SARASOTA, Fla. — Kyle Gibson will be the first to admit it. He may be taking the ball for the Orioles on opening day Thursday in Boston, but he’s no ace.
In reality, there are few true aces around Major League Baseball, and because Baltimore decided against splurging in free agency this offseason for one, the opening day role was handed to Gibson. The 35-year-old veteran has been here before — even though that previous time included just one out and five runs against him.
On that previous occasion, when Gibson pitched for the 2021 Texas Rangers — a team destined to lose 102 games — Gibson was an ace by default rather than dominance.
Baltimore expects to be in a different position than those Rangers, with the internal belief it can fight for a playoff spot in one of the toughest divisions in baseball. But still, when manager Brandon Hyde passed Gibson in the hallway and casually asked, “You all right if you start opening day?” the decision was also a matter of default.
The Orioles don’t have a prototypical ace — at least not yet, with top pitching prospect Grayson Rodriguez in the minors rather than the majors and John Means still working to return from Tommy John surgery. Instead, there’s Gibson, a table-setter if not a long-term answer in the twilight of a good, not great, career.
So as Gibson readily declared he was not an ace, the question formed: What does the veteran view himself as instead?
“I want to be a workhorse. I want to be a guy who starts 32 games a year, is known for not missing starts, is known for getting close to 180, approaching 200 innings,” Gibson said. “I want to be a guy who, when I take the mound, these guys know we have a chance to win. It’s not like, ‘We’re confident because you’re our teammate.’ No. Like, ‘We know you’re going to give up three or less, and we have a chance to win if we just put up four.’ That’s the confidence I want to instill in these guys.”
When Gibson signed this offseason on a one-year, $10 million deal, he wasn’t expected to be the lone offseason pitching splash in free agency. The Orioles also traded for left-hander Cole Irvin, but Gibson went from a projected back-end starter to a front-end leader.
He has experience in both roles, beginning with the Minnesota Twins and working his way up to become one of their innings eaters by the time he was 30 years old. He started 32 games and held a 3.62 ERA in 196 2/3 innings.
The year before, the Twins twice optioned Gibson to the minor leagues during the season. He had lost track of who he was as a pitcher, Gibson reflects now, and allowed 32 earned runs in his first 36 2/3 big league innings in 2017.
“If I’m really not letting one event affect the next, and not letting one pitch affect the next, then I shouldn’t let one inning affect the next,” Gibson said, relaying lessons he learned through conversations with Minnesota’s mental skills coach. “And as I had a couple outings where, like the other day, where you had a bad start and before you know it, you’re through the fifth or sixth, you start learning, ‘OK, what did I do there?’”
Gibson found a way to reset to his game plan — falling back on a pitch he knew he could spot for a strike that day — and didn’t panic. He’ll meet with his catcher, create a plan of attack for the next series of at-bats and flush the hits and runs that came before, just as he did last week in his final start of the spring, when two three-run homers in the first and second innings didn’t derail him.
“As pitching coaches and managers stress the importance of, ‘Hey, we need you to get through the fifth today, this is important because we’re short on bullpen, this is important because ABC,’” Gibson said, “I think I just had people teach me a little bit on what that means to obtain that and how you might accomplish that more often when you do all those steps first.”
In that sense, he’s much like right-hander Jordan Lyles, another innings eater who left a major impression on the young players in the clubhouse last season before Baltimore opted against re-signing him. Lyles, who earned a two-year deal with the Kansas City Royals this winter, rolled through 179 innings with the Orioles with the same kind of level-headedness on the mound.
Before Gibson signed with Baltimore, he called Lyles. And Lyles gave a rave review of the young players in the clubhouse and the team being built. He convinced Gibson to, in effect, supplant Lyles’ own role.
In the limited time Gibson has been an Oriole, Hyde said Gibson has lived up to the rave reviews given to Baltimore’s skipper by friends in Philadelphia.
“He’s a total class act,” Hyde said. “Great leader in the clubhouse, one of the great leaders of our club.”
“Gibby, [James] McCann, Fraz [Adam Frazier], all those guys, they know how to take charge,” Irvin said. “I’ve seen it a few times this spring, just in communication, and it’s been really good to have them around and help the young guys.”
Gibson will be a tone-setter when he takes the mound on opening day at Fenway Park, not only with that three-game series but for the season as a whole. He recognizes how he might be “overanalyzing the need to go out and get five innings” each start because the starters around him, including Irvin and right-hander Dean Kremer, are proven major leaguers.
Still, there’s so much for a young staff to learn from, even as they just watch Gibson battle through a rough start.
“He’s kind of seen it all, been through it all,” Kremer said, “and he can help guide us in a bunch of different aspects.”
He may not be an ace — and Gibson recognizes that. But as the Orioles begin a season of mounted internal expectations, he may be exactly what they need.
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