orioles sit at 72-76, three games behind Cleveland for the third and final wild-card spot and one game behind Toronto.
Ben McDonald saw the trouble early. The MASN analyst and former Orioles first-round pick said Bradish didn’t have his breaking ball working and noted how Toronto attacked him.
“He has no feel for the breaking ball,” McDonald said. Seven of the Blue Jays’ eight hits came against the fastball, leading McDonald to add, “They were sitting on the fastball,” McDonald said.
Bradish didn’t hide from the outing afterward. “Terrible, giving up way too much damage,” Bradish told reporters in Toronto.
“Putting our team in a big hole to start the game, so it’s not good. It’s been a tough six weeks.”
That stretch has been rough enough to raise real questions about how much more the Orioles should ask of him. Bradish has allowed at least five earned runs in three of his last nine starts, and in five of those nine he hasn’t made it through five innings.
The workload is part of the backdrop too. Bradish has already thrown 155 innings after logging just 32 in 2025 and 39 1/3 in 2024 because of Tommy John surgery. After watching Saturday’s start, it looked to many like the kind of outing that should push Baltimore toward shutting him down as a precaution.
Manager Craig Albernaz wasn’t ready to make that move. “We talk through everything and everything is on the table,” Albernaz told reporters.
“But, with KB, he’s such a competitor and he’s been our guy all year. We feel comfortable giving him the ball every time he pitches.”
Bradish said fatigue wasn’t the issue. “My arm feels great,” he told reporters.
Still, the results have been hard to ignore. He’s now 7-14 with a 4.12 ERA, with 156 hits allowed in 155 innings, 142 strikeouts and 69 walks. That’s not ace production, and for an Orioles team chasing a fading playoff path, the risk now seems bigger than the reward.
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With 13 games left, the margin for error has all but disappeared. Baltimore sits three games behind Cleveland for the final American League Wild Card spot, which leaves little room for losses like this one as the club tries to hang on in a crowded finish. [Read more 🡒]