Orioles to promote top pitching prospect Kyle Bradish

The Orioles are going to call up right-handed pitching prospect Kyle Bradish to start Friday’s game, reports Roch Kubatko of MASNsports.com, as Baltimore will be hosting Boston for a weekend series. The 25-year-old will be making his major league debut. He is already on the 40-man roster, so the club will just need to create a spot for him on the active roster.

Bradish was selected by the Angels out of New Mexico State University in the fourth round of the 2018 draft. He made his professional debut in 2019, throwing 101 innings in High-A with a 4.28 ERA. In December of that year, he was one of four prospects sent from the Angels to the Orioles in the Dylan Bundy trade.

Of course, a few months later, the pandemic wiped out the 2020 minor league seasons, preventing Bradish from making an official debut with his new team for a year. In 2021, he began the season with the Double-A Bowie Baysox. In three starts, he threw 13 2/3 scoreless innings with 26 strikeouts against just five walks. After that clearly dominant performance, he was moved up to the Triple-A Norfolk Tides. In 21 games, 19 of them starts, he tossed another 86 2/3 innings with a 4.26 ERA, 27.8% strikeout rate and 10.4% walk rate.

In November, the club added Bradish to their 40-man roster to protect him from the Rule 5 draft (which never ended up happening due to the lockout). He’s off to a great start on the year so far, throwing 15 innings over three Triple-A starts with a 1.20 ERA, 29.8% strikeout rate, 5.3% walk rate and 50% groundball rate. He has climbed up to the No. 9 position among Orioles’ prospects, according to Baseball America, with their report noting that he has a fastball that can touch 97 mph and a plus slider that stands out as his best secondary offering. Eric Longenhagen and Kevin Goldstein of FanGraphs had Bradish in the No. 7 slot among Baltimore farmhands, with both their report and BA’s remarking on his unique delivery, which helps him add a deceptive element to his game.

Bradish will now get a chance to join a fairly wide-open rotation on a rebuilding Orioles team. The club recently lost the most reliable and effective member of their starting staff, John Means, for the next year-plus due to Tommy John surgery. Aside from veteran Jordan Lyles, the rest of the group is lacking in experience, with Bruce Zimmermann, Tyler Wells and Spenser Watkins all coming into this season with about one year of service time, give or take. If Bradish can provide serviceable innings for the club, he should be able to stick around. This is likely the first of several prospect promotions for the O’s rotation, though, as hurlers such as DL Hall, Grayson Rodriguez and others could soon work their way up to the bigs as well.