Power ranking where the Orioles' bullpen ranks in AL East ahead of 2026 season

This offseason, the Baltimore Orioles made a point to do their best to reinforce their bullpen. After losing Felix Bautista again, adding Ryan Helsley early on in the offseason hopefully stabilized the late innings while the front office then shifted their attention to other areas of the roster. That may have been a mistake.

Teams in a tight divisional race cannot afford to have their bullpen blow games. Four of the five teams in the AL East are loading up this offseason but only one team can win the division. How each team's bullpen performs could be the difference between making the playoffs and watching October baseball from home.

Orioles should be really concerned about their bullpen compared to the rest of the AL East

1. The Blue Jays

The Jays have the most complete bullpen in the AL East. They have an experienced closer in Jeff Hoffman at the back of the pen but if he gets hurt or pitches his way out of the closer role they have a surplus of arms they can trust to pitch high leverage innings.

On the Jays path to the World Series, there wasn't an arm they leaned on more than Louis Varland. Yimi Garcia has been a late inning staple in Toronto for years now and on top of those 2 arms the Jays also brought in Tyler Rogers who has been one of the most consistent bullpen weapons in the league for several years now. In total they have 4 high leverage arms. That's half the pen!

2. The Red Sox

The Sox bullpen is top heavy. Their 8-9 inning combo of Garrett Whitlock and Aroldis Chapman is among the best in the league but after those two there's not nearly as much dependable production.

The most interesting part of their bullpen will be their two young prospects, Payton Tolle and Connelly Early. Both Tolle and Early debuted at the end of the 2025 and pitched well. It doesn't seem like there is room for both of them in the rotation so if they both slide into the bullpen and pitch to their potential it's going to be hard for lefties to get hits late in games against the Red Sox.

3. The Yankees

The trio of David Bednar, Camilo Doval and Fernando Cruz at the back of this bullpen can be deadly. All of those guys have great swing and miss stuff. Once they were traded to the Yankees, Bednar put up a 12.8 K/9 and and Doval put up a 10.6 K/9. Cruz spent the enitre year with New York and put up a 13.5 K/9. It'll be a strikeout party in the last three innings for the Yankees all season.

The issue is that all of these guys have had stretches in their careers where they struggled so much to throw strikes that they were not effective relievers despite having really good stuff. Additionally, once you get past that backend trio there's not too much for opposing hitters to worry about. Right now in the Yankees bullpen they have 4 guys projected to put up a K/9 less than 8.

4. The Rays

The Rays are steadily selling off their their win now players so by the time the season starts the Orioles could catch them, but as of today the Rays have multiple relievers who would be the best reliever in the Orioles bullpen.

Griffin Jax and Edwin Uceta are a great 8-9 inning combo. They've both shown they can reach big time strikeout numbers without dealing with walk problems. Garrett Cleavinger and Bryan Baker are also both very solid but they're out of options so the Rays will most likely flip them at some point to make room for their next wave of unknown prospects and waiver claims that they're about to turn into all star candidates.

5. The Orioles

The Orioles should be concerned that they have by far the worst bullpen in the AL East. Right now they are relying heavily on Helsley who has a good track record but is coming off by far the worst stretch of his career. Besides Helsley the only guys who have any track record of sustained MLB success are Andrew Kittredge, Keegan Akin and Yennier Cano. The Blue Jays have four high leverage MLB arms in their bullpen and the Orioles have four arms with more than two years of MLB service time.

The Orioles have some fun minor league arms and starters like Cade Povich and Brandon Young who could be pushed to the pen and it will be interesting to see how their stuff plays up in that role but they're competing against teams who have put real resources intro their bullpen and they're trying to get away with not putting real resources into their bullpen so 5th place is where they end up.