It’s almost like Mike Elias and the Orioles front office are conducting a long-term experiment with their pitching program. They want to prove that it is possible for a team to build a competitive big league staff without the use of any high draft picks. If they can turn Trey Gibson in a force at the highest level they might just stop picking pitching altogether.

Gibson went undrafted out of Liberty University in 2023. That wasn’t entirely reflective of his talent. He had been poised to be selected out of high school in 2020, but the shortening of the draft to five rounds helped push him towards college instead. At Liberty, he was good as a freshman (3.32 ERA over 65 innings), struggled as a sophomore (6.75 ERA over 56 innings), and then suspended as a junior. It is not publicly known why

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