SARASOTA, Fla. -- Earlier this week, Orioles manager Brandon Hyde was asked what factors should be considered when trying to decide on an Opening Day starting pitcher.

“I think it's a little bit different with every team, but you want to give [the assignment to] maybe some guys with experience, guys that you feel like can handle it well and guys that have earned it,” Hyde said.

Baltimore hasn’t yet announced who will take the mound March 30 at Fenway Park, but there’s one hurler on its roster who perfectly fits Hyde’s description: Kyle Gibson.

The 35-year-old right-hander is a 10-year MLB veteran. He was among the O’s most notable offseason acquisitions. He’s their highest-paid player, set to earn $10 million in 2023. He has started an opener before (for the Rangers in ‘21).

Gibson’s spring performance is also making him the clear frontrunner for the Opening Day nod. On Sunday afternoon, he tossed five scoreless innings in the Orioles’ 8-0 split-squad Grapefruit League win over the Pirates at Ed Smith Stadium, allowing only three hits and striking out seven -- including six swinging.

Over four spring starts, Gibson has a 1.29 ERA (two runs allowed in 14 innings), a 0.79 WHIP, 13 strikeouts and no walks. Each outing has been solid, but Sunday’s was his best yet.

“That was probably about as good as my stuff’s felt, maybe in a long time,” Gibson said. “Maybe the best changeup I’ve had -- I don’t know, I’d have to go back and watch tape to see when it felt that good.”

Gibson credited a slight delivery change for that success. In his first three outings, he said he was feeling “rigid and stiff.” So he tweaked his mechanics a bit, bending his knees more throughout his windup in order to feel more relaxed and “a little bit more athletic moving down the mound.”

While continuing to strengthen his case to start Opening Day, Gibson appears to be ready to go for his first season with the Orioles. And he believes the rest of the club is getting there, too.

“When you have a team that’s trending the way we are, you get excited when you know that real games are coming,” Gibson said. “Now that we’re a little over a week away, I think everybody’s ready to get out of Florida and start playing games that really matter. Guys that aren’t in the right spot are probably pretty close, and guys that are feeling good are ready to go.”

Rest of rotation potentially lining up
The way the Orioles have set up their rotation over the next week could give an indication of the order they may utilize during the regular season. There are only eight Grapefruit games remaining, and Hyde said the club would be lining up starters to prepare for the end of camp.

Kyle Bradish (Monday at the Phillies), Cole Irvin (Tuesday vs. the Red Sox) and Dean Kremer (Wednesday at the Blue Jays) are set to pitch the next few days. The trio will likely be followed by Grayson Rodriguez, who last pitched Saturday against Boston.

If Baltimore doesn’t shake anything up, that could be the sequence for those starters for the second through fifth games of the season. In that scenario, Bradish and Irvin would pitch after Gibson in Boston, then Kremer and Rodriguez would begin the series vs. the Rangers in Arlington.

It’s not yet a guarantee those will be the five starters in Baltimore’s rotation, though. The team still has several other candidates in the mix, most notably right-hander Tyler Wells, who allowed only one run in 3 2/3 innings against a stacked Yankees lineup in the Orioles’ 5-3 split-squad win on Sunday in Tampa.

How about the rest of the roster?
Don’t expect to see the O’s narrow their roster down to 26 players until they have to for Opening Day. They aren’t set to break camp until after their final Grapefruit game vs. the Cardinals on March 27, and it appears they’ll be using all of the available time to determine their final cuts.

Baltimore still has 51 players in big league camp, including 15 non-roster invitees.

“I think we’re going to be waiting until the last day on a bunch of guys,” Hyde said. “There might be a couple sporadic cuts in between now and Opening Day, but I think that we’re going to have these guys get as many at-bats as possible and see these guys throw until the very end.”