It’s no secret that the Orioles had a lot of problems in 2025. Their starting rotation was unreliable. Their young hitters failed to progress.
And then there was their patchwork bullpen, which had Orioles
fans wondering: who the heck are these guys?
The Orioles cycled through an astounding 41 pitchers this season. According to MASN’s Roch Kubatko, that’s one shy of the American League record (held by, among others, the 2021 Orioles). That number includes five position players who made pitching appearances, led by infielder Luis Vázquez’s four scoreless outings. Most of the Orioles’ actual pitchers could only dream of having Vázquez’s success.
All season long, pitchers came and went from the Orioles’ roster in a flash, some stopping by for only a day or two before shuffling off to the minors or another organization. The Norfolk shuttle was working overtime. The waiver wire never got a moment’s peace. Before you even learned a player’s name, he was already gone.
Most made little impact. Carson Ragsdale gave up eight runs in his MLB debut. Shawn Dubin was forgettable, other than the fun factoid that he was born on the day of Cal Ripken’s 2,131. Corbin Martin, who like Dubin was drafted by the Astros during Mike Elias’ tenure there, posted a 6.00 ERA in 17 games. The gloriously bearded Colin Selby had 14 strikeouts and two walks, which is nice, but spent five separate stints in the minors and two months on the IL.
Then there were the one-and-dones. Do you remember the single Orioles appearance for Elvin Rodríguez, José Espada, Cody Poteet, or Roansy Contreras? Actually, I do remember Contreras. He pitched 4.1 scoreless innings of long relief against the Red Sox and would have gotten the win if the O’s hadn’t blown the game in the ninth. The Orioles still DFA’d him the next day and he was claimed by the Rockies. Tough crowd.
The bullpen maneuvering reached a fever pitch after the trade deadline. The Orioles, newly without veteran relievers Gregory Soto, Seranthony Domínguez, Andrew Kittredge, and Bryan Baker — and with closer Félix Bautista on the IL with a torn rotator cuff and labrum that will cost him all of next season — were forced to cobble together an entire bullpen out of minor league call-ups, journeymen, and no-names. The results were…mixed. Some, like Dietrich Enns, Kade Strowd, and Rico Garcia, pitched decently enough to put themselves on the radar for 2026, and we’ll discuss them in separate posts. But the ever-changing relief crew was largely unimpressive. From Aug. 1 to the end of the season, the Orioles’ bullpen ERA of 4.34 ERA ranked just 22nd in the majors.
Among the group of anonymous relievers were three right-handers at different stages of their careers who each took circuitous paths to Baltimore: Scott Blewett, Matt Bowman, and Yaramil Hiraldo. Each pitched at least 20 innings for the Orioles this season (well, 19.2 in Hiraldo’s case, but we’ll round up), and none of the trio particularly distinguished himself.
Bowman was the first to arrive. The Chevy Chase native debuted with the Birds in 2024 — his fourth team of that year — and he was the Orioles’ first call-up of the 2025 season, coming up from Triple-A Norfolk on March 30 to replace the injured Albert Suárez. That was the beginning of a whirlwind season of transactions for Bowman, who was called up, designated for assignment, and outrighted four times each before the O’s finally released him at the end of August.
It would have been a nice story if the Maryland guy had become a key part of the Orioles bullpen, but Bowman simply wasn’t a good enough pitcher for that to happen. The well-traveled 34-year-old had one job: to soak up innings in blowout games. Whenever he was on the mound, chances are things had already gone wrong for the Orioles. The O’s had a 4-16 record in games in which he pitched. Four and sixteen! All told, Bowman posted a 6.20 ERA in 20 games.
Bowman was briefly joined in the O’s bullpen by his former Twins teammate, Blewett. The 29-year-old Blewett first showed up as a waiver claim from the Twins in April and made two decent appearances, but the O’s lost him on waivers to Atlanta in a roster crunch. Two months later, the Birds claimed him back — and ironically he took the spot of his friend Bowman, whom Blewett credits for helping him learn how to be an MLB journeyman. Like Bowman, Blewett mainly only pitched in low-leverage situations. And in case you were wondering, he apparently pronounces his name “blue-ETT,” because “blew it” would be an unfortunate moniker for a relief pitcher.
Blewett finished the season in the minors, off the Orioles’ 40-man roster, after finishing with a 6.17 ERA in 13 games for the club. It’ll be a surprise if he’s part of the Orioles’ organization next year.
Then there’s Hiraldo. While not an MLB veteran like the other two, the 29-year-old rookie has had an extended baseball journey. He signed with the Diamondbacks as an amateur from the Dominican in 2018, was released in 2021, and then spent four years playing independent ball in the Atlantic League and Mexico before the O’s proffered him a minor league contract last October.
Hiraldo wore a path from Norfolk to Baltimore this season, getting recalled six times and sent down five. He was one of the relievers thrust into a more prominent role after the trade deadline, and he fared decently enough…as long as you weren’t asking him to pitch in important moments. In low-leverage situations, Hiraldo held opposing hitters to a .688 OPS. But in medium- and high-leverage spots, Hiraldo allowed eight of 19 batters to reach base (admittedly, a very small sample size). The O’s gave him one save opportunity, handing him a two-run, ninth-inning lead at Fenway Park on Aug. 19, and it took him only two batters — a walk and a game-tying homer — to squander it. That brought a quick end to the Yaramil Hiraldo closer experiment.
The O’s have Hiraldo under team control for the next six years if they want him, so he could be part of the bullpen competition at next year’s spring training, but he’s also unremarkable enough that the Orioles could jettison him from the 40-man roster this offseason to make room for other players.
Such is the life of a fringe major league pitcher. Every so often you’ll get to stick around in the bigs, for days or weeks at a time. But at the end of the day you’re always replaceable, the first one sent packing when someone else shows up. These types of pitchers have their place and can serve a role. But next year, let’s hope the Orioles don’t build an entire bullpen out of them.
