Without missing a beat, Orioles first baseman Ryan O’Hearn had his answer ready for why he believes the team could be better this season than it was in 2024.

Félix Bautista is back.

The absence of Baltimore’s closer, who underwent Tommy John elbow reconstruction surgery and missed last year, was acutely felt in close games. There is no guarantee Bautista immediately returns to the dominance he displayed in 2023, when he saved 33 games and became an All-Star. He’ll undergo a ramp-up period this spring, slowly integrating himself back to his former role, although general manager Mike Elias expects Bautista to be ready on opening day.

And, beyond Bautista, the signing of right-hander Andrew Kittredge gives Baltimore another reliable high-leverage arm. Kittredge posted a 2.80 ERA last year for St. Louis.

Those two additions — one from injury, one from free agency — will obviously bolster a bullpen that finished last season with a 4.22 relief ERA (23rd in the majors). But they are not the only reasons the bullpen could be a major strength.

Three other relievers, two of whom were added at last year’s trade deadline, have the chance to be integral parts of a bullpen that can rebound from last season’s uneven display. These are the metrics that signal why right-hander Seranthony Domínguez and left-handers Gregory Soto and Keegan Akin could be in line for strong seasons.

Seranthony Domínguez

Almost immediately upon Domínguez’s acquisition last year, manager Brandon Hyde thrust him into high-leverage situations. By the end of the season, Domínguez had supplanted right-hander Craig Kimbrel as the club’s closer.

Domínguez performed much better in Baltimore (3.97 ERA) than he did in Philadelphia (4.75 ERA), although his expected ERA of 3.64 across the whole season shows he did well limiting hard contact. He finished in the 90th percentile for hard contact rate.

Domínguez has great “stuff,” as baseball folks say. His career Stuff+ metric is 126, and it rose to 131 in 2024 alone based primarily on a fastball that was rated favorably by FanGraphs due to its velocity, movement and spin rate. In Baltimore he leaned on his fastball slightly more, which was a prudent choice.

But where Domínguez struggles slightly is his location, which FanGraphs’ Location+ tool lists as a 97, or slightly below average. His average 97.8 mph fastball induces plenty of whiffs, but he can miss his location, particularly up in the strike zone. As such, Domínguez has seen his ground ball percentage steadily decline since 2019, from a high of 55.9% to 36%.

According to charting data from Brooks Baseball, Domínguez left his four-seamer and sinker up in the zone more frequently with the Orioles than he did with the Phillies. However, he buried his slider down and away to righties better after the transition.

PitchingBot, which grades a pitch’s effectiveness on a 20-80 scale, considers Domínguez’s sinker a 70. If he can locate that pitch better, it could lead to more ground balls and perhaps even more swings and misses.

A full offseason and spring training with Baltimore’s pitching lab could help Domínguez maximize what he does best, while bringing out his sinker more as a change-of-pace pitch.

Keegan Akin

Perhaps more than any Orioles player last year, Akin slid under the radar. He put together one of the best seasons of any left-handed reliever (his 1.4 wins above replacement were the fifth most for lefty relievers), and his expected ERA of 2.45 was in the 99th percentile across the majors. His actual ERA of 3.32 was inflated in part by a few poor performances — he had four games in which he was charged with three runs, but he didn’t allow a run in 49 of his 66 appearances.

Akin’s individual pitch metrics help show why he was so successful. The revolutions per minute a pitcher can put on a pitch are telling — and, usually, the more rpm, the better. Akin added almost 400 rpm on his slider from 2023 to 2024, and his fastball, which doesn’t boast otherworldly velocity, gained an extra 100 rpm.

With both, Akin’s Stuff+ ratings are impressive on his four-seamer (108) and slider (104). He couples that with a Location+ rating of 104, meaning he often is finding an ideal placement for those pitches.

Akin doesn’t force many hitters to chase pitches out of the strike zone, but that hasn’t impacted him. By pounding the zone in good areas (Statcast gives Akin a plus-14 pitching run value in the shadow zone, the area that is about one ball width inside and outside the strike zone), Akin recorded a strikeout rate of 31% and a walk rate of 6.1% last year.

If Akin can maintain those metrics — and limit the rough outings — he should be a formidable middle reliever or swing man, able to cover multiple frames if required. Bautista, Domínguez, Yennier Cano and Kittredge are expected to be the primary late-inning arms, but a strong bullpen needs a lefty who can stifle batters on both sides of the plate.

Gregory Soto

Soto finished his 23 games in Baltimore with a 5.09 ERA. At first blush, that is unflattering. But his first three appearances as an Oriole inflated his stats immediately — he gave up eight runs while recording just four outs and one strikeout. He impressed from Aug. 8 onward. In his last 20 games, Soto had a 1.10 ERA with 20 strikeouts. Batters posted just a .559 on-base-plus-slugging percentage against him, too.

Looking at Soto’s overall performances in 2023 and 2024, his ERA is deceptive.

His FIP — a stat that removes the fielding element of pitching and focuses on strikeouts, walks, hit batters and homers — was lower than his ERA both years (3.59 and 3.68), and his expected ERA in 2023 was 2.79 compared to the actual 4.62 ERA he received.

Soto boasts a high-velocity sinker, at 97.4 mph, that has a Stuff+ rating of 109 and a PitchingBot rating of 65. It’s a valuable offering, and when he couples it with his slider (129 Stuff+), he can be hard to hit. And it led to a 51.4% ground ball rate and 31% whiff rate in 2024.

Soto and Domínguez, who both arrived from the Phillies at last year’s trade deadline, didn’t produce as well as they could have in the final months of the season. That’s especially true for Soto, whose first three outings made his overall contributions seem less valuable.

But those two, along with Akin, could be major parts of resurrecting a bullpen that took a step backward in 2024. It won’t just be Bautista and Kittredge.