Orioles trade rumors: Team has reported interest in Cubs pitcher Jameson Taillon.

With all of the starting pitching injuries that the Orioles have suffered this season, the team enters the days before this year’s trade deadline with a real need for improvement in the rotation. Much as it did a year ago, it seems like they must get a starting pitcher before the deadline. One recent rumor offers a possibility, as Bruce Levine of Chicago’s 670 The Score reported on the O’s having shown interest in Cubs starter Jameson Taillon. The Yankees and Red Sox are also interested, he said.

Taillon is a player whose name I will always remember because 14 years ago, the Pirates drafted him one spot ahead of the Orioles, who went on to choose Manny Machado. This wasn’t a money-saving pick on Pittsburgh’s part, as Taillon got a bigger bonus than even the #1 pick Bryce Harper, to say nothing of Machado. They just liked Taillon better. It worked out for the O’s.

On the “Is this rumor worth taking seriously?” level, it’s fine. The fact that it’s being put out by a Chicago-based guy suggests it’s based on Cubs sourcing, which could be fluffed up to try to make the market for their player seem bigger than it is. The rumor is at least not sourced in some of the wild speculation that sometimes generates trade talk, where you see phrases like “rival executives speculate” or even just some dopey blog or podcast or Twitter account tosses out a trade idea.

It makes sense for the Orioles to have at least checked in about this player, and it’s not absurd to think that things could have gone a bit beyond the basic check-in. That makes it worth considering to me.

As for Taillon in the present day, he’s a 32-year-old righty who’s currently in the second year of a four-year, $68 million contract. The salary for this year and each of the remaining two seasons is $18 million per year. It would be unthinkable for this kind of trade to happen under the previous Orioles ownership. Under David Rubenstein’s group, the possibility can at least be considered.

The 2024 season is going well for Taillon, better than any of his previous seven major league seasons. He’s sporting a 2.96 ERA and 1.146 WHIP across 17 starts, while averaging just shy of six innings per start. At first glance, this is a trade candidate who clears my standard of “Get a better #3 starter for the playoffs than Dean Kremer.” If your standard is “Get a better #2 starter for the playoffs than Grayson Rodriguez,” that could also be the case based on 2024 results to date, but it may not continue to be that way.

At second glance, some caution is called for, because while Taillon has been pretty consistent with his performance and health over the past three seasons before this, he hasn’t been consistently this good. He’s actually been pretty much exactly league average, with a 4.08 ERA (100 ERA+) in two seasons with the Yankees before he became a free agent, then a 4.84 ERA (91 ERA+) in his first season with the Cubs a year ago.

The difference between last year and this year for Taillon could just be better batted ball luck, as he went from a .292 BABIP for 2023 to a .275 so far this season. He’s also got a substantial cut to his HR/FB%, falling from a 12% career mark to 9.1% for 2024. The Orioles, or any team that wants to acquire a starting pitcher and is considering Taillon, would have to get an idea of how much of this improvement would carry over to a new team in deciding how to value him.

The Statcast array for Taillon has a lot of blue, which is bad. That’s something to consider as well. He doesn’t throw the ball hard, although he is getting very good results with a below-average fastball. He doesn’t get a lot of swing-and-miss, and he’s not even doing good at limiting the exit velocity batters get against him. Do they at least put the ball on the ground instead of in the air? No. He doesn’t walk many batters either.

A recent roundtable in which The Baltimore Banner’s Orioles team made hypothetical trade proposals included a deal for Taillon with the O’s sending back Seth Johnson and Jud Fabian. I have no idea how realistic of a proposal that might be; in general, I agree with what the Banner’s Jon Meoli said elsewhere in this article, “Every trade you read on the internet is bad and dumb.” Teams have their own ideas of what prospects they like and what the veterans they might trade are worth. It’s something to talk about, though.

For my part, I’d wave good-bye to Johnson and Fabian in an instant if it got the Orioles even the league average pitcher that Taillon was in 2021 and 2022. The 25-year-old Johnson, who came to the O’s from the Rays about two years ago in the three-team Trey Mancini swap, has yet to throw even 70 pitches while starting for Double-A Bowie. He’s walking too many guys and he’s already on the 40-man roster. If the deal is bringing the O’s a pitcher through 2026, Johnson should be viewed as expendable.

Fabian, 23, is an outfielder who’s got a decent enough batting line for Bowie, with 15 homers and 10 steals, but also strikes out a lot, and as we are well aware, the O’s are pretty loaded in the outfield.

The risk in hypothetically trading Johnson and Fabian for Taillon or whoever isn’t so much in giving up two of the prospects who are outside of the top 10 of the system. The risk is if they trade for a pitcher and he isn’t what they need to improve the rotation right now.

This is what we experienced a year ago when the Orioles needed starting rotation help and what they got was Jack Flaherty – the 2023 version. It’s not that they now miss César Prieto, Drew Rom, and Zack Showalter. (The 20-year-old Showalter has done some interesting things in relief for the Cardinals Low-A team this season.) It’s that they needed a good pitcher and they didn’t get one. Flaherty being a drag didn’t hurt the Orioles quest to win the AL East, but he was not worth putting in the postseason rotation.

With Albert Suárez having some “The Cinderella story might be over” outings lately in the #4 spot and with Cade Povich or Chayce McDermott for the #5 spot, even a due-for-regression Taillon could be potential improvement on the back end and could be a stabilizing piece looking ahead to next year, when Corbin Burnes is almost certainly going to be elsewhere.

If the Orioles decided to trade for a pitcher who is more of a back-end guy, I wouldn’t be bothered as long as the price they pay feels appropriate for that value. I’d just still be anxious about needing to improve the top 3.