2026 Positional Power Rankings: Bullpen (No. 16-30)

Nothing went particularly well for the Orioles in 2025, but the bullpen was one of the more glaring failures. By the end of the season, they had guys like Dietrich Enns closing out ballgames. While the lineup could easily be projected for a bounce back in 2026, the same could not be said of the relief corps. So they went looking for some upgrades, largest among them Ryan Helsley.

I wrote a whole post about Helsley back when he signed his two-year, $28 million deal, so look there for more fleshed out thoughts. The upshot: There’s good reason to believe he can recover much of his prior effectiveness. He has since added a splitter, and so far, he’s located it well enough to work as a serviceable third pitch.

Behind him, chase king Andrew Kittredge has made his triumphant return to Baltimore after a brief trade deadline sojourn to the Cubs. He’ll start the season on a rehab stint with Triple-A Norfolk as he works his way back from a shoulder issue, but he should be a quality setup man once he gets right. Kittredge’s excellent slider has been the key to him generating a 40% O-Swing rate across the past decade, the best of any pitcher in that span. While he’s on the shelf, Keegan Akin and Yennier Cano will vie for the primary setup role. Cano’s power sinker is the best pitch between the two of them, and it should allow him to gain a slight edge over Akin, a lefty with a so-so slider.

Most everyone else — Enns, Tyler Wells, Rico Garcia — is snoozetown. But there is one special guy who is far from snoozetown, and his name is Yaramil Hiraldo, the man with the magic changeup. As I noted in my piece highlighting new and improved spring pitches, Hiraldo’s changeup racked up the highest swinging strike rate of any pitch in the history of Alex Chamberlain’s Pitch Leaderboard. His fastball got rocked in 2025, but it’s been getting around 20 inches of induced vertical break this spring with plus velo. I believe in Hiraldo, and even if he’s currently slated for Triple-A work, the Orioles will come around soon enough.

Want a solid relief corps? It helps to go sicko mode on the free agent market. This offseason, Chicago went out and signed five different guys. Well, technically, one of them was a re-signing: Caleb Thielbar is returning to the North Side after a bounce-back campaign, and the Cubs will hope to recapture some of the same magic in the lefty’s age-39 campaign. The other four are new to town, though, and all of them ought to contribute heavily, assuming they’re in good health.

At two years and $14.5 million, Phil Maton earned the richest deal of the bunch. Maton is sort of a right-handed Thielbar. He doesn’t have much velocity, but his curveball gets psychedelic two-plane movement. Don’t let his placid expression and subpar velocity fool you — his spin talent lets him miss a ton of bats. It’s Hunter Harvey, however, who has the highest ceiling in this quintet. His ZiPS projection — 2.83 ERA, 27.7% strikeout rate — tells the story well enough. Harvey’s carry heater, two quality out pitches (a depth-y splitter and firm gyro slider), and plus-plus command make him a top-end setup option — if he can manage to stay on the field. He hasn’t been incredible at that part, but it’s easy to see why the Cubs gave him $6 million, especially considering his velocity is up in spring games.

The final two guys — Jacob Webb and Hoby Milner — are something like mirror images of one another, mostly effective against same-handed hitters and hanging in there against their opposite-handed counterparts. Milner, in particular, is a fun arm, slinging from a true sidearm slot at 88 mph or so, and generating some of the ugliest contact on planet Earth.

Holdovers round out both the top and bottom of the bullpen hierarchy here. Daniel Palencia is about as classic of a fire-breathing closer as you’ll find. He sits around 100 mph with his heater, and he’s going to throw it seven times out of 10. Just try to hit it! When he was healthy last year, hardly anybody did. The bulk relief roles look fated for guys like Javier Assad and Colin Rea, who seem likely to also ply their trade in the starting rotation at some point across the long season.

