Former Orioles Starter Linked to World Series Finalist

You can’t blame Baltimore Orioles starting pitcher Kyle Gibson for testing the free-agent market. He’s 36 years old, coming off perhaps his best season and is still chasing a World Series ring.

With a projected rotation built around young talent like Dean Kremer, Kyle Bradish, Grayson Rodriguez and Tyler Wells, the Orioles may be inclined to chase after a younger veteran pitcher like Philadelphia’s Aaron Nola.

But Gibson still needs a place to land, and even at 36 he’s valuable to a team that might be trying to take that final step to win a World Series.

In a piece in Sports Illustrated, the site ranked the top 50 free agents this season and then predicted which team would end up with the free agent.

Gibson made the list and predicted that he would end up with a team that just reached the World Series but didn’t quite finish the job — the Arizona Diamondbacks.

His age and durability work in his favor with a team that also features a young staff, per SI:

The journeyman Gibson has quietly been among the most durable starters in the league in recent years. Since the start of 2020, only four pitchers have made more starts than Gibson, who’s pitched for three different clubs during that span. Though reliably able to take the ball each turn through the rotation, the 36-year-old has put up some spotty results, with a 4.88 ERA over the last two years. Still, dependable arms that can eat innings are hard to come by these days, which should work in Gibson’s favor.

Gibson set a career-high in victories in 2023, going 15-9 with a 4.73 ERA. He hasn’t had an ERA under 4.00 since 2021, when he pitched part of the season for Texas and the other part for Philadelphia.

For his 11-year career he is 104-110 with a 4.54 ERA and strikes out 7.2 hitters per nine innings. He will give up hits. He led MLB in hits allowed in 2023 with 198 and has a rate of allowing 9.3 hits per nine innings for his career.

But there’s good news there. The Diamondbacks committed the fewest errors of any defense in 2023.

If Gibson lands there, he’ll have one of the best defenses in baseball backing him up.