What If the Reliever of the Year… Isn’t Really a Reliever?

At the end of each MLB regular season, members from each BBWAA chapter are assigned one of four awards to vote on: Manager of the Year, Rookie of the Year, Cy Young, or MVP. But in 2026, the writers in the BBWAA will do something they have never done before. They will vote for a Relief Pitcher of the Year in both leagues.

Since 1976, various versions of a reliever of the year award (Rolaids Relief Man, Delivery Man of the Year, the Mariano Rivera and Trevor Hoffman Awards) have been given out. MLB’s Mariano Rivera (AL) and Trevor Hoffman (NL) Awards are voted on by a panel of retired relief pitchers. Traditionally, they select a guy who, naturally, was lights out in the late innings of games that season.

That conventional wisdom should leave writers in both leagues with a fairly easy choice to make for the inaugural BBWAA reliever awards: Louis Varland in the AL and Mason Miller in the NL. Each of these men is near the top of the saves leaderboard and has an ERA that is microscopic.

Yet, one pitcher in the American League could challenge the standards of the past and open an even deeper conversation about the prerequisites that make someone eligible for this honor. A man who, despite having only one save and a 4.84 ERA, could force himself into consideration as the Junior Circuit’s best bullpen arm. That pitcher is Brayan Bello of the Boston Red Sox.

A Roller Coaster Season

Bello’s 2026 season has been anything but conventional. Two years removed from getting the nod to start for Boston on Opening Day and one season following a 3.35 ERA in 166.2 innings, Bello was hoping to stay a steady face in the Red Sox rotation. But what was supposed to be another step forward spiraled quickly into disaster.

Throughout March and April, Bello made six starts and posted a 9.12 ERA. He wasn’t getting whiffs, he wasn’t throwing strikes, and he wasn’t inducing soft contact. He was one of the worst pitchers in baseball by all accounts.

Newly promoted manager Chad Tracy came up with an outside-the-box solution to try to get the righty back on track: Come out of the bullpen and follow an opener.

On May 5 against Detroit, he did exactly that, and it worked. Bello pitched seven strong innings, allowed one run on four hits, and struck out seven. One week later, he logged 6.1 innings against the Phillies, once again only allowing one run.

It seemed as though Bello was back on track, and he was put back into a traditional starter role to face the Braves in Atlanta. It did not go well. He allowed three runs in the first inning, two in the second, and finished his night with seven runs allowed over five innings.

After that, Bello would make two more bulk reliever outings, allowing zero earned runs in 12 combined innings. He was given one more shot as a starter.

Facing the division rival Orioles at Fenway Park, Bello surrendered six runs in the first inning, immediately putting the game out of reach. He was later sent down to Triple-A with a 6.34 ERA throughout the season.

More than a month later, Bello was back with the Red Sox, who had suddenly been surging up the American League standings after looking dead in the water. Bello has since made six more relief appearances, allowing only two earned runs in 22.2 innings.

Throughout the season, Bello has somehow mastered the art of bulk relief. He holds a 0.75 ERA in 48 innings out of the bullpen. It’s the lowest ERA among the 174 relievers with at least 35 IP this season. That includes Varland, Miller and all others. This is not the typical route you see a reliever take to get to these numbers out of the bullpen. But could it be enough at season’s end to earn him some hardware?

Award-Worthy?

If a pitcher holds the lowest ERA in his respective league in a relief role, how much weight should that alone hold in crowning him the reliever of the year? It turns out, not a lot.

Since 2015, only seven of the 22 relievers selected for the Mariano Rivera or Trevor Hoffman Award led their league in ERA, with the panel prioritizing saves instead. But this won’t be the same group of voters, and we don’t have a precedent for how the BBWAA will evaluate this. We also don’t have a recent precedent for the kind of season Bello is having.

Since 1976, there have been 14 seasons (excluding the COVID-19 shortened 2020 season) in which a qualifying relief pitcher posted an ERA below 1.00. All but one of those seasons came with at least 32 relief outings. Bello has just 10. At 0.75, his ERA also ranks sixth lowest on that list of 14. Virtually no one has ever had this level of success in this exact role.

For Bello to have a shot competing with guys closing games out, he would need to log another 15-20 innings at the same pace. In any event, asking someone to allow only one or two runs over any 20-inning stretch is a lot to ask. But Bello has already done it twice this season.

If he can continue on that trajectory until the end of the season, there could be a much more nuanced discussion to have about how to weigh the achievements of a relief pitcher throughout the course of a season, and there’s a new award to help identify exactly how something like this is valued in the modern day.