Pitching chaos (complimentary) became pitching chaos (derogatory) in 2025, as Detroit’s relief corps slipped to the 24th-best FIP in the league. One guy who did not slip? Will Vest, the reigning king of the Tigers bullpen, and (if you’ll believe it) the reliever with the best projection in this entire section of the positional power rankings. Among relievers with at least 150 innings pitched over the last three seasons, Vest is fourth in FIP, which is pretty wild given his reputation — or relative lack thereof — around the league. He’s upped his average fastball velocity every year of his career, settling in at 96.8 mph last season, and he pairs that heat with two legitimate out pitches in a firm gyro slider and a firmer kick change.

Still, Vest probably won’t be the closer when the season begins. That honor will go to Kenley Jansen, 24 saves short of 500 for his career. Late-model Jansen is going to throw a cutter eight out of every 10 pitches. He actually hasn’t lost much velocity from his peak, but the shape of that famous pitch has gradually shifted as his arm angle has dropped; while it’s getting as much vertical movement as ever, its glove-side movement has declined a bit. It’s still a freaky pitch, but I’m not quite sure he’s a better option than Vest at this point, or even Kyle Finnegan, who thrived after the Tigers made an extremely obvious tweak to his pitch mix. Stop throwing your dead zone fastball 70% of the time and prosper — who would’ve thought?

A few members of the pitching chaos group — Tyler Holton, Brennan Hanifee, Brant Hurter, Beau Brieske — remain entrenched in middle-relief roles, with none of them quite reaching the highs of that 2024 season last year. Enmanuel De Jesus will join that group as a luxury third lefty. Still, one new addition threatens to upend the whole situation if he remains in the bullpen. Drew Anderson, who signed for a measly $7 million this offseason in his return from the KBO, is sitting 95-96 mph with his heater and has one of the nastiest kick changes in the sport. He’ll be something like a bulk swingman — not quite a starter, not quite a reliever — and could be extremely effective within that structure.

Cincinnati brought back the bulk of last year’s totally fine bullpen. That started with re-signing closer Emilio Pagán to a two-year, $20 million deal. In the cold light of March, that deal looks a touch rich; Pagán’s fastball is pretty good, but he throws it a ton, and the shape leaves it vulnerable to damage. Also, he’s entering his age-35 season. And, for whatever it’s worth, that fastball is down two ticks this spring. Given the centrality of the four-seamer to his whole deal, he can’t start sitting 94 mph and expect to hold on to the closer job. For the Reds’ sake, let’s hope he’s just taking his foot off the gas to save his best fastball for when the games count.

If Pagán falters, there are two possible heirs to his throne. Tony Santillan is a pretty simple four-seam/slurve fellow whose velocity has dipped even more than Pagán’s this spring, which is why Graham Ashcraft is the guy to keep an eye on. Like some of the greatest closers in history, Ashcraft leans on a cutter with surprising carry, a pitch that should be able to function well against hitters of either handedness. He supplements that cutter with a nasty sweeper, 88 mph with 10 inches of lateral break. Nothing moves to the arm side, and his command is shaky, but even so, he posted a 2.72 FIP in his first relief campaign. He’s got pure closer stuff, and is likely the best arm in this ‘pen.

That being said, Zach “Big Sugar” Maxwell could give him a run for his money. The 6-foot-6, 275-pound right-hander sat 100 mph on his heater last season, pairing that heat with a slider that’s nearly identical to Ashcraft’s. Big Sugar walks a ton of guys, and will start the year in Triple-A, but keep an eye out, because the stuff is undeniable. Luis Mey and Kyle Nicolas round out the crew of big dudes with top-end velocity and only a faint sense of where those heaters might end up.

Brock Burke is a high-velocity lefty with a slider that moves arm side; Sam Moll is a low-velocity lefty with a slider that breaks across the width of the plate. Pierce Johnson is going to throw so many curveballs. Connor Phillips’s sweeper goes brrrrrrr. Brandon Williamson is pretty good, as far as long relievers go.

