A forgettable season for the Orioles is turning into a lost season for one of their most promising starting pitchers.

Right-hander Grayson Rodriguez may undergo season-ending elbow surgery to solve a recurring impingement issue, general manager Mike Elias said Friday during a video call.

The positive development is that Rodriguez would not require an elbow reconstruction surgery related to ligaments. Instead, Elias said, this surgery would be a debridement to remove bone. Because of that, Rodriguez is expected to be ready for spring training in February, Elias said.

“We’re still finalizing the medical plan, but Grayson, he’s had a tough year,” Elias said.

It began during spring training, when Rodriguez was shut down because of an elbow impingement. He received a cortisone injection to reduce swelling. But, once Rodriguez began throwing again, he suffered a lat strain.

As he recovered from that lat strain — the likes of which have been nagging Rodriguez throughout his career, so much so that he altered his delivery slightly to ease stress on that muscle — he was pulled back from his throwing program again in July because of elbow discomfort related to the impingement.

The Orioles, and outside medical counsel, opted against pursuing elbow surgery earlier in this saga. Now it might be required after all.

“At the time, that was the opinion of all medical parties, including outside opinions, to treat the injury conservatively before we go diving into an elbow surgery,” Elias said. “But now, with this recurring, I think this option is back on the table and this would not be an elbow reconstruction. It would be a debridement of some bone that needs to be removed or can be removed. And if we go through with this, which is a possibility here in the next few days, it’ll put him down for the rest of 2025 but it’ll put him in a position to return for 2026 spring training.”

The result is a full season spent on the sidelines. The Orioles planned on Rodriguez being a large part of their staff this year, but his injury issues — coupled with setbacks for others in performance and injury — created a wholly unstable rotation for the first portion of the season. The hole in the standings led to manager Brandon Hyde’s firing and prompted Baltimore to become a seller at the trade deadline.

Rodriguez has shown dominance when healthy. The 25-year-old took a step forward in 2024 with a 3.86 ERA in 20 starts, but his season was cut short because of another lat injury.

His power fastball, coupled with a changeup, slider and curveball, makes Rodriguez a high-upside starting pitcher. Baltimore will again hope Rodriguez is available to be a major part of the 2026 rotation. But one of the lessons Elias learned from a disappointing season is that pitching plans can hardly be written in pen.

“All these last couple seasons have shown us that pitchers are going to get hurt, and you need a lot of them,” Elias said. “But we have a lot of really good ones and this is probably as strong as our pitching stable has been in the last few years.”