Veteran Orioles Reliever is Proving That His Impressive Start to 2025 is No Fluke

The Baltimore Orioles have had a tough go of things to start off their 2025 season, currently holding a 26-38 record, which lands them at the bottom of the American League East. The positive is that things have started to turn around for them recently, and even better, they have started to clear up their injured list, with multiple key pieces now set to return to play in the coming days.

It seems as though their slow start to the season is something that may be reparable, and under the tutelage of new manager Tony Mansolino, maybe they can even begin to compete again. This success that the team has been able to find is heavily reliant on individual performances starting to rapidly improve, but one player who has been steady all year long is reliever Bryan Baker.

Baker has put everything together in 2025 when it comes to his production, and now, as the mid-season point grows ever closer, he is still hitting his stride as he did to start off the year. While he has not seen an exceptional amount of playing time yet for a reliever, he has done just about everything that could be asked of him in that span, which is all the team needs to improve.

The obvious improvements for Baker have been his ERA at 2.79, his WHIP at 0.966, his strikeouts per walk at 6.33 and his ERA+ at 138. One of the only places where he has struggled is in allowing home runs, as he has given up six in 29 innings, which, while somewhat concerning, is not a major issue when he is performing as well as he has been outside those few mistakes.

His more advanced analytics tell a similar story, with Baseball Savant marking him in the 96th percentile for strikeout rate (34.9%), 86th percentile in whiff rate (30.9%), 86th percentile in fastball velocity (96.7 MPH) and 85th percentile in walk rate (5.5%). The notable issue among his analytics is that he is giving up an exceptional amount of hard contact, with a hard-hit rate of 47.7% (9th percentile) and a 15.4% barrel rate (3rd percentile).

Giving up hard contact is a hit or miss statistic, as they could be predominantly high fly-outs, but in Baker's case, they occasionally lead to pretty substantial home runs as well. If he could get that rate down by focusing on when he should be using pitches and which ones avoid hard contact the best in long at-bats, that would likely help his case in the latter half of the year.

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