Jon Meoli: The Orioles have built bullpens this way before. This time, it’s more of a risk.

Much of the Orioles’ team building over the last few months has been about limiting uncertainty and trying to populate the roster with as many known commodities as possible.

Their projected lineup, featuring Pete Alonso and Taylor Ward, speaks to that. So does a rotation that features Shane Baz and Chris Bassitt and is done waiting around for Grayson Rodriguez to be healthy enough to help.

Free agent closer Ryan Helsley adds that at the back of the bullpen in place of Félix Bautista, but that group is far less stable than any other part of the roster.

In a winter in which they’ve done so much differently than in the past, the way this bullpen will be built feels true to how the Orioles have operated. They’re betting on their ability to help pitchers get better to derive as much value as possible from any reliever they get their hands on.

I’m not saying this pejoratively, nor is it a compliment. It just feels very Orioles-y, to me, and that stands out after a few months when hardly anything else has felt that way.

The spring has featured twists on the path to selecting the season-opening relief corps, with Andrew Kittredge’s shoulder soreness removing the most experienced pitcher from the mix to start the season but Tyler Wells’ switch out of the rotation adding a highly capable arm to the high-leverage group.

Beyond him, you’re either hoping for a return to form or that the success found during the lost 2025 season continues. Keegan Akin fits into the former category, having pitched to a 3.41 ERA in 2025, but with far worse underlying and expected stats. So does Yennier Cano, a 2023 All-Star whose results have deteriorated since.

Those two might be the most tenured arms in the bullpen, but at least to start the season, deploying them in high-leverage situations feels risky. That would leave those options to a group that carved out roles in 2025: Grant Wolfram, Rico Garcia and Dietrich Enns. Each has intriguing stuff that has worked better here than at other stops in their careers, but none has the track record to be a foundational bullpen piece just yet.

Beyond them, you could have a long reliever like Albert Suárez, a recent waiver claim in Jackson Kowar or another 2025 debutante in Yaramil Hiraldo. Later in the season, you could see recent 40-man roster additions Anthony Nunez and Cameron Foster in the mix, to say nothing of camp participants Eric Torres, Andrew Magno, Jose Espada and Josh Walker.

And, in the second half of the summer, I imagine the Orioles will be wondering if a temporary bullpen transition for Trey Gibson, Levi Wells, Nestor German or Luis De León may be in order to add upside to the major league relief corps.

That’s a far cry from what the Orioles did last year in the bullpen, with Bautista back to pitch the ninth inning, experienced setup men in Kittredge, Seranthony Domínguez and Gregory Soto, plus Akin and Cano entrenched. This year’s group is shorter on pedigree, but that doesn’t mean it will be worse.

The last time the Orioles rolled the dice on an unproven bullpen was 2022, and that laid the foundation for their turnaround that season. Tanner Scott and Cole Sulser were considered core parts of the bullpen entering that season, but they were dealt just before opening day to Miami.

In their place, inconsistent starter Jorge López became the closer — and an All-Star one at that — while Akin, too, found a home in the bullpen after the rotation didn’t pan out for him. They gave a chance to Bautista, who had stayed under the radar in the minors despite his massive frame and even bigger fastball, and watched him blossom into a dominant reliever. Bryan Baker and Cionel Pérez were waiver claims they kept for the whole winter and were rewarded for with meaningful contributions.

It all worked out well, and through the years the Orioles’ ability to manufacture valuable relievers has been one of the team’s strengths. They added Danny Coulombe after he wasn’t going to make the Twins for the 2023 season, the same year Cano came out of nowhere to become an All-Star. Later that summer, Jacob Webb arrived as a waiver claim from the Angels and almost immediately took on a leverage role.

Their success in those two years at turning cheap, available relievers into contributors effectively limited their ability to do it in the proceeding years. The team was better, had fewer bullpen needs, and added veteran relievers at the 2024 trade deadline.

Now the opportunity to fashion a competent and competitive bullpen in the same manner is available, with the expected reliability of Helsley in the ninth inning as a foundation to build around.

If little beyond Helsley stands up to the test of a long season in which the Orioles are hoping to compete at the top of the AL East, putting together a bullpen this way is going to feel irresponsible, given the level of investment elsewhere in the roster.

But, if there’s anywhere the Orioles get the benefit of the doubt, it’s in maximizing value by identifying pitchers who might help and guiding their development to make that true.

That doesn’t make it any less risky — especially when anything short of the playoffs would be incredibly disappointing. I imagine they’ll be malleable in terms of personnel and roles until things start to stick and won’t hesitate to swap in new faces to see how they do late in games.

It’s all a viable approach to long-term talent collection and diverse roster building. Given the stakes, it’s a lot to ask for it to work from the first weekend of the season. But that’s what the Orioles need.