Baltimore Orioles Boss Provides Encouraging Progress Report on Star Closer

According to Matt Weyrich of the Baltimore Sun, Hyde disclosed that Bautista threw his first live bullpen of spring training on Sunday morning.

While Bautista will be back in game action soon, Hyde is still unsure as to where he will land in terms of his maximum velocity, according to Weyrich.

According to Bautista's Baseball Savant data, he threw his sinker 693 times in 2023 at an average velocity of 99.5 miles per hour. While that was the average velocity, Bautista had no problem revving that pitch up to well over 100 throughout the year, and he topped out with a 103.3 mph sinker in a June game against the Cincinnati Reds.

Bautista's lethal combination of velocity and movement made him practically unhittable when he last pitched. He struck out nearly half of the batters he faced at a league-leading clip of 46.4%, an entire 5% higher than the next closest pitcher who tossed at least 50 innings that year, Aroldis Chapman.

The Orioles were able to effectively shorten games all of 2023, as the paired Bautista in the ninth inning with Yennier Cano in the eighth. Cano slipped from a 2.11 ERA in 2023 to a 3.15 mark last year, which dropped him from elite to merely very good.

If Bautista can return at anywhere close to the level he performed at previously, it could do a lot to lessen the load on Cano's shoulders, and he too could bounce back to the elite level that gave Baltimore one of the most fearsome bullpens in the game.

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