Like a Bird on the Wire: Orioles Get Robert for Free

Brad Penner-Imagn Images It’s easy to forget that the trade deadline isn’t actually the last chance for teams to reload before the postseason. Players can join a team through waivers as late as August 31 — Monday, for those of you who, like me, have trouble keeping track of the calendar — and still be eligible for the playoffs. It’s common practice for teams to put expensive vets on the wire to see if anyone will bite and take the contract off their hands. The Angels famously flooded the waiver wire in 2023, as their last-ditch effort to load up for a playoff run with Shohei Ohtani left backfired in a matter of days. This year, the biggest name on the move was Luis Robert Jr., who’s bound for Baltimore. In 2022, Robert peaked at no. 8 on the leaguewide trade value ranking, and stayed in the top 30 until 2024. By the end of August 2026, the Orioles were able to get him off waivers for nothing. Well, “nothing” isn’t quite accurate. Robert’s seven-year, $68 million contract once represented a cheap deal for an early-20s star under long-term team control. La Pantera is now 29, three seasons removed from his last 2-WAR campaign, and into the most expensive guaranteed year of his contract. The last month of that deal is worth a hair under $3 million, and Baltimore is now on the hook for either Robert’s $20 million team option for 2027 (don’t laugh) or a $2 million buyout. Plus, the Orioles have to pay to get him from Queens to the Inner Harbor, which is not cheap. Almost that entire drive is toll roads — two bridges, the Fort McHenry Tunnel, almost the entire length of the New Jersey Turnpike, and the stagecoach stickup job that is the Delaware Turnpike. That drive will cost about $50 these days in tolls alone. The Mets are not only over the CBT threshold for the third straight year, they’ve also gone over the marker for the top tax bracket. Long story short, they’re paying a 110% tax on Robert’s salary, so by offloading their center fielder to Baltimore, they’re saving about $6.1 million before the buyout even enters the picture. That pays for a lot of trips up and down the Jersey Turnpike. You Aren't a FanGraphs Member It looks like you aren't yet a FanGraphs Member (or aren't logged in). We aren't mad, just disappointed. We get it. You want to read this article. But before we let you get back to it, we'd like to point out a few of the good reasons why you should become a Member. 1. Ad Free viewing! We won't bug you with this ad, or any other. 2. Unlimited articles! Non-Members only get to read 10 free articles a month. Members never get cut off. 3. Dark mode and Classic mode! 4. Custom player page dashboards! Choose the player cards you want, in the order you want them. 5. One-click data exports! Export our projections and leaderboards for your personal projects. 6. Remove the photos on the home page! 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By contrast, $5 million is a non-trivial amount of cash for the Orioles. The O’s team that won 101 games in 2023 had a payroll of just $66 million. The purse strings have loosened up after control of the team passed from Kendall and Roman Angelos to David Rubenstein. Three free agents from this past offseason — Pete Alonso, Ryan Helsley, and Chris Bassitt — cost $53.5 million against the tax this year on their own. The Orioles have also extended Samuel Basallo, Kyle Bradish, Shane Baz, and Yennier Cano. All told, Baltimore’s payroll is $162.8 million this year, including what’s owed to Robert. That’s nowhere near even the first luxury tax marker, but middle-third payroll teams don’t throw money around willy-nilly. What makes Robert worth the risk? For starters, right-handed outfield help is hard to come by. Don’t believe me? Ask the Orioles themselves: They traded Grayson Rodriguez for one season of 32-year-old Taylor Ward last offseason. Even at his nadir, Robert can play center field and provide some pop — Ward leads the AL in walks, but he hasn’t done either of those things. After hitting 36 home runs last year, Ward homered just seven times in 111 games for the Orioles before the deadline, which probably has something to do with why he’s a Seattle Mariner now. (To say nothing of the fact that the O’s are 14-11, which is white hot by the standards of the AL Wild Card race, since they traded Ward.) The Orioles are in decent shape when it comes to left-handed outfield production, thanks to former first-rounders Dylan Beavers and Colton Cowser. But with the right-handed Tyler O’Neill, as ever, battling injury (a shoulder strain this time), this Baltimore outfield has far too much Leody Taveras for my comfort. An outfield with Beavers in a corner and one of Cowser or Robert in center, with the other in right, looks far more potent than what the O’s were working with before. I mentioned Robert’s nadir a moment ago; to be clear, this isn’t it. He left Chicago just before the White Sox discovered the genie who turned Miguel Vargas into an All-Star and ensured that Munetaka Murakami would be Joey Gallo (complimentary) rather than Joey Gallo (derogatory). Pity Robert didn’t get a hit of any of that magic. Nevertheless, Robert is running a career-high 10.6% walk rate and his best strikeout rate (24.3%), ISO (.176), and wRC+ (96) since at least 2023. After hitting 28 home runs in 210 combined games across 2024 and 2025, Robert has 10 dingers in just 58 games this year. That 58-game total, it should be said, isn’t the result of platooning in the Mets’ loaded outfield. Robert has been hurt this year; he missed three months with a herniated disc in his back. (Millennial-and-older SportsCenter viewers may know this injury as Steve Levy Syndrome.) Since his return, Robert’s average bat speed is 77.8 mph, which is seventh best among the 444 hitters with at least 100 swings in that time frame. He’s swinging harder than Jac Caglianone, Kyle Schwarber, and Nick Kurtz. Put another way, Robert is swinging harder than he has at any point since we got bat tracking data from Statcast, which includes his 5-WAR 2023 season. Eight of Robert’s 10 home runs have come in the 34 games since his return. His batting average, power, and strikeout numbers leave much to be desired, but he’s slugging .454 since his back healed, despite a BABIP of just .242. That’ll do just fine for a waiver wire pickup. This is obviously not the first time the Orioles have taken a flier on a muscular-but-down-on-his-luck former White Sox outfielder. There was the Eloy Jiménez trade of 2024, which didn’t work out great for Baltimore. (Though it arguably worked out better than the Albert Belle signing did.) Impressed as I am with Robert’s bat speed since his return from injury, we are still looking at a player who hasn’t been healthy or good for a whole year since 2023. Even if his bat is kinda-sorta back, he isn’t stealing bases or defending as well as he did in his youth. There is a reason why he was available for free. But this waiver claim gives the Orioles another credible option at a position of need. More than that, it’s opportunistic. Teams that want to survive in the highly Darwinistic AL East need to be opportunistic, especially if they aim to win without running a top-10 payroll. It’s good to see that the Orioles, who sold heavily at the deadline, are trying to stay in the fight.