Even after gutting their bullpen at the 2025 trade deadline, the Twins have retained a respectable crew of dudes. The projections are hot and heavy for Cole Sands, a guy who took a pretty big step back from an unreal 2024 and attacks hitters with a wide mix rather than any single killer pitch. Derek Shelton said he might be the closer, but he also said he might not be the closer.

Who are the other options? Taylor Rogers is back for another run; he’s certainly got the most veteran presence of the group, though it’s been a half-decade since the results were convincingly closer-quality. This spring, his sinker velocity was generally below 90 mph, though on the bright side, he added a cutter. That cutter is not itself an outstanding pitch, but late-career Rogers was in desperate need of a third offering as a bridge between his sinker and sweeper. Kody Funderburk has the best ERA and FIP projections in this ‘pen, and, respectfully, looks like an upgraded version of Rogers. Both have the low slot sinker/slider thing going on, but Funderburk has nearly three ticks of velo on Rogers; he also throws five distinct pitches. In the battle of the lefties, Funderburk looks primed to triumph.

Befitting a team that claims to be trying but that isn’t really all that competitive, the rest of the bullpen features a mix of unexciting veterans with some sort of big league track record. Justin Topa bounced on over to Minnesota as part of the 2024 Jorge Polanco deal. After missing that season, he came back and did his sinker-slider thing with more or less the effectiveness he showed in Seattle pre-injury. Anthony Banda got squeezed off the Dodgers’ formidable 40-man roster and found a home in Minneapolis. Eric Orze continues his quest to forge a career off a changeup and little else. Travis Adams is on cleanup duty. If the Twins miraculously make a run, look for Connor Prielipp or Kendry Rojas to assume a leverage job.

The good news: The Marlins have a reliever projected for more than 1 WAR! The bad news: I don’t trust those projections. In the early part of the decade, Pete Fairbanks was filth personified, sitting 99 with a cut-ride fastball and a deathball slider designed for whiffs. In 2024, the fastball velo took a two-tick dip, and the strikeouts dove right alongside it. This spring, he’s down to 96 mph.

The Marlins sort of need Fairbanks to match his projections, because at present he constitutes over two-thirds of their projected bullpen value. Behind him, there’s Calvin Faucher, who put together a decent 2025 season spamming breaking balls, and Tyler Phillips, who became famous both for throwing two excellent breaking balls and for slapping himself in the face before he entered the game to do so. Andrew Nardi is a too-obvious candidate to supplant both Faucher and Phillips; he ran a 33.3% strikeout rate in 2024 before missing the entire 2025 season with recurrent back issues. He made it into four spring outings and the stuff looks undiminished, so I’ll project Nardi into a setup role by year’s end given health.

I’ll speed through the middle relievers — Anthony Bender throws benders, John King is a soft-tossing sinker/slider lefty, Cade Gibson is a soft-tossing lefty who was recently optioned, Janson Junk should be in the rotation instead of Chris Paddack — to talk about two guys lurking at Triple-A with serious leverage potential: Josh Ekness and Josh White. The two Joshes posted absurd strikeout rates in the high minors in 2025 and arrived to camp with the stuff to back it up. Ekness employs a vicious flat vertical approach angle fastball at high velocity, and pairs it with a lifty sweeper and a sinker that has significant movement separation from the four-seamer. White is more north-south, looking a bit like Fairbanks at a slightly lower velocity band. Both the Joshes could easily end up supplanting the more experienced arms by late summer.

Lastly, I must take a moment to stump for my guy Lake Bachar here. Were his results great last year? Maybe not. Do I think he can be a competent big league reliever? Absolutely. Most pitchers would die for a carry fastball and an 87-mph sweeper. He even throws a splitter! Don’t give up on Lake!

