Michael Forret has built enough of a starter’s case that the Orioles have every reason to keep giving him the ball. He’s 22, already in Triple-A, works with five pitches, misses bats and has generally made life uncomfortable for minor-league hitters. There’s real starter shape here.
But the part worth monitoring is getting harder to ignore: his velocity keeps slipping as his outings go on.
This isn’t about one bad inning or a single start where he ran out of gas. In several recent Triple-A outings, the same pattern has shown up again and again. Forret can open a game with his four-seam fastball sitting around 94-95 mph and touching 96.6 mph, then watch it drift into the 92-93 mph range by the fourth and fifth innings.
The drop has shown up in the game logs, too. One start had his four-seamer fall from 94.8 mph in the first inning to 92.4 in the fifth.
Another went from 94.8 to 93.0. In another, it slid from 93.9 to 91.7.
The sinker has followed an even steeper path. Forret has had outings where it began around 94-95 mph and ended up around 91-92. In one recent start, it went from 95.1 mph in the first inning to 91.8 in the fourth.
And it’s not just the fastballs. His slider often starts in the 82-83 mph range before dipping into 80-81.
His cutter and changeup have shown the same kind of fade. When every pitch is losing velocity together, it looks less like a choice and more like a stamina problem.
That matters because Forret isn’t overpowering to begin with. He does, however, have a profile that plays better in games than some of the raw stuff models suggest. His Triple-A pitch-quality numbers show a gap between the data and the actual results, and that gap is part of what makes him interesting.
His slider is the only pitch currently grading as major-league average by psStuff+, at 100. The rest are below average: four-seam fastball 91, curveball 92, cutter 87, changeup 85 and sinker 82.
Those grades don’t tell the whole story. His four-seam fastball, in particular, has produced better results than the model would predict.
It has roughly 17 inches of induced vertical break and has generated strong swing-and-miss rates despite sitting around 94 mph. The slider has also done damage with its sweeping shape, sitting around 82-83 mph and moving roughly 12-15 inches glove-side.
Hitters haven’t handled it well.
So there’s clearly something here that a pure stuff grade doesn’t fully capture. Deception, shape, sequencing and command all seem to be part of the package.
That’s also why the velocity trend matters so much. When Forret is fresh and sitting 94-95, his fastball has enough life to bother hitters.
When he’s down around 92, the margin gets thinner and he has to lean more heavily on location and disguise. The same thing applies to the slider.
An 83 mph sweeper paired with a 95 mph fastball is one thing. An 80-81 mph slider with a 91-92 mph fastball is a much softer matchup.
None of that means the Orioles should rush to move him to relief. At 22, that would be too early. He’s already reached Triple-A at an age when plenty of pitchers are still climbing through High-A or Double-A, and he’s shown enough strikeout ability, command and pitch variety to deserve a real shot to remain in the rotation.
Pitchers can improve velocity retention through strength, conditioning, mechanical efficiency and simply learning how to manage their outings better. Forret may still grow into that.
He also has the kind of repertoire that fits a starter’s job. He throws a four-seamer, sinker, slider, changeup and cutter, with an occasional curveball. He can attack both righties and lefties, and he has shown the ability to work through a lineup.
There’s still a believable path to him becoming a useful No. 4 or No. 5 starter. But the velocity retention has to improve for that to happen.
If it doesn’t, the bullpen could bring out a different version of him.
Fresh, Forret looks a lot more dangerous. The first-inning version, sitting 94-95 and touching 96 with an 82-84 mph sweeping slider, an upper-80s changeup and an 89-90 mph cutter, is a much sharper weapon than the version that sometimes shows up later in games. In shorter outings, he wouldn’t have to spend energy trying to preserve his best stuff for five or six innings.
That doesn’t have to mean a one-inning relief role, either. He could fit as a multi-inning reliever, a bulk arm or a high-leverage bridge pitcher who works through a lineup once.
For a 22-year-old with five pitches and some command, that’s a useful fallback - maybe even a valuable one.
For now, though, the Orioles have earned the right to keep him starting. The bigger question is the one hanging over every outing: can Michael Forret keep his stuff long enough to start in the majors, or will his best version eventually live out of the bullpen?
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