Royals Linked To Former Orioles Starting Pitcher

The Kansas City Royals are among the teams in pursuit of former Baltimore Orioles starter Jack Flaherty, per MLB.com.

Flaherty would be a big get for a Royals team that finished with a 56-106 record and last place in the American League Central.

He became a free agent after the season, as he joined the Orioles at the trade deadline to help their push to the AL East title after winning 101 games.

He made Sports Illustrated’s list of the Top 50 free agents at the start of the offseason.

But he didn’t have a great finish to the season. With the O’s he went just 1-4 with a 6.75 ERA in nine games, with seven starts. Her certainly didn’t build on his solid first-half in St. Louis, where he went 7-6 with a 4.43 ERA. Combined, he went 8-9 with a 4.99 ERA.

Before joining the Orioles, he spent his entire career with the Cardinals, where he finished fifth in NL Rookie of the Year voting in 2018 and fourth in NL Cy Young voting in 2019 with an 11-8 record and a 2.75 ERA.

For his career in St. Louis, he went 41-31 with a 3.58 ERA in 122 games (118 starts), with 706 strikeouts in 633 innings.

For his entire seven-year career, the 28-year-old is 42-34 with a 3.75 ERA.

He also comes with potential injury concerns. While he made 29 starts in 2023 with the Cardinals and Orioles, entering the season he hadn’t logged more than 30 starts since 2019, which was the best season of his career.

The Orioles have a young rotation returning with talent like Dean Kremer, Kyle Bradish, Grayson Rodriguez and Tyler Wells. One of their veteran starters from 2023, Kyle Gibson, has already signed a free-agent deal with Flaherty’s former team, St. Louis.