How this lefty starter turned himself back into an ace

Who won the Trevor Rogers trade?

Ask most baseball fans last fall, and the results would be nearly unanimous: the Marlins, of course! Two talented young hitters for a pitcher who had to be sent down to Triple-A midseason -- need we say more?

That was the prevailing wisdom at the time, and even for the first half of 2025, when Kyle Stowers emerged as an All-Star slugger in Miami. But just a short time later, much has changed.

Rogers has put together a masterful season since joining the Orioles rotation in mid-June, giving the team a much-needed building block on the mound and upending the narrative about one of 2024’s most compelling trades. Simply put, the left-hander has been one of MLB’s best pitchers: Heading into Saturday's scheduled start against the Dodgers, Rogers has a 1.39 ERA in 14 starts.

Let’s take a look at Rogers’ resurgent season -- and examine whether he can keep it up.

A bevy of weapons

Seven innings, one run. Rinse and repeat.

That has been Rogers’ stat line in each of his past four starts, dating back to Aug. 13. He has averaged seven innings over his past seven starts, posting a minuscule 1.10 ERA in that span. In terms of both length and run prevention, Rogers is doing it better than pretty much any MLB starter right now.

“I'm always trying to go deep into games. It's not my focus, but that's a goal every time out,” Rogers told MLB.com’s Jake Rill in late August. “The fact that I can go deep into games and give some relief to the bullpen to keep them fresh going forward, it's just icing on the cake for me.”

But … how, exactly? It isn’t easy to point to one area where Rogers outshines his peers. His fastball averages only 93.1 mph. His breaking pitches don’t dart all over the place. And when hitters square him up, they usually hit the ball hard.

The left-hander has found success this season by sticking to a few fundamentals: mixing things up, throwing strikes and keeping opponents from pulling the ball in the air.

Rogers has been able to retire hitters with any of the offerings in his five-pitch repertoire, which consists of a four-seam fastball, a sinker, a changeup, a slider and a sweeper. His WORST pitch of the five, the sinker, has still been pretty good: Opponents are slugging just .298 against the pitch with only two extra-base hits, both doubles. (Elite horizontal movement sure helps.)

The other four offerings have been exceptional. Just look at the stats.

Four-seam fastball: .175 BA / .215 OBP / .263 SLG, 36 K’s in 121 PA
Changeup: .173/.198/.214, 16 K’s in 101 PA
Slider: .083/.179/.208, 6 K’s in 28 PA
Sweeper: .038/.074/.038, 15 K’s in 27 PA

How about that sweeper? Rogers added the pitch to his arsenal this season, and it’s been stellar. Among the 138 pitchers with at least 25 plate appearances ending on sweepers, Rogers is first in opponent batting average, first in opponent slugging percentage and third in strikeout rate. Rays star Junior Caminero owns the only hit against the pitch in 2025, an RBI single on July 20.

In the zone

No matter what he’s throwing, Rogers is locating it in the strike zone.

In 2025, 56.4% of his pitches have found the zone, the second-highest rate of any hurler entering Thursday (min. 1,000 pitches). Rogers is landing first-pitch strikes at a well-above-average 66.0% clip, the highest rate of his career.

His strike-throwing does have some adverse effects -- hitters have both the highest swing rate (52.6%) and highest hard-hit rate (46.7%) of Rogers’ career -- but it’s clearly working. By getting ahead of opposing batters quickly, Rogers is able to dispatch them, whether by strikeout or by weak contact.

The lefty has cut down on dangerous batted balls, decreasing both his fly-ball and line-drive rates while increasing his ground-ball and popup rates. He gets grounders at a 47.5% clip, which ranks in the 77th percentile of MLB pitchers, and his 9.6% popup rate is by far a career best.

As a result, Rogers’ barrel rate is down to 6.3%, which ranks in the 81st percentile. It’s his lowest barrel rate since a 5.0% clip in his breakout 2021, when Rogers posted a 2.64 ERA in 2025 starts for the Marlins. He made the National League All-Star team and finished second to Jonathan India in NL Rookie of the Year voting.

But after taking a step back in 2022 (5.47 ERA in 23 starts), Rogers made only four starts in 2023. He suffered a biceps strain in April, then had to deal with a lat strain suffered during his rehab process. Rogers was sporting a 4.53 ERA through 21 starts in 2024 when the Orioles made their move, acquiring the lefty for Stowers and infield prospect Connor Norby on July 30, 2024.

After allowing 15 earned runs in 19 innings (7.11 ERA) in his first four starts with Baltimore, Rogers was optioned to Triple-A Norfolk for the rest of the season. Particularly with Norby (.760 OPS with Miami) showing promise for the Marlins, the deal sure didn’t look good for the O’s, but there was still time to flip the script.

‘It’s phenomenal’

In 2025, Rogers has done that and then some.

He had to recover from a right knee subluxation (partial dislocation) suffered during the offseason, then started out in Triple-A. Rogers didn’t make his season debut until May 24 in Boston, but it was worth the wait: He held the Red Sox scoreless for 6 1/3 innings, allowing just two hits and striking out five.

The southpaw’s next start wasn’t his best -- on June 18, he allowed three runs in just 2 1/3 innings against the Rays -- but it was downhill from there. Rogers tossed eight scoreless innings against the Rangers, the beginning of a 12-start span in which he has averaged just shy of seven innings per start with a 1.21 ERA.

In 14 total starts -- half the workload of most frontline starters -- Rogers has been worth 5.1 bWAR, fourth most in the American League and tied for the seventh most in MLB. If he’d been healthy, in the Majors and pitching like this the whole season (all big “ifs”), he’d be running away with the AL Cy Young Award.

While that’s obviously not the case, Rogers is still pitching well enough to cause a major reevaluation of last season’s trade between Baltimore and Miami.

2025 statistics

Orioles
LHP Trevor Rogers: 14 GS, 1.39 ERA, 90 1/3 IP, 81 K, 5.1 bWAR

Marlins
OF Kyle Stowers: 117 G, .288/.368/.544 (.912 OPS), 25 HR, 73 RBIs, 5 SB, 3.6 bWAR
INF Connor Norby: 77 G, .247/.298/.373 (.671 OPS), 6 HR, 31 RBIs, 7 SB, 0.1 bWAR

Stowers is currently on the injured list with a Grade 1 left oblique strain, an injury that puts a damper on his impressive season. An oblique strain and a fractured left hamate bone cost Norby considerable time in 2025, too. But Rogers has pitched well enough to outperform both players in terms of WAR this season.

Since the 2024 trade, the Marlins have gotten a total of 3.1 bWAR from Stowers and Norby, while Rogers has been worth 4.6 bWAR for the O’s. That doesn’t tell the whole story of the trade -- Rogers is only under club control through 2026, while Stowers and Norby have four and five years, respectively, of control after 2025 -- but it’s a reminder that things can change in a hurry.

They certainly have for Rogers, and the Orioles love to see it.

“It’s phenomenal,” Orioles reliever Keegan Akin said after Rogers’ Aug. 24 start against the Astros. “I don’t know if you can really put it into words, really.”