Examining the bullpen’s highs, lows

| The core of the Orioles lineup isn’t soon going to change. Neither, with a rotation full of pitchers with ERAs over 5.00 at Triple-A Norfolk, will the starting rotation.

Even the bullpen, in which the Orioles have made considerable financial investment and is the one thing they’ve been able to count on in the past, has let them down.

Through 65 games, here’s the good and the bad of the Orioles bullpen. Good: After early overuse, Brad Brach and Mychal Givens are back in form

As the Orioles were trying to first cope with life without closer Zach Britton, they simply relied on Brach and Givens too much. By mid-May, it showed. But each has rested a good bit recently and received the unwelcome respite that comes for high-leverage relievers in losing spells.

Brach held opponents to a .165 batting average with 29 strikeouts and nine walks in his first 281⁄3 innings for a 2.86 ERA. Givens had opponents batting .228 with 32 strikeouts in his first 322⁄3 innings with a 2.76 ERA. It’s a shame manager Buck Showalter has to hold them out for potential winning situations, because the Orioles bullpen was at its best when he could deploy them in those hairy middle-inning situations and have a real shot to get out of a jam. Bad: Injuries to Britton and Darren O’Day are tough to overcome

Instead of four eminently reliable relievers to deploy on a near-daily basis, the Orioles have two. Even if Brach and Givens are filling in well in the back of the bullpen, there’s still the problem of back-filling for them.

Because the team has needed to cover so many short starts and is using pretty much everyone for as many innings as they can, no one has been able to emerge in the way Brach or Givens has in the past few years. Good: The Orioles might have something in Miguel Castro

Perhaps they might find out eventually why two teams saw a live arm that throws up to 98 mph and decided they were done with him, but until then, the Orioles should keep Castro around and see what they’ve got.

In his first four appearances with the Orioles, he allowed a run on three hits with four walks and three strikeouts in 61⁄3 innings. Absent a better option, Castro seems to have done enough to warrant sticking around. Bad: Ubaldo Jiménez complicated things

It’s hard to have any amount of projects in your bullpen to learn on the job when one of the seven people in the bullpen is Jiménez. A lifelong starter who essentially was still on a starting pitching schedule while working out of the bullpen, he really made things difficult on days he wasn’t able to pitch before being moved back to the rotation.

It’s unclear what the best solution is for him at the moment. But on those days when one or two of his other relievers weren’t able to pitch and Showalter knew he couldn’t use Jiménez, that made for a tough game to manage. Good: Richard Bleier seems to be sticking

Executive vice president Dan Duquette made great efforts to bolster the left-handed pitching depth this offseason, bringing in Bleier, Vidal Nuño and Andrew Faulkner in the spring to supplement the crew already in place.

Bleier seems to be fitting in better filling the old T.J. McFarland role of left-handed long-man than McFarland did. Bleier posted a 1.83 ERA in his first 191⁄3 innings, the fourth most of any reliever out of the Orioles bullpen this year. Bad: Donnie Hart hasn’t replicated last year’s success

Bleier was never supposed to be the bullpen’s only left-hander, though. Hart, who stormed onto the scene in 2016 as a left-handed specialist and allowed one run in 22 games, was expected to help.

Things haven’t progressed as well for Hart this year, who wasn’t getting left-handers out when he was sent down with a 4.32 ERA and a 1.62 WHIP on the year. He’ll be back, perhaps soon given the upcoming visit of the lefty-heavy Cleveland Indians. But he was considered a lock for a bullpen role entering the season and has to pitch himself back into that mix.