No facet of the Orioles has changed more dramatically over the last calendar year than the bullpen. Only two pitchers from the 2025 Opening Day bullpen are likely to crack the 2026 season-opening roster. Whereas last year the O’s built a bullpen of veterans with ample experience, this year they’re taking the opposite approach.
Mike Elias has struck gold with unconventional bullpens before. Think back to the start of the 2022 season, when the Orioles traded two of their best relievers, Tanner Scott
and Cole Sulser, to the Marlins just four days before Opening Day. That left them with a season-opening bullpen that included a slew of unknowns, including Bryan Baker (who’d made only one previous MLB appearance), Cionel Pérez (a control-challenged waiver claim), Jorge López (a failed starter), and a mountainous but wild righty who’d never pitched in the majors before, Félix Bautista. My one-word description for the bullpen at the time: “woof.”
And yet, it worked. That 2022 O’s bullpen turned into one of baseball’s best. Bautista emerged as arguably the most dominant reliever in the game. Pérez transformed into a lights-out setup man. And López pitched so well as the closer that he was traded for a three-player package that included Yennier Cano, who himself became an out-of-nowhere bullpen success story the following year. The Orioles proved that you don’t need a stable full of recognizable names to build a reliable bullpen.
This year, they’re really testing the limits of that theory. More than half the Opening Day bullpen is made up of journeyman castoffs with relatively little MLB experience. Only one reliever — closer Ryan Helsley — was signed as a major league free agent. The rest were mostly acquired through waiver claims, minor league trades, and the Rule 5 draft. And now the Orioles are depending on them to get big outs in the late innings. We’ll see how it all turns out. It could be a stroke of brilliance…or an unmitigated disaster.
Ryan Helsley, RHP
We’ll start with the one famous face among the group. Helsley is a two-time All-Star closer with the Cardinals who led the league with 49 saves two years ago, earning down-ballot NL Cy Young votes. He posted a stellar 2.67 ERA and 105 career saves in his seven-year St. Louis career, but had a horrible time after a midseason trade to the Mets last year, struggling to a 7.20 ERA in 22 games. Helsley later said that he was tipping his pitches with the Mets and that the Orioles have helped him fix it. Let’s hope they’re right. The Orioles invested $14 million in Helsley for this season and another $14 million in 2027, though he can exercise a player opt-out after this year.
Helsley is the Orioles’ closer replacement for Bautista, who will miss most or all of this season with a torn right rotator cuff and labrum. Helsley should at least be more reliable than the Orioles’ last Bautista replacement, Craig Kimbrel in 2024, but he’ll need to prove that he’s more like the Cardinals version of himself than the Mets version.
Keegan Akin, LHP
Akin is the longest tenured Oriole in the current bullpen, entering his seventh year with the team and his fifth since converting to relief. His best season was 2024, when he had a 3.32 ERA in a career-best 66 games. Last year his ERA was similar but all of his rate stats got noticeably worse, including WHIP, H/9, BB/9, and K/9. After the Orioles’ midseason trades of four relievers, Akin was thrust into the closer’s role almost by default, but struggled as a ninth-inning guy. He figures to return to more of a lefty specialist/setup role this year, though his recent hip injury puts his status for Opening Day in doubt.
Yennier Cano, RHP
It’s been a steady decline for the 32-year-old Cano since his All-Star 2023 campaign. His ERA jumped by more than a run in 2024 and then by nearly two last season, ballooning to 5.12 in 65 games. The O’s even sent him back to the minors for a spell. He simply had too much traffic on the bases, averaging nearly a runner and a half per inning, and batters torched his once-devastating changeup to the tune of a .417 AVG and .667 SLG. The Orioles still tendered him a contract and he’ll be in the Opening Day bullpen, with a short leash.
For what it’s worth, the projections systems forecast a modest bounceback for Cano. ZiPS projects him for a 3.58 ERA and Baseball Reference for 4.05. Cano was unremarkable in spring training with three earned runs in seven innings, though he didn’t walk anyone.
Tyler Wells, RHP
The 6-foot-8 righty is one of the biggest wild cards in the bullpen. Wells hasn’t worked regularly as a reliever since 2021, his rookie year, but the Orioles’ overloaded rotation bumped the erstwhile starter to bullpen duty. Considering he’s thrown only 34 innings in the last two years combined, the new role might be for the best. Wells could serve as a multi-inning long relief guy, a setup man, a backup closer, or anything in between. For now, he’s a top candidate to handle eighth-inning responsibilities in Andrew Kittredge’s absence.
Rico Garcia, RHP, and Dietrich Enns, LHP
We’ll group these two together as well-traveled brothers in arms. Garcia and Enns have each played for seven different organizations but have pitched fewer than 50 major league games. Both were acquired at the trade deadline last year as “throw things at the wall and see what sticks” bullpen stopgaps — and boy, were they able to stick. Garcia was known for pulling off Houdini-like escapes on the mound, including a memorable game at Fenway Park in which he entered with the bases loaded and nobody out and promptly struck out the side. This spring he worked 5.2 hitless innings for the Orioles and also pitched for Team Puerto Rico in the World Baseball Classic.
Enns debuted in 2017 but had pitched only 11 MLB games until last year, when the O’s picked him up after a brief stint with the Tigers. The 34-year-old was surprisingly effective, posting a 3.14 ERA and 10.7 K/9 in 17 games. He came into spring training with a bullpen spot all but locked up, though he nearly frittered it away by walking seven batters and giving up eight runs in 7.2 innings. If Enns keeps struggling with his command, his stay on the 2026 roster may be short.
Grant Wolfram, LHP
Wolfram was arguably the Orioles’ biggest relief star of camp this year. He was another of the Orioles’ up-and-down relievers last year who failed to impress — a 5.40 ERA in 21 games — but this spring he dominated with six scoreless innings, walking one and striking out 10. A 6-foot-7 lefty with a 95-96 mph fastball is always going to attract attention, but Wolfram’s struggles with the strike zone led him to be released by the Rangers and cast aside by the Brewers before the O’s took a flyer on him last April. Wolfram has worked on improving his mechanics and his confidence this spring, and perhaps it will pay off.
Andrew Kittredge, RHP
Kittredge won’t be included in the Opening Day bullpen due to shoulder inflammation, but he expects his IL stay to be short. The veteran righty originally signed with the Orioles last year, appearing in 31 games with a 3.45 ERA before the O’s traded him to the Cubs as part of their deadline sell-off. Kittredge excelled down the stretch with Chicago before the Birds reacquired him this offseason. The 36-year-old was slated to serve as Helsley’s setup man, and probably still will once he gets healthy.
Other candidates
The Orioles haven’t finalized their Opening Day bullpen as of this writing, but Kittredge’s injury opens one more spot (and Akin would open a second one if he has to go on the IL). Candidates include non-roster long reliever Albert Suárez, the out-of-options hard-thrower Jackson Kowar, and second-year righty Yaramil Hiraldo, who FanGraphs weirdly loves. A phone call away at Triple-A Norfolk are rookies Anthony Nunez, Cameron Foster, and Jose Espada. So too is former top-10 Orioles prospect Chayce McDermott, who had a brutal go of it in 2025. Expect most of these guys to show up at some point or another this season.
FanGraphs projects the Orioles’ bullpen to be middle of the pack with a cumulative 2.8 WAR, 16th best in baseball. Considering how unproven most of these pitchers are, it’s hard to argue that they should rank higher. Get ready to hold your breath in the late innings of close games this year.