Of all the Pirates’ moves from this offseason, I think I liked the acquisition of Mason Montgomery best. Montgomery was something like a throw-in as part of the Brandon Lowe acquisition, but he may finish the season as the best reliever in Pittsburgh’s bullpen. Firing 99-mph four-seamers with 18 inches of carry to go with 89-mph gyro sliders from the left side with plus extension, Montgomery lit up every stuff model in existence in 2025. The only thing missing were the results. He walked too many guys, and the limited mix and subpar command led to predictable pitches in the heart of the zone. He got optioned midseason, and the Rays evidently considered him expendable. But he’s busted out two new pitches this spring — a curveball with more depth than the gyro, and a show-me changeup — and the quality of his stuff suggests he’s one tweak away from joining the premium relief arms in the sport.

None of the other arms in this bunch have that sort of upside. Dennis Santana had great results the last two years by generating super weak contact, including a preposterous .211 BABIP last season, but I don’t think he has the arsenal to justify those Max Fried-esque outcomes. Gregory Soto is sort of similar to Montgomery — a hard-throwing lefty with questionable command and mediocre results — but the results have been mediocre for so long that it’s harder to project a 2.00-ERA season popping up out of nowhere. Isaac Mattson was created in a lab to see if an average velo carry fastball can singlehandedly prop up a major league career. Evan Sisk is your classic soft-tossin’ lefty; Yohan Ramírez will hoover up some innings. Cam Sanders’ changeup is so good that it might be impossible to command.

Finally freed from Colorado, Justin Lawrence impressed in a 17.2-inning sample last season, whipping his frisbee sweeper around the zone for strikeouts. Carmen Mlodzinski possesses the arsenal to suppress damage and ought to be cromulent in a swingman role.

To build his 2025 bullpen, Rangers POBO Chris Young went to the scrap heap, finding misfit toys and plugging them into empty roster spots. It worked surprisingly well: The peripherals weren’t super convincing, but the Rangers nevertheless finished fifth in bullpen ERA.

Misfit toys usually aren’t signed to multi-year deals, though, so Young started the process all over again this offseason, bringing in guys like Tyler Alexander, Carter Baumler and Jakob Junis to fill the void. There are a handful of holdovers, and two of them are currently slated to fill the highest leverage roles in the ‘pen: Robert Garcia and Chris Martin, who are both idiosyncratic options, albeit in different ways.

Garcia, the nominal closer, is unusual for a few reasons. He’s a lefty, and there aren’t many lefty closers. He also does not throw particularly hard — in camp this spring and during the WBC, he’s sat 93-94 on the four-seamer. Finally, his preferred out pitch is a hard, depth-y changeup, not the typical relief ace look. Unusual as it is, it worked well enough to turn in a 2.95 ERA in 2025.

Martin is an absolute giant who looks stiff and ungainly when he releases a baseball. He also turns 40 in June, and has spent time on the IL in each of the last three seasons. But when he’s on the mound, his command remains pristine, and the results are incredible, year after year. Neither Garcia nor Martin are likely to turn in sub-2.00 ERA seasons, but both should easily be above-average options.

Gavin Collyer is the upside play. His command is shambolic, but his sweeper sits around 88 mph, bonkers velocity for a pitch with that sort of glove-side lateral movement. Michel Otañez presents a similar command/stuff dichotomy. Jalen Beeks is the perfunctory lefty. Josh Sborz is ostensibly back, but his stuff is down a good bit from his 2023 peak this spring. I feel like Cole Winn will be better than the pessimistic projections; PitchingBot thinks he throws five above-average pitches, and I tend to agree with PitchingBot. Alexander is giving swingman. Junis is giving slightly more luxurious swingman. He can spin a baseball with the best of them.

Remove injuries from the equation, and this bullpen would be more “mid” than “yeesh.” Unfortunately, it’s looking like the Angels’ top two options will be out for a good bit. In 2025, Ben Joyce found the perfect partner for his 102-mph four-seamer, a hard splinker with unreal drop. Sadly, he likely won’t return from his shoulder issues until midseason. Robert Stephenson’s fate is a bit more grim. He’s thrown just 10 innings since signing a three-year, $33 million deal in January of 2024; recently, he had yet another “setback,” with concern that there’s been further UCL damage. If Stephenson pitches another inning for the Angels, it will be a surprise.

