Regression has come for Orioles previously overachieving position group

The Baltimore Orioles were busy this offseason, but one aspect of their team they pretty much ignored was the bullpen. After the Orioles jettisoned almost their entire bullpen at the 2025 trade deadline, many people assumed they'd have to do a lot of work to rebuild it in one offseason. They signed Ryan Helsley and traded for Andrew Kittredge early in the offseason and decided that was a job well done.

It was a bold strategy, but for the first month of the season, it appeared to be a savvy one. Even with some of the few veterans the Orioles did have in the bullpen injured and underperforming to start the season, breakouts from Rico Garcia and Anthony Nunez, along with a bounceback from Yennier Cano, made the bullpen one of the few areas of the team that wasn't subject to major concern.

The Orioles offseason strategy of ignore the bullpen is starting to look like a mistake

Over the past week, however, the breakout arms the Orioles had been relying so heavily on have faltered, and the veteran arms that were struggling to start the season are still struggling, leaving the Orioles bullpen extremely vulnerable and costing the team several games during their 1-5 road trip.

Starting pitching has been a distinct pain point for the Orioles this season. There have been far too many games where the starting pitcher puts the team in a multi-run hole before the offense even gets a chance to pick up their bats, and the game spirals from there.

With that being the case, the fact that during the Orioles series against the Rays, they got a 5.1-inning, 2-ER start from Kyle Bradish and a 6-inning, 1-ER start from Shane Baz, and still managed to turn both of those starts into losses is devastating. The offense and the defense share in the blame for both losses, but the fact that, in both games, the Orioles sent their very best relievers to the mound and, in both games, their best guys allowed late-inning rallies that salted the game away for the Rays is incredibly demoralizing.

The top two regressors are Nunez and Garcia. They had been the Orioles' top two leverage arms all season, and it seems like after a month and a half, the strain is getting to them.

Nunez is a rookie and was bound to experience some growing pains as teams get a better scouting report on what to look for when facing him. Now it's a matter of how he adjusts to the adjustment.

Garcia just could not possibly keep up the pace he was pitching at. Mathematically, he was not going to go a full season without allowing a hit on a ball in play. BABIP regression comes for everyone, good or bad. Now Garcia has allowed a hit in three straight appearances. His stuff still looks good, and it's likely he'll continue to be largely effective, but he's not going to have an ERA of 0.35, and that's kind of what the Orioles needed from him to hold their bullpen together.

The real worry is that regression is still coming for more of the Orioles relievers. Yennier Cano and Dietrich Enns have both been very important to the Orioles bullpen, and both have large gulfs between their expected ERA and their actual ERA. That doesn't bode well for the rest of their season.

Of course, the Orioles can hope to experience some positive regression, it feels unlikely that Keegan Akin and Andrew Kittredge will both finish the season with ERAs over 10 but will those two getting back on track balance out the rest of the pen crashing back to Earth? Probably not.

With so many things going wrong with the Orioles, the bullpen seems like the least of their worries, but it's going to become more important as they blow more close games and push the Orioles further out of the playoff picture.

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