Orioles make puzzling decision with recently acquired righty Scott Blewett

Earlier this afternoon, the Orioles promoted righty Brandon Young to the big league roster. The 26 year old made his major league debut against the Reds at Camden Yards and looked fine, allowing 4 runs on 7 hits and 3 walks while striking out 3 across 4 innings of work.

In order to get Young onto the 26-man roster, the O's had to make a corresponding move to make space for him. There were some questions going into the day but the guy who seemed most likely to get shuttled out was lefty Cionel Perez.

Perez has been awful in 2025 and is coming off a down year in 2024, as well. You have to go back to 2022 to find the lefty at his best, and he's been in steady decline ever since. While the O's have two other lefties up in Baltimore in Keegan Akin and Gregory Soto, they chose not to give up on Perez just yet. Perez is out of options and like most of the guys in the bullpen, would have needed to be designated for assignment to get him off the roster.

What the Orioles did instead was mystifying. The O's had picked up righty Scott Blewett off waivers from the Twins earlier this week. Blewett appeared in two games for the O's, allowing 1 unearned run and striking out 6 in 4.1 innings. Rather than dump Perez, which would have been deserved, the Orioles chose to designate Blewett for assignment and let him head back to the waiver wire.

Orioles make strange decision to designate Scott Blewett for assignment

Orioles fans are well aware that Brandon Hyde has his guys. Perez certainly seems to be one of them, as the team has refused to move away from him despite his struggles. What Perez does well is to induce soft contact. He's pretty good about getting guys to hit the ball poorly, but he's also almost entirely lost control of the strike zone and hitters are crushing him in the zone.

Perez's 86.4% contact rate ranks 201st out of 211 qualified relievers in 2025. His swinging strike rate is 198th out of 211. He's not fooling anyone anymore, and his stuff isn't good enough to make up the difference inside the zone. At this rate there's a decent chance that he'd pass through waivers unclaimed and the O's do have Grant Wolfram on the 40-man, so it's not like they don't have any other left-handed pitching depth to work with.

At first glance, it looked like Blewett had made a good enough impression upon his arrival in Baltimore. That clearly wasn't the case. We'll have to wait and see whether he passes through waivers or if he's lost in the process. Unfortunately, we'll have to suffer through at least a few more Cionel Perez outings in the meantime.