The second-tier options include a trio of veterans, two of whom are coming off down years. Kirby Yates rode his splitter to a ridiculous 35.9% strikeout rate in 2024; the Ks didn’t totally disappear in 2025, but the homers went through the roof. His fastball is down in the 91-92 range this spring; even with the killer splitter, it’s hard to imagine the long balls disappearing at that velocity. Speaking of gopher-prone: Jordan Romano allowed 10 homers in just 42.2 innings of work in 2025. The main culprit was a two-pitch mix where he can only reliably command one of the pitches. That means a lot of sliders in hittable locations. Drew Pomeranz looks the most promising of the three. After missing four entire seasons, he basically picked up where he left off, throwing a ton of fastballs and leveraging his platoon-neutral arsenal to great success. He is likely to handle closer duties with both Joyce and Stephenson unavailable to start the season.

Brent Suter is another fun veteran doing it like nobody else, sitting 86 and appearing to add a splitter over the offseason. Ryan Zeferjahn scrapped his cutter this spring, looking to keep his strikeouts up while excising those pesky walks and long balls. Sam Bachman is wild but sort of compelling. Hey, Nick Sandlin and his trademark slider are around! Chase Silseth will probably swap into the rotation at some point.

Randy Rodríguez pitched like a relief ace until his UCL decided to punish him for his hubris. Who will take his place as he recovers from Tommy John? Erstwhile closer Ryan Walker is next in line. After an incredible 2024 campaign, he ran back the same sinker-sweeper arsenal with a funky, crossbody delivery last season and saw diminished results. In a fascinating turn of events, the regression centered around his performance against right-handed hitters, ostensibly the guys he’s most primed to dominate. His strikeout rate against lefties held steady at around 28%, but against righties, it was nearly cut in half — 35.4% in 2024, 17.9% in 2025. I have no good explanation here.

Behind Walker, the Giants have a lot of arms who look like they belong in a second-division bullpen. José Buttó is still pitching like a backend starter even as he’s been reassigned to high-leverage relief work, going so far as to add a curveball to further widen his arsenal. Spencer Bivens is another fifth starter wearing the disguise of a middle reliever. Erik Miller put up one of the wildest ERA-xFIP splits you’ll see, posting a 1.6 K-BB% but somehow allowing zero home runs. I cannot help but think the enormous difference in arm angle between his two primary pitches (38 degrees on the four-seamer and 20 degrees on the changeup) will limit his upside. JT Brubaker is on this depth chart? Am I reading that right? Matt Gage, Trevor McDonald — they’re also guys.

All that said, there is a collection of high-upside wild cards lurking around the org. Gregory Santos is one that I wrote about in my spring pitching update; the upshot is that he’s showing the same stuff he had in his breakout 2023 campaign. Joel Peguero hasn’t pitched yet this spring, but he sat 100 last year with a disgusting 92-mph slider. Even in his minor league career, he didn’t miss as many bats as you’d expect, even taking into account the deadzone shape of his heater, but I believe there’s got to be a way to unlock another level. With his fastball-splitter combo, Keaton Winn could be intriguing in relief. I’m convinced that inside of the recently optioned Blade Tidwell is the heart of a shutdown reliever, but the Giants likely aren’t ready to go down that path.

Hogan Harris is a super fun pitcher. He’s a lefty with no slider. His two primary pitches — a carry fastball and a 12-6 curveball — are separated by nearly three feet of vertical movement. On top of that, he adds a Whiffleball changeup, mimicking his fastball’s movement profile almost exactly but with a 12-mph speed differential. It’s cool and fun, and, respectfully, it’s a bananas mix for a potential closer. Harris looks primed to lead the A’s closer committee in the early going, though to my mind, the other options lack clear closer capabilities.

