Trey Gibson didn’t arrive in Baltimore with much fanfare, and for a while this season, it looked like the Orioles might have been right to treat him like a depth arm rather than a real answer. Then came that September 23 nightcap against Toronto, and everything changed in a hurry.
Thrown into the second game of a doubleheader because the Orioles were scraping for healthy starters and Kyle Bradish was out with a sports hernia, Gibson delivered the best outing of his young career. He worked 6⅔ scoreless innings, gave up three hits and two walks, and struck out seven against a Blue Jays team that still had playoff hopes that morning. For a pitcher who entered the day with a 7.36 ERA and a 1.91 WHIP in seven big-league appearances, it was a jolt.
That kind of finish can tempt you to rewrite the whole season. But Gibson’s 2026 was messier than that, and more revealing, too.
He came into the year already carrying some momentum. An undrafted free agent, Gibson had been pitching for the Chatham Anglers in the collegiate summer circuit when the Orioles signed him to a minor league deal in 2023. His stock kept climbing over the next three seasons, and 2025 was the real breakthrough: 166 strikeouts across three levels made him the organization’s Minor League Pitcher of the Year.
So there was a real head of steam behind him when the season opened. The problem was that the majors have a way of humbling even the best minor league storylines.
After six starts at Triple-A Norfolk, Baltimore gave Gibson the ball at Yankee Stadium on May 3. He lasted 4⅔ innings, allowed three runs, and gave up two homers.
May was solid enough overall - a 3.65 ERA in three appearances, including 5⅔ innings of one-run work against the Rays - but June hit hard.
Over five starts that month, Gibson was tagged for a 9.58 ERA and opposing hitters nearly batted .300 against him. The strikeouts were still there - 25 in 20 2/3 innings, including eight at Dodger Stadium - but the results were brutal.
The low point came on June 30 against the White Sox, when he was charged with seven hits, six walks and eight runs in 2⅔ innings. After that, he was sent back to Norfolk, and there wasn’t much reason to think he’d see Baltimore again this year.
At Triple-A, the surface numbers didn’t exactly scream turnaround. His ERA sat at 3.55 from March through July, then climbed to 5.27 in August and September.
But the underlying picture shifted in a meaningful way: his walk rate dropped from 4.3 per nine innings through July to 2.0 in August and September, while the strikeouts stayed in the mix. During the rough stretch, Gibson had been living too much in the zone and giving up too many hits.
By trimming the walks, he started looking like a different pitcher.
The Orioles almost certainly weren’t making some grand statement when they brought him back for one more start; by every indication, it was a necessity move after Bradish went down. Still, Gibson’s scoreless outing against Toronto gave the front office something to think about.
That’s where the season leaves him now: not as a finished product, but as a real candidate. Caution has to come with the optimism, because one dazzling start in nine big-league tries doesn’t change everything.
The Blue Jays were already out of postseason contention by the time they met him in Game One of the doubleheader, either. And Gibson’s strikeout numbers have come down from where they were in 2025, when he averaged 12.4 whiffs per nine innings across three levels.
He was at 8.0 per nine early this season at Norfolk, then 9.0 per nine over the final two months, and 8.4 per nine across his nine major league starts.
Still, there’s a broader point here for the Orioles, too. Gibson is not a clean answer to the criticism that the Mike Elias regime has failed to draft pitchers, because Baltimore signed him after he went undrafted in August 2023.
But his rise does bolster the argument that the organization can develop arms. Alongside 14th-rounder Michael Forret and Luis De Leon, who signed for $30,000, Gibson is evidence that the pipeline has produced something.
He remains a relative unknown in a lot of ways. The fastball sits at 95 mph, the work ethic is strong, and he has shown he can miss bats in the minors.
Add in one dominant big-league start, and that’s the file for now. But if the Orioles are looking for someone who could force his way into the 2027 rotation conversation, Trey Gibson belongs on that list.
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