Baltimore Orioles New Reliever Was Best in MLB at This Important Metric

A lot of the attention given towards the Baltimore Orioles and their pitching staff is with a negative slant because they didn't replace Corbin Burnes with another ace-caliber arm.

The depth approach general manager Mike Elias took by signing veterans Charlie Morton and Tomoyuki Sugano, to go along with a few young pitchers who also could factor into the mix, gives this team multiple options to choose from in case of injury or poor performance.

But because they don't have a star leading the rotation, the Orioles are seen as a worse team.

That could be the case since only time will tell, but that also ignores the aspect of Baltimore's staff that should be better in 2025 compared to last season; their bullpen.

They'll have the formidable one-two punch with Yennier Cano and Felix Bautista back in action. They also held onto Seranthony Dominguez and Gregory Soto, two of last year's trade deadline acquisitions.

Perhaps the most intriguing addition, though, is Andrew Kittredge.

The right-hander is coming off a dominant 2024 campaign with the St. Louis Cardinals, putting up a 2.80 ERA and 150 ERA+ across his 74 outings, striking out 67 batters in 70.2 innings pitched.

Considering he had Tommy John surgery in 2022 and was limited to just 14 games in 2023 before returning, what he did at 34 years old with the Cardinals last season was impressive.

Especially because he led Major League Baseball in one important statistic.

Per Brendan Mortensen of MASN, Kittredge was first amongst pitchers who had 200 plate appearances against him when it came to chase rate, getting batters to swing at pitches out of the zone 38.9% of the time.

While that didn't necessarily translate to strikeouts with just under one punchout per inning, he was still in the 53rd percentile of K%, per Baseball Savant.

So why is that important for the Orioles?

Kittredge will balance out what Baltimore currently has coming out of their bullpen.

While the right-hander isn't a soft thrower by any means with his fastball sitting in the mid-90s, he's not the overpowering type of arm like Bautista, Cano, Dominguez and Soto.

Throwing Kittredge in the mix will keep batters off balance, giving them a different type of pitching style to see which could allow their flamethrowers to later come in and have even more success against a lineup.

All that is a hypothesis, though.

What is a fact is Kittredge was the best pitcher in baseball at getting batters to chase out of the zone, something that will allow him to be effective this season and boost the overall pitching staff of the Orioles.

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