Angels trade Ward to Orioles for Grayson Rodriguez
The Baltimore Orioles and Los Angeles Angels pulled off an early contender for surprise trade of the offseason on Tuesday.
Baltimore dealt right-handed starter Grayson Rodriguez to Los Angeles for outfielder Taylor Ward.
The Orioles entered the winter in desperate need of rotation help, but ended up trading away one of their best young starters who has four years of team control remaining.
Rodriguez, 26, posted a 3.86 ERA, 1.24 WHIP, and 130 strikeouts across 116 2/3 innings (20 starts) in 2024. However, he missed the entire 2025 season while dealing with elbow inflammation and a lat strain. He underwent season-ending elbow surgery in August, but is expected to be ready for the start of 2026.
Adding Rodriguez is a solid start for a Los Angeles team that also entered the offseason in need of starting pitching. He joins an Angels rotation that's headlined by Yusei Kikuchi and José Soriano, but features a number of question marks after that.
Rodriguez now gets a chance to restart his career in Anaheim, albeit with an Angels organization that hasn't had much success developing pitchers or keeping them healthy in recent years. The Halos haven't had a starter throw more than 180 innings since 2017, and have had just two Cy Young winners since 1961.
It was expected that Los Angeles would deal either Ward or Jo Adell this winter to clear space, and help address its starting pitching needs. With Adell being the cheaper of the two outfielders and having an additional year of team control, Ward became the odd man out.
Ward is coming off one of the best seasons of his eight-year career. He hit 31 doubles, a career-high 36 home runs, and slashed .228/.317/.475 with a .792 OPS across 157 games. The 31-year-old appeared in 153 games in left field, and also has experience in right field.
Acquiring Ward seems like a gamble for Orioles president of baseball operations Mike Elias. While he does bring some much-needed power to a team that didn't have a single player hit more than 17 homers in 2025, he only has one year of arbitration eligibility left before becoming a free agent. Ward also doesn't grade out as a great defender, and is coming off a season in which he posted a 26.4 K% - the ninth-worst among qualified AL outfielders.
The Orioles now have seven outfielders on their 40-man roster, and a number of their top-10 prospects also play the outfield.
Baltimore's been active to start the offseason, having also acquired reliever Andrew Kittredge and outfielder Leody Taveras this month. Those new additions are expected to add roughly $25 million to the team's 2026 payroll depending on Ward's final arbitration number, which is projected to be $13.7 million, per MLB Trade Rumors.