This offseason bargain is one Orioles fans wish Baltimore had pulled off instead

The Baltimore Orioles currently lack a lefty specialist in their bullpen. Keegan Akin and Dietrich Enns are both useful left handed relievers and will fill a role in the Orioles pen this season but they both have either neutral or reverse platoon splits.

Akin's career splits aren't quite reversed but last season lefties slashed .287/.358/.457 against Akin (basically he turned every lefty he faced into Ryan O'Hearn) compared to righties who slashed .198/.309/.362. The last time that Akin was significantly better against lefties than righties was in 2022. The current version of Akin cannot be your leverage lefty specialist.

Enns' actually does have career-long reverse splits.

• Lefties: .333/.376/.552
• Righties: .227/.284/.343

In a lot of ways, having splits-neutral left handed pitchers can be advantageous. It makes it so that when a manager is contemplating who to call in from the bullpen he doesn't have to avoid certain left handed relievers because out of fear of a looming right handed bat. However with Akin and Enns specifically they are both so bad against lefties that Albernaz would be wise to avoid putting either of them on the mound vs a dangerous lefty.

Having a bullpen where none of your left handed relievers can be relied up to neutralize left handed batters doesn't make a ton of sense. The other internal options the Orioles have are Grant Wolfram who has 26 professional innings at a 5.40 ERA under his belt and possibly Cade Povich who has two career relief experiences. It would feel a tad irresponsible to tell either of those guys "you're going to be our guy out of the pen in the late innings when the opposing teams best lefty is due up"

The Orioles bullpen is not ready for the 2026 season and time is running out to fix it

Sadly, this is exactly why the Orioles will regret letting most of this years left handed reliever free agent class sign while they were courting bigger fish. Gregory Soto, Caleb Thielbar, Drew Pomeranz, and Sean Newcomb all came off the board for less than 10 million dollars.

Any one of those arms would have been a good fit in the Orioles overly right handed pen. However the name that stands out as a real missed opportunity for the Orioles is Hoby Milner who signed a one year deal with the Cubs for $3.75 million.

Milner isn't the kind of guy you want pitching in the 8th or 9th inning every night, but against left handed batters, he's one of the better relief pitchers in the league. Out of the 362 pitchers who pitched at least 10 innings in 2025, Milner ranked 23rd in opponents wOBA. Most of the 22 guys ahead of him on that list were not available for $3.75 million dollars this offseason.