To be fair (?) to the team, the competition is thin. This is not an organization that is known for churning out quality relief arms. Justin Sterner went on a really good run in the second half last year, fueled by a couple of excellent breaking balls, but he has essentially nothing to throw to left-handed hitters. The same goes for Tyler Ferguson (recently optioned) and Michael Kelly. The newly signed Mark Leiter Jr. has put together a totally respectable career with his splitter, but also, he’s 35 years old, and it’s Mark Leiter Jr. The guys with traditional closer stuff — Elvis Alvarado, Eduarniel Núñez, Luis Medina — are saddled with terrifying control problems. Scott Barlow, brought in on a one-year, $2 million deal is sitting 88 in spring. That’s 88 mph. He’s a reliever!

If the A’s position player core rakes enough to make this team competitive, they’ll need to figure something out in the bullpen, whether it’s a trade or converting one of their starting pitcher prospects into a short-term relief option. Gage Jump and Jamie Arnold would surely handle a bullpen job with aplomb, but it would almost certainly not be worth risking their development to go down that path. Other than that.. yeah. I don’t know.

Tanking teams — or more generously, teams in a transition phase — ought not to have a good bullpen. From a resource efficiency standpoint, those arms are better allocated to good teams in exchange for promising young players. By that standard, the Cardinals are doing a pretty good job. Riley O’Brien is maybe the only guy here who wouldn’t be out of place in a playoff contender’s bullpen; his primary pitch, a 98-mph power sinker, generated weak contact against hitters on both sides of the plate last year. Matt Svanson may also have an argument; he employs a similar sinker-sweeper combo, plus a cutter to throw to righties.

Otherwise, St. Louis is rostering… a bunch of guys. Also Ryne Stanek, who is perhaps on the line between guy and Guy. He’s still throwing ridiculously hard, but it’s his age 34-season, and it may be time to give up on the dream of him throwing more strikes. JoJo Romero’s results have been great, but the stuff and peripherals are unconvincing; to me, he seems like a solid lefty specialist, and no more. Justin Bruihl is the Kirkland Brand JoJo Romero. Matt Pushard came over in the Rule 5 Draft after posting very good numbers in Triple-A last year; he also purportedly throws a lot of strikes. His stuff is, respectfully, quite boring. Ryan Fernandez is… fine. George Soriano has some promising stuff and a career 5.95 ERA.

For upside, there’s a few names. Gordon Graceffo still wields a starter’s mix and bumped his velo up a tick in spring, but he’ll start the year in Triple-A. Chris Roycroft’s release traits and sinker movement are weird enough to stand out. And if Brandon Clarke ever converts to a relief role, watch out.

With A.J. Puk and Justin Martinez both on the shelf for the foreseeable future, Kevin Ginkel — who, to be clear, posted a 7.36 ERA in 2025 while battling intermittent shoulder issues — started the offseason in the pole position to handle much of the team’s high-leverage work. Then his fastball was down two ticks this spring, and he got lit up, so that might’ve been the end of high-leverage Gink.

At least Paul Sewald is back in town. He appears to have added a cutterish pitch to his two-pitch arsenal, and his velocity has actually been up a bit in his brief spring action. Given the trend lines of these two, I’d pick Sewald to emerge as the preferred early-season closer option, but there are a few guys who are perhaps primed to seize the title as they gain a bit more big league experience.

Brandyn Garcia and Kade Strowd are the two most promising names. Garcia, who came over from Seattle in the Josh Naylor trade, features a nasty sinker-sweeper combo from a low lefty slot. It may be an arsenal prone to platoon splits, but it should allow him to be one of the better lefty suppressors if and when his command gets dialed in. By virtue of his right-handedness, Strowd, who was acquired from Baltimore for Blaze Alexander, may have more of a shot at future closer duty. His four-seamer is dead-zone-ish, but it gets a little sneaky cut-action. He also replaced his sweeper with a harder, depthier slider this spring, a nice pairing with his signature two-plane curveball.

Then there are the wild flamethrowers. Juan Morrillo sits 99, but his control issues might relegate him to Triple-A Reno, even in a weak bullpen. Drey Jameson sits 97, but he can’t really throw a breaking ball. Jonathan Loáisiga, who made the Opening Day roster after signing a minor league deal in January, has looked good in spring, though who knows what they’ll ultimately get from him.

