The Outstanding Bullpen Strength of the Baltimore Orioles

The Core of the Baltimore Orioles Bullpen

The best asset of the bullpen is the strength of the trio of arms at the back end. When a team doesn’t have this, you essentially have the Detroit Tigers of 2014.

No reliever is perfect; there is going to be a bad outing here and there. And when that happens, a reliever’s numbers can explode pretty quickly. Mariano Rivera was close to perfect, but O’s fans can remember several occasions where the Orioles got to him as well.

Zach Britton — It is almost difficult to imagine that just two years ago at this time we were not talking about Britton as a closer; nobody was even mentioning it as a possibility. Now he looks like a long-time veteran in that role.

One of my enduring memories of this past season will be the numbers of times the camera would catch a photo in the visiting dugout of hitters recently struck out by Britton. They would be talking, making downward motions with their hands, and shaking their heads — all in amazement that a pitch thrown that fast could sink that much. It is nasty stuff.

The one sort of frustrating element about Britton is that he is almost too good. Rather than hitting the ball poorly on the ground for an easy out, so many hitters are more significantly fooled; and when they do get a bit of the bat on the ball, they drive it into the ground. The result is often the craziest combination of weird infield hits that put tying and go-ahead runs on base.

But like Buck says so often of players, we can say of Britton … “I’m glad he’s on our side.”

Darren O’Day — What more is there to say that we have not written in this offseason? It is still kinda hard to wrap our heads around the idea that the Orioles were able to re-sign this player who appeared to be all but gone.

O’Day has put to bed the common notion that relievers are notoriously inconsistent performers year-to-year. I don’t buy that truism as true at all. We’ve gone over the numbers frequently, but there are few pitchers, players, superheroes, whatever who have the regularity of statistical performance as does O’Day.

Apparently Brady Anderson had a lot to do with keeping O’Day in Baltimore. And like Anderson, as we look down into the corridors of time over the next couple decades, perhaps O’Day can finish his career in Baltimore and be a positive long-term influence and developer of players in the same way Brady has been for the Orioles.

Brad Brach — This guy is a lot better than what he gets credit for being. Perhaps a bit more than Britton and O’Day, he is vulnerable to laying an egg. But generally his pitching is very, very good. An ERA in 2015 of 2.72 is commendable in its own right, especially over 62 games and 79.1 innings.

It is forgotten that Brach had a rough start in his first outings of 2015. In his first four games of the season he gave up five runs on nine hits in 4.2 innings. If you take out those four games, his seasonal ERA drops to 2.29 and the batting average against to .185 over 58 ballgames. Not bad at all.

Brach gets a bit better each year. He is becoming a very steady performer who gives the O’s a lot of relief innings. And they needed it. They’ll probably need them again!

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