It’s finally over. The chance of the Orioles reaching the postseason for the 2026 campaign is officially zero. They were done in not through any last failure of their own that occurred today, instead getting eliminated on an off day because their miracle path involved the White Sox losing their final four games against the Royals and then Rockies.
The Chicago club put that to bed on Thursday, blowing out the Royals in Kansas City to win their 82nd game. The Orioles cannot possibly win 82. That’s it.
The party ended when some guy named John Rave grounded out, second base to the pitcher covering first. The White Sox are guaranteed at least a wild card spot. They might even win the Central division. That’s to be settled over the season’s final weekend.
There is no way to view this season as anything other than a disappointment. After the team flopped to a 75-87 record last season, largely resulting from a horrible April and May that got then-manager Brandon Hyde fired, we got a lot of noise from Mike Elias on down about how it would be different this year. The players who did not live up to expectations last year would be stronger for the adversity, they were going to do everything in their power to assess what went wrong and what they can do to fix it, and other such platitudes.
The front office did try to fix one of last year’s weaknesses – the lack of home run power – by trading for Taylor Ward and eventually signing Pete Alonso to a big contract. Alonso delivered many dingers here. Ward did not. They tried to stabilize the rotation in a way that wasn’t done last year with one-year signings of Zach Eflin and Chris Bassitt. Eflin went down with a torn elbow ligament in the middle of his first start. Bassitt was not very good, got back surgery, came back, and was fine enough.
Still, we did not get a lot of evidence as the season went along that much had been done to fix some of the other issues. The core players who were supposed to be fueling the multi-year period of great Orioles baseball spent substantial parts of the season riding the struggle bus. Elias’s big trade for Shane Baz brought back a pitcher who has been exactly league average; he gave up at least one prospect who seems like a huge loss and others who may yet hurt. A bullpen that was only lightly reinforced went through difficult patches as guys who are unproven tried to go from that to “proven to be good” rather than “proven to be bad.”
All of this built up to the developments ahead of the trade deadline, when a variety of players, some we were invested in more than others, were moved at a time when it seemed clear the team was not going to be in the race. Indeed, two of the trades they made, Ward to the Mariners and Dean Kremer to the Twins, reinforced teams against whom, at that point, the Orioles were notionally competing in the wild card race. As things have turned out, the Orioles will finish ahead of those teams.
There was, of course, the ultimate indignity of a recognizable Orioles star being traded to the Red Sox. Adley Rutschman getting dealt to Boston still hurts. More than one of the players who came back in that trade went on to make a nice first impression in the organization, but still: It’s the Red Sox, and the Orioles gave up on a season where they weren’t that far out of the picture by sending a player who was the face of the rebuild off when he still had this year and next year left with team control.
Despite all of the season’s problems, and despite that trade deadline decision seeming like the front office was giving up on the season, the Orioles played their way through August to finish the month in a wild card position. Colton Cowser’s walkoff home run robbery in Colorado did it. They finally reached .500 again and with a good September, they could sneak in to the playoffs.
Instead, the Orioles lost the next six games, including four in a row at home to those same Red Sox. That made the eventual elimination start to feel inevitable; later being swept by the Brewers at home made it extra inevitable. They kept their chances alive a lot longer than I expected in April, in July, or even on Labor Day. At last, it’s over. Maybe next year.
Good things happened this year! Pete Alonso will finish with no fewer than 41 home runs and 110 RBI in the first year of his five-year contract. He should win a Gold Glove. That signing has gone better than anybody could have imagined, and after seeing it in action, all of the stuff about Alonso being a great person and a good leader does seem to actually have something to it.
Alonso’s season combined with the unexpected rotation emergence of Brandon Young is probably what kept this Orioles campaign from being a truly irredeemable slog. You can certainly find other fun stories, like Blaze Alexander blossoming into an intriguingly good player, and Christian Encarnacion-Strand coming off the reclamation project scrap heap to look like he deserves to be a part of next year’s Opening Day roster picture.
It sure was a slog at times. Inexplicably bad defense, weird lineup decisions, bizarre pinch hitting decisions, reliever choices that seemed to be based more on hope than on reality, all of these things contributed to a variety of stupid losses for the season. New manager Craig Albernaz threw players under the bus in postgame pressers on more than one occasion. For long parts of the season, the vibes around this team were not far off from the 100+ loss disasters of the early Elias years. In the end, they will lose no more than 84.
That’s not good. It’s not terrible either. Fix the defense and shore up a few spots on the roster in the offseason instead of July or August and this Orioles team could be right back in it. Maybe. Its chief architect and its disappointing dugout leader are both coming back, so it’s fair to wonder how much things will really change. Those are problems for next year. For this year, it’s over.
