With Opening Day just around the corner, there are certainly reasons for optimism about the Orioles.
After a 2025 season that went wrong in so many ways, this club should hit the baseball, especially after the offseason additions of five-time All-Star first baseman Pete Alonso and power-hitting left fielder Taylor Ward. If the Orioles can stay relatively healthy — of course, the injuries to Jackson Holliday and Jordan Westburg weren’t an encouraging start on that front — and at least a couple young position players take the next step in their development, Baltimore sporting one of the American League’s best offenses is a distinct possibility.
President of baseball operations Mike Elias may not have landed an established No. 1 starter over the winter, but this rotation includes some ace potential and much more upside than it had at this point a year ago. Opening Day starter Trevor Rogers was one of baseball’s best pitchers over the second half of 2025, Kyle Bradish owns a 3.47 career ERA and is poised for his first full season since 2023, and newcomer Shane Baz carries upside similar to Grayson Rodriguez while actually staying healthy over the last 1 1/2 seasons. And though the 37-year-old Chris Bassitt isn’t the ideal candidate to start a postseason game at this point in his career, his high-floor ability to induce ground balls and eat innings is critical to helping a contender get to such a point.
New manager Craig Albernaz also seems to have made a strong impression in his first camp, which will hopefully pay off in terms of both intangibles and fundamentals — areas very much lacking in 2025.
But the bullpen?
At this stage of spring, that’s where Elias is asking Orioles fans to take quite a leap of faith. After all, we’re talking about a club that dealt multiple relievers at last year’s trade deadline and lost former All-Star closer Felix Bautista to a shoulder injury last July that will keep him out for most or all of 2026.
The relative buy-low nature of the two-year, $28 million contract for two-time All-Star closer Ryan Helsley made a ton of sense, especially if the 31-year-old’s struggles indeed stemmed from tipping pitches last season. But if Elias and the Orioles aren’t correct about Helsley, it’s anyone’s guess how this bullpen can possibly be good enough for a contender.
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Baltimore needs Helsley to be great in order for this bullpen to be pretty good, and even that could prove to be difficult when sizing up the rest of the group.
The concern surrounding 36-year-old Andrew Kittredge’s right shoulder inflammation doesn’t appear to be serious, but his likely absence to start the season only reinforces an outsized reliance on him for high-leverage spots. Given the high volume of work for modern bullpens over a 162-game season, any club fancying itself as a real contender needs four or five legitimate arms for medium-to-high leverage. No matter how much we might like to manage bullpens from the couch, it can’t be the same reliever or two in every close game.
Who else is trustworthy in the Orioles bullpen entering 2026?
Regardless of where his place in the pecking order should be, lefty Keegan Akin has proven himself as a legitimate major league reliever with back-to-back sub-3.50 ERA seasons. He even went 8-for-11 in the save department stepping into more late-inning situations after last year’s trade deadline, which bodes well for counting on him a little more than in previous seasons.
Having pitched well in his return from elbow surgery last September, right-hander Tyler Wells owns a career 3.98 ERA and has long been viewed as a high-leverage relief candidate under ideal roster circumstances. But he’s also made just five appearances out of the bullpen since his rookie season in 2021, so you’d rather see Wells, 31, prove he can just hold up in a relief capacity for a while — physically, if nothing else — before throwing him into the late-inning fire.
Yennier Cano? You’d love to believe the 2023 All-Star version of the 32-year-old right-hander is still there, but he’s coming off a season in which he pitched to a 6.27 ERA over his final 53 appearances. It’s worth noting that he does have a minor-league option remaining if he runs into early-season difficulties.
Left-hander Dietrich Enns and right-hander Rico Garcia appear to be close to locks for Opening Day after successful post-deadline auditions last year. To be clear, both pitched well enough to warrant legitimate roster consideration this spring, but we’re putting a lot of stock into what a pair of 30-something journeymen did pitching for a last-place club playing out the string last August and September. Baseball scouts have long warned about reading too much into what players do in spring training or September, so you really hope the Orioles aren’t falling into that exact trap.
8If that thought weren’t unsettling enough, Enns and Garcia still only get you to six relievers if we’re working on the assumption that Kittredge will open the season on the 10-day injured list.
Grant Wolfram? Albert Suarez? Jackson Kowar? Yaramil Hiraldo? Jose Espada?
As former Orioles manager Buck Showalter used to ask, is that real depth or just inventory?
Make no mistake, this isn’t to suggest the aforementioned names are devoid of talent or that a couple can’t prove to be diamonds in the rough, especially if including some others — Anthony Nunez, to name one — who’ve already been sent to Triple-A Norfolk. Even the best bullpens in baseball have a questionable spot or two at some point over a long season. But when you’re talking about the possibility of as much as half of your Opening Day bullpen being non-prospects who began last season in the minors and haven’t pitched in truly meaningful games in the majors, that’s not an encouraging thought for a contender.
There’s been much debate about the status of veteran starter Zach Eflin and whether the Orioles could head north with a six-man rotation, but doing so because you don’t have eight healthy relievers warranting spots anyway cannot be the reason.
Though it’s true that Elias can always add to the bullpen as we get into the summer months, the last thing the Orioles want is to be dropping winnable games early on, especially playing in a bear of an AL East. One could certainly question whether Elias did enough with this bullpen even before Kittredge’s shoulder started barking.
The Orioles can’t afford to have a bottom-10 bullpen in baseball for a third straight season. With Opening Day less than 10 days away, we’re close to finding out just how legitimate that concern may be.
