The Orioles were officially eliminated last night. The White Sox beat the Royals 9-1, just as they were supposed to, and clinched a Wild Card spot. Munetaka Murakami drank champagne and told us, lo and behold, he’s Japanese. And the Orioles, meanwhile, watched, helpless to their fate. At 78-81, the best they can do now on the season is finish .500.
Next year needs to be different, but the people are mostly going to be the same people. We’re not getting a new manager or a new GM: Craig Albernaz is
back for a second season, and Mike Elias is staying put. Don’t hold your breath for another splashy winter, either. The club could and should, as our own Tyler commented, sign a front-line starter. But as for the lineup, they’ve already committed five years and $155 million to Pete Alonso, who, to be fair, has more than held up his end with 41 homers, an .871 OPS, and a newly-minted Most Valuable Oriole award. But it’s hard to picture ownership doing that twice, especially after trading Adley Rutschman at the deadline. So the reinforcements have to come from inside the house.
And we’d better hope that they do, if we fans are to have a prayer of watchable baseball next year. This season, despite working with an all-new hitting staff, the Orioles’ offense was great undiversified: a whole lot of swinging and not much else. As we enter the final weekend of the ’26 season, the offensive stats are gloomy. The Birds are hitting .233 as a team. Even accounting for the league-wide offensive downturn, that’s 28th of 30 teams in baseball, and only the Mariners are worse in the American League. Baltimore’s .707 OPS ranks 23rd in the majors and 11th of 15 in the AL. The home runs, to be fair, didn’t go missing: 194 of them, counting for 10th in MLB and fourth in the AL. But 41 of those belong to Pete Alonso. Take him out and the rest of the roster hit 153, which is about where the Blue Jays and Guardians finished, at the bottom. A lineup that can’t hit for average and gets on base at a .313 clip needs every one of those homers to come with runners on, and many didn’t.
If outside reinforcements aren’t forthcoming, this puts a lot of weight on the existing lineup. I want to highlight just a few key bats. Only one had a year to feel good about, and he’s the one we expected the least from.
Coby Mayo
Mayo came into the season a young hitter who hadn’t made it yet. Impressively, considering his peers who were higher-rank and round He’s leaving it as the only one who clearly did: .225/.293/.463 with 24 homers in 130 games, good for a 112 OPS+. The power is real. The on-base percentage is a problem, since under .300 is thin even for a slugger. If he gets that closer to .320 and keeps the pop, he’s a 30-homer bat in the middle of the order. He doesn’t need a bounceback; he just needs a repeat performance.
Tyler O’Neill
Gah,how dreary. Back in December 2024 outfielder Tyler O’Neill signed a three-year, $49.5 million deal that’s looking worse and worse, and he’s got one more year left on the deal. So far, the Orioles have gotten 139 games of .206-ish baseball for their troubles. O’Neill hit .199 with nine homers in 54 games in 2025, and .212/.300/.377 with 10 homers in 85 games this year (a 92 OPS+). His 2026 started with a concussion stint after he fainted from dehydration in April, and it ended on the IL with shoulder inflammation. The talent is there, but now he’s had 19 trips to the injured list across his career.
Colton Cowser
Cowser came into spring with a real shot at the everyday center field job. Then he hit .167/.255/.188 over his first 23 games, struck out more than 30 percent of the time, and spent the rest of the year platooning in center with Leody Taveras. To his credit, he added a leg kick, worked his way back, and finished at .223/.313/.365 with 13 homers (93 OPS+). Thanks to his defense, that was still worth 2.4 bWAR. Cowser has the lowest bar of anyone here. With his glove, a league-average bat makes him a solid regular. But the high-contact guy of his days back at Sam Houston State has gone MIA for now.
Jordan Westburg
Westburg didn’t play at all in 2026. He had an oblique issue in the spring, then elbow pain that a PRP injection didn’t fix, and he had Tommy John surgery in May. Elias says a return “as a full player in the early part of 2027 is very much in play.” The worry is what the talented Westburg’s floor really is. The third baseman broke his hand in 2024, a string of injuries held him to 85 games in 2025, and now he’s missed a full season. Healthy, he’s a 2024 All-Star who can play third or second. Whether he’ll be healthy is the real question.
Jackson Holliday
Holliday’s season went sideways before it started. He had hamate surgery in February, didn’t debut until May 19, and missed the final week with inflammation in his other wrist before undergoing surgery this week. In between, he hit .229/.300/.340 with seven homers, an 83 OPS+, in 98 games. Hamate injuries are notorious for sapping power even after the bone heals, so it’s fair to call this a lost year. Still, that’s three big-league seasons without a league-average bat, and his name came up in trade talks this summer. He turns 23 in December. That’s young, but the grace period won’t last forever.
Gunnar Henderson
Here’s the guy I was really thinking about when I wrote this. In 2026, Henderson hit .225/.310/.405, a 102 OPS+. That’s a precipitous drop from 2025 (.787 OPS) and tumble off a cliff from 2024, when he hit 37 homers, posted a 155 OPS+, and got into the MVP conversation. This year, Gunnar still put up 3.4 bWAR, because he played 157 games at shortstop and the glove was good. But the Orioles need more. They need Gunnar to be the best player on the team, especially now with Adley gone. There will be a lot of soul-searching about what happened to Gunnar Henderson’s lost offensive season this year, and what can be done for 2027. If the Orioles do get the 2024 Henderson back, the whole lineup looks a whole lot scarier. If they don’t, nothing else on this list can make up for it.
So, reasons for optimism?
The best-case scenario is that everyone here but Mayo has already been better than he was in 2026, and Mayo’s best is happening right now. Westburg’s absence and Holliday’s wrists are about injuries, not skill, and that kind of bad luck doesn’t usually hit twice in a row. The bad case is that every fan says “he’s been better before” about every slumping player, and the Orioles have now spent two years waiting for the young core to take the next step together. I’d bet on the core, but I don’t know if I’d bet much.
