A year ago, Cade Povich was the answer to one of the Orioles’ most pressing questions. On the final day of spring training in March 2025, the club named him their fifth starter. He was 25 years old, making his first Opening Day roster, and stepping into a rotation that needed him.
Twelve months later, despite making 20 starts for this team the year before, Povich’s place on this roster has become a question mark.
The shape of the rotation has changed dramatically. Kyle Bradish and Trevor Rogers are at the top of the rotation. Chris Bassitt, signed for $18.5 million this winter, gives Baltimore a veteran presence with a 3.64 career ERA and four straight seasons of 170-plus innings. Shane Baz, acquired in a trade, occupies another spot. Zach Eflin, who had back surgery in August, is back on a one-year deal and expected to join the rotation once he’s fully ramped up. That’s five starters with legitimate claims to roster spots before you even get to Dean Kremer, Tyler Wells, and Brandon Young — all of whom made starts last season.
Povich, who logged a 5.06 ERA across 21 appearances in 2025, is now competing for a role that the organization hasn’t quite defined for him yet.
“We’ve got a lot of great guys in the rotation and in the bullpen,” Povich said earlier this week in Sarasota after throwing two scoreless innings against Atlanta. “I think competition is always good.”
He knows what the situation is. Asked about the bullpen, he was refreshingly candid: “If they say, ‘we think this is going to help the team the best,’ I’m all for it.”
That flexibility matters, because right now the bullpen looks like the more realistic path to a roster spot than the rotation. The team lacks a pure left-on-left specialist. Southpaws Keegan Akin and Dietrich Enns are useful arms who can get out right-handed hitters, but neither is a shutdown weapon against same-handed batters. Povich could theoretically fill that gap, though his career splits haven’t been markedly better against lefties than righties.
One thing is making Povich’s spring more interesting than it might be: a gyro slider. A tightly spun offering with rotation like a tight football spiral, the pitch tunnels like his four-seamer before dropping just enough to induce weak contact or a whiff. In the offseason, Povich studied how Blake Snell deployed his slider last year (a pitch with a 54% whiff rate on it) and has been integrating his own version to address what has always been his most glaring vulnerability: being behind in counts.
Good timing: opponents hold a .710 OPS against Povich when he’s ahead in counts; when batters get ahead, that balloons to 1.072. The gyro slider is designed to change that equation, giving him something he can throw in the zone at 2-0 or 3-1 instead of grooving a fastball.
He’s also refined his kick change, which was his best swing-and-miss weapon in 2025 with a 34.3% whiff rate but was maddeningly unpredictable in its movement. Sometimes it cut glove-side; sometimes it ran arm-side. Catchers had trouble framing it, and Povich had trouble locating it.
Early spring results have been encouraging. Two scoreless innings against the Braves, a hit and a walk, no real damage. But these are early days against split-squad lineups, and what matters more is the stuff than the line. Manager Craig Albernaz said Povich looked good and was right where he needed to be.
The most realistic outcome for the lefty is probably a hybrid role — not quite a starter, not quite a traditional reliever, but something in between that gives the Orioles flexibility. A bulk innings guy behind an opener, or a sixth arm when the rotation needs it.
The rotation math is what it is. Bradish and Rogers are locks. Bassitt, Baz, and Eflin were brought in to stabilize things, and Elias described Bassitt specifically as someone who would give the rotation “strength in numbers.” With Kremer and Wells also pushing for spots, Povich simply isn’t going to be a regular starter on Opening Day barring an injury.
What he can control is whether he makes himself hard to cut. The gyro slider and and improvement changeup are a nice start. Showing he can get lefties out consistently would help, too. So would improved control early in counts, and staying healthy through camp, come to think of it.
Povich remains on the 40-man roster and the Orioles clearly see something in him. He’s been asked to compete, not released. For a player who was handed an Opening Day start just twelve months ago, it’s a humbling recalibration. But if the new pitch plays, and if he can carve out a role as a versatile left-hander on a team that needs exactly that, there’s still a meaningful career to be built here.
The Birds have a crowded house this spring. Povich’s job is to make himself the one they can’t send away.
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