{"id":609945,"date":"2026-03-06T15:21:14","date_gmt":"2026-03-06T15:21:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/609945\/"},"modified":"2026-03-06T15:21:14","modified_gmt":"2026-03-06T15:21:14","slug":"whats-the-ceiling-on-a-healthy-zach-eflin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/609945\/","title":{"rendered":"What\u2019s the ceiling on a healthy Zach Eflin?"},"content":{"rendered":"

For most of 2025, Zach Eflin was just not himself. The effort was undeniable. But something was badly, visibly wrong. In 14 starts, he went 6\u20135 with a 5.93 ERA, a 1.42 WHIP, and a K:BB ratio of 50:13 across just 71\u2153 innings. He made three separate trips to the injured list before finally undergoing lumbar microdiscectomy surgery in August \u2014 a procedure that removes part of a herniated disc pressing on spinal nerves. When Eflin hit the market in free agency, the thought might have crossed your mind that he wouldn\u2019t be back.<\/p>\n

Well, good thing Mike Elias kept his agent\u2019s number. On Thursday, in Eflin\u2019s first spring training appearance of 2026, the righty offered a bracing reminder of what he can be when everything is working \u2014 and what the Orioles paid $10 million this winter to get back.<\/p>\n

Against his former team, the Tampa Bay Rays, Eflin spun two-plus scoreless innings with three strikeouts, lighting up the radar gun and flaunting a command that looked nothing like the labored pitcher who gritted through 2025. He worked with six different pitches \u2014 sinker, sweeper, curveball, four-seamer, cutter, changeup \u2014 and got six whiffs in fourteen swings. Most excitingly, his sinker and fastball touched 94 MPH, several miles better than last season.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s just one spring start, I know. But the velocity, the pitch mix, the swinging strikes \u2014 it all points toward a pitcher who has been genuinely fixed, not merely managed.<\/p>\n

Eflin agrees. His 2025 numbers were ugly in ways that the box score couldn\u2019t fully capture, especially the four IL trips. Speaking in December, Eflin revealed that back problems<\/a> had haunted him on and off for ten years in his pro career, but 2025 was when the pain turned debilitating, convincing him to finally go in for surgery to \u201cclean it up.\u201d Now, he reports feeling like he has a \u201cbrand-new back.\u201d<\/p>\n

This is good news for all of us. With Kyle Bradish, Trevor Rogers, and Shane Baz ahead of Eflin in the rotation, the Orioles aren\u2019t depending on an Eflin resurgence, but seeing him approach his ceiling would be a wonderful thing. That would look something like 2023, a season when Eflin was arguably the most underrated starting pitcher in the American League as a member of Tampa Bay\u2019s staff. That year, he made 31 starts, went 16\u20138, posted a 3.50 ERA, struck out 186 batters over 177\u2154 innings, finishing sixth in AL Cy Young voting. His 1.02 WHIP ranked second in the entire American League, behind only Gerrit Cole. The Rays went 23\u20138 in his starts \u2014 a team winning percentage that, per historical records, tied David Price\u2019s 2014 season for the best in franchise history in a starting pitcher\u2019s qualified starts.<\/p>\n

That is a genuine ace-adjacent performance. Not a fluke, not a warm stretch \u2014 a full-season demonstration of what a healthy Eflin looks like.<\/p>\n

Eflin will never be a strikeout-rate marvel. He\u2019s a contact pitcher who works with heavy sinkers and lateral break, generating soft contact and keeping the ball in the park. When his stuff plays at full strength, he profiles as a legitimate number-two or number-three starter capable of eating 175\u2013180 innings with an ERA in the mid-threes. That is, in the current pitching landscape, genuinely valuable. The Orioles, who ranked near the bottom of the AL in rotation ERA last season, need that stabilizing presence badly.<\/p>\n

The case for Eflin bouncing back rests on a straightforward premise: the problem was structural, and the structure has been repaired. A lumbar microdiscectomy isn\u2019t a band-aid; it removes the source of nerve compression. Eflin himself says the chronic pain is gone in a way it hadn\u2019t been in years. The early evidence from the mound \u2014 the velocity restored, the arm angle presumably returning toward its 2023 level, the whiff-generating breaking ball \u2014 suggests the surgery worked.<\/p>\n

Baltimore re-signed him to a prove-it deal worth $10 million with a mutual option that could extend to $30 million total. The incentive structure is perfectly aligned. Eflin has everything to prove and, finally, a back that will let him prove it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For most of 2025, Zach Eflin was just not himself. The effort was undeniable. But something was badly,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":609946,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2377],"tags":[3357,5,4,297,2550,68,2551,2549],"class_list":["post-609945","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tampa-bay-rays","tag-baltimore-orioles-analysis","tag-baseball","tag-mlb","tag-rays","tag-tampa-bay","tag-tampa-bay-rays","tag-tampabay","tag-tampabayrays"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116182914656516026","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/609945","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=609945"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/609945\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/609946"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=609945"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=609945"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=609945"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}