Elsewhere, Ryan Thompson is still throwing underhand and tweeting stuff like “Can anyone name a recent popular conspiracy that has been unequivocally proven false?” Phillip Abner is a lefty with a 91-mph cut-ride fastball. Taylor Clarke has a good changeup. Andrew Hoffmann’s media day headshot might not fill you with confidence, but he does feature two quality out pitches: a firm gyro slider and a filthy split-change. There isn’t a ton of depth behind these guys.

Last year after I boldly proclaimed that the Rockies’ relievers weren’t that bad, they proved me… well, their -0.4 team WAR ranked 29th. Which, importantly, is not last place! Not many holdovers remain from the ashes of last year’s 119-loss squad. Victor Vodnik is one notable exception: The right-hander will slot in as the presumptive closer after posting an extremely respectable 3.02 ERA in his 50.2 innings last season. His approach is nothing fancy, a steady diet of triple-digit fastballs paired with a power change to throw to lefties and a serviceable slider to break out against righties.

Jimmy Herget is next in line. I will bet four gumballs that you have no idea how his 2025 season went. But he threw 83.1 innings… and posted a 3.32 FIP… in Colorado?! Herget was up to his trademark sidearm slangin’ ways, taking a page out of the Adam Ottavino success-at-altitude playbook with a heavy mix of sweepers and sinkers. Will it work as well this year? No, probably not. But he has a career 3.17 ERA, so he’s much better than his fastball velocity suggests.

There are two big breakout possibilities: Juan Mejia and Jaden Hill. If you’re curious about Hill, I wrote about him in my spring pitch update. Mejia is perhaps most famous for getting trucked by Warming Bernabel on the way to securing his first career save. But he’s also got some pretty good stuff, and he showed it off for the Dominican Republic in the WBC. He’s got a cut-ride fastball he probably throws too much and a sweeper that he’ll throw to lefties and righties alike. It also seems like he’s added a gyro slider this spring, which is never a bad idea.

Seth Halvorsen’s swing-and-miss situation confounds and disturbs me. In 2025, he had a 28.2% strikeout rate at Coors… and a 10% strikeout rate on the road! What!? Keegan Thompson won’t offend anyone; he’s lost some velocity over the years but added some pitches, and should be able to competently handle multi-inning stints. Zach Agnos has a good cutter and a great mustache. Antonio Senzatela is the best-paid long relief guy in the league. Brennan Bernardino will be doing lefty things. For the sake of the Rockies’ beat reporters, let us hope John Brebbia makes this team.

Sadly, there’s no question that this is the worst bullpen in baseball. At 0.1 projected WAR, the Washington relief corps sits more than half a win below the Rockies. Only three players project to deliver a positive contribution of any kind. One of those three guys — Clayton Beeter — is their nominal relief ace, in line to inherit Kyle Finnegan’s closing gig. He’s got nasty stuff — his carry heater and death ball-ish slider are both plus pitches — and also walked 17.3% of the hitters he faced in 2025.

Control issues, it turns out, are a theme with many of the presumed contributors: Cole Henry, Cionel Pérez, Orlando Ribalta, and PJ Poulin are all projected by ATC for walk rates above 10%. Of that crop, Ribalta has the highest ceiling: He sat 96 – 97 mph on his four-seamer this spring with plus vertical movement.

What else is going on here? Julian Fernández throws gas and tosses a funky changeup that will rack up tons of whiffs if thrown with precision in two-strike counts. Jackson Rutledge is enormous and will deliver uninspiring competence in the middle innings. Dicky Lovelady is here, for some reason. (UPDATE: Dicky Lovelady is no longer here.) The Zack Littell signing pushed poor Brad Lord to mop-up duty. I don’t really understand why the whole Gus Varland thing hasn’t worked out to this point, but he’ll likely get a shot here to gain a big league foothold.