Little about the Orioles appears calibrated through the season’s first four games, which isn’t exactly surprising or even reason for great concern in the midst of a 2-2 start.
That includes the bullpen, which entered 2026 as arguably the club’s biggest question mark with even new closer and two-time All-Star selection Ryan Helsley coming off a down season. Manager Craig Albernaz acknowledged that unknown entering Opening Day, especially with veteran relievers Andrew Kittredge and Keegan Akin on the injured list for the time being.
“They have to get built up too. They have to get into a cadence,” said Albernaz about Baltimore’s relievers last week. “You have to monitor their workloads. You don’t want to overdo it with back-to-backs out of the chute, two out of three, three out of fours. It’s just monitoring the workload. All of our guys are going to pitch in a variety of different situations to start the year.
“But as the season goes on, usually the bullpen guys tend to pitch themselves into roles. That is where you raise the floor of the bullpen when you have a high-functioning bullpen [and] the majority of guys out there can pitch in leverage. That is what we want to get to.”
There’s been no shortage of early chances to mix and match with the bullpen throwing a whopping 103 pitches in Sunday’s laborious 8-6 win over Minnesota and tossing 81 more in Monday’s 5-2 loss to Texas. Of course, the starters haven’t gone very deep into games since Trevor Rogers pitched seven shutout innings on Opening Day with Kyle Bradish, Shane Baz, and Chris Bassitt combining to cover just 14 1/3 innings over the last three contests.
That’s not ideal, especially when a club has a new manager trying to find his own footing and manage a bullpen without clear roles beyond Helsley — who’s been excellent in his first two save chances — at this point.
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Right-hander Tyler Wells has stumbled out of the high-leverage gate by allowing a run in each of his first three appearances, but there have been bright spots within a less-than-ideal workload.
With the 37-year-old Bassitt needing 100 pitches to get through 4 1/3 innings in his disappointing debut Monday, lefty Dietrich Enns and right-hander Rico Garcia combined to strike out seven over 3 2/3 innings that not only kept Baltimore in the game, but they largely saved the rest of the bullpen in the process. Garcia has been particularly impressive so far as he earned the win Sunday after a called strikeout of Twins outfielder Matt Wallner stranded the bases loaded and preserved a tie score at the time.
Enns and Garcia appear to have picked up where they left off last August and September when they took advantage of wide-open bullpen auditions in the aftermath of the Orioles’ sell-off at the trade deadline. Of course, the stakes weren’t exactly high at that point for a last-place club playing out the string, so we’ll see how they fare in games carrying greater stakes.
Just as encouraging has been the early work of 2023 All-Star reliever Yennier Cano, who is coming off a forgettable 2025. The 32-year-old has faced just three batters over two appearances, but he’s struck out two of them, which included a huge strikeout of Twins star Byron Buxton to leave the bases loaded in the eighth inning of Sunday’s narrow win. Cano looking more like the reliever he was in 2023 and 2024 would go a long way toward fortifying the high-leverage picture for this bullpen.
The most interesting development from the opening weekend, however, was the two innings tossed by rookie right-hander Anthony Nunez in Saturday’s 4-1 defeat. The 24-year-old originally drafted as an infielder and acquired in last July’s Cedric Mullins trade struck out three batters and showcased an impressive sweeper and changeup to go along with a high-90s fastball. You could see why the Orioles pivoted from initially sending Nunez to the minors when Akin’s late-spring injury opened the door for his inclusion on the Opening Day roster.
“We feel like the strike throwing and the command are going be something that’s going to be pretty much automatic for him,” pitching coach Drew French said. “Getting comfortable, it didn’t seem like he had any issues doing that. He’s got real weapons. He’s got angles that are very, very unique. This is a guy that we can foresee kind of walking his way up into more leverage [situations] for sure.”
Of course, we’re dealing with extremely small sample sizes with the season not yet a week old. The bullpen’s biggest problem to this point has been the starting pitching not being very good since Opening Day.
8But seeing arrows pointing upward is encouraging nonetheless.
Rehabbing in Norfolk
The returns of Kittredge and second baseman Jackson Holliday appear to be right around the corner.
Holliday began a rehab assignment with Triple-A Norfolk last Friday night, and the Orioles say the 36-year-old Kittredge will begin his with the Tides on Wednesday as he returns from dealing with right shoulder inflammation early in Grapefruit League action.
Holliday is eligible to be activated as soon as Wednesday, but one would assume Baltimore would like to get him more at-bats to ramp up after the 22-year-old missed all of spring training with a broken hamate bone in his right hand suffered in early February. Holliday is 0-for-6 with four strikeouts and a walk over his first two rehab games.
