The first few series of this season were supposed to be the easy ones for the Orioles. They had a better 2025 record than each of their first three opponents and they don’t play a team that was better than .500 a year ago until they meet the Guardians on April 16. Three series into this, they are not getting wins out of these easy games. Now they visit the White Sox, who were 60-102 a year ago but are fresh off a three-game sweep of the Blue Jays. They needed the sweep: They were 1-5 before that.
This Chicago team has already been blown out four times in their first nine games. They bring a 6.19 team ERA into the contest and a combined batting line of .216/.291/.356. As bad as we feel about the Orioles right now, they’re doing better than this, with a 4.71 team ERA and a .248/.327/.361 batting line. That’s not a terrible average or OBP. They just need to start hitting for power as well. If they cannot start doing this against the White Sox, there will be an even greater despair in Birdland.
Not that it’s going to be great conditions for baseball out there in Chicago. It’s looking like a forecast daytime high of 50 degrees for today’s game and possibly even below 40 degrees in the daytime tomorrow. They won’t be playing in the daytime on Monday or Tuesday, either. It’s going to be a couple of those cold, miserable April affairs. The Orioles must find a way to succeed without optimal conditions.
One guy on the White Sox I’ll be curious to see in this series is Munetaka Murakami, who came over from Japan for this season. Teams were not convinced in his ability to hit MLB arsenals, so he had to settle for a two-year, $34 million deal with Chicago instead of for more money with a team that has done better recently. He has hit four dingers in his first nine games. Only Gunnar Henderson has more than one homer among Orioles batters.
There are a lot of bad batters in this White Sox lineup, though, including former Oriole Austin Hays (.541 OPS to date). With Trevor Rogers and Kyle Bradish each set to pitch in this series, it would be nice to have them continue the White Sox on their overall poor-hitting trend.
Game 1: Monday, 7:40pm Eastern
- BAL starter: TBD as of this writing
- CWS starter: Grant Taylor (likely one-inning opener)
If the Orioles had wanted to do so, they could have finagled the roster to have Dean Kremer make the next start in Zach Eflin’s spot in the rotation. They have opted not to do so. The first backup plan was to have Cade Povich start here, except then he ended up being used for emergency long relief on Sunday. This is probably going to end up being a mostly-bullpen game, hopefully getting at least four innings out of Albert Suárez before turning to others.
For the White Sox, Taylor has already pitched in four games, the last two of which were one-inning opener uses. I don’t know enough about this roster to know who they intend to have follow Taylor. Probably it should be a pitcher against whom the Orioles ought to have some success. As we know from the last roughly 21 months of Orioles baseball, the players do not always succeed against pitchers who should be easier marks.
Game 2: Tuesday, 7:40pm Eastern
- BAL starter: Trevor Rogers
- CWS starter: Shane Smith
We can only hope that the Orioles do not need to turn to Rogers to serve as a stopper for a second consecutive start as he makes this appearance, but if he somehow does, well, that will be a big test of whether he’s able to pick up where he left off last year. So far, his ERA is looking like he’s continuing with 2025’s great success, though he’s going to need to strike out more batters to sustain something like what he did last year. This White Sox team has struck out in 29.5% of plate appearances up to this point. That’s a good sign for Rogers.
The White Sox starter, Smith, has been horribly roughed up through his first two games, allowing twelve runs (10 earned) in only 4.2 innings. The 26-year-old righty had a solid rookie season a year ago, posting a 3.81 ERA across 29 starts. He’s probably not suddenly double-digit ERA bad. But if he’s going through a rough patch to start this season, it is imperative for the Orioles to take advantage of this.
Game 3: Wednesday, 2:10pm Eastern
- BAL starter: Kyle Bradish
- CWS starter: Sean Burke
Bradish being 0-2 with a 6.23 ERA in his first two starts of the year isn’t the only reason that the Orioles record is what it is. Sure not helping the team, though, that he’s yet to even complete five innings while issuing too many walks. After his six starts coming back from Tommy John a year ago, you could have hoped that he was picking up where he left off before his surgery. Maybe he still will in the long run, but that’s going to take going in a different direction than he’s started 2026. This White Sox team ought to be a good one for him to regroup.
Burke was a Kremer-tier pitcher for the White Sox a year ago. For all of their problems, they did at least have 60% of a potentially decent starting rotation and Burke was part of that. He’s off to a nice start in 2026, with 12 strikeouts and no home runs allowed across his first 10 innings. This is another righty starting pitcher. The Orioles offense has done better against righties so far, though even that platoon split isn’t good (.694 OPS). That warrants a puke emoji.
**
The Orioles have already put themselves in a place where they can’t afford to let the losses pile up. If they aren’t able to win at least two of the three games in this series, their path to an eventual recovery will be that much tougher, and our ability to believe they might be able to accomplish even a partial recovery will be that much smaller.
Hope is not lost yet. For one thing, much of the rest of the AL East has stumbled out of the gate this season as well. The Orioles, at 3-6, aren’t even in last place in the division at this moment. The 2-7 Red Sox are worse. Only the Yankees are above-.500 in the division, sitting at 7-2.
What are you looking to see from the Orioles in this series? How many games do you think they will win? Let us know in the comments below.
