Two Steps to Get Something From a Lost Season in Birdland

I don’t need to tell you how bad of a situation the Orioles are in. After a putrid 15-27 start with a predictably horrific starting rotation and surprisingly poor offense, the Orioles would need something of a historic turnaround to have any shot at getting back to the playoffs.

Realistically, they’d need a miracle to even get back to .500. I’m not sure the Orioles roster is constructed to even just play .500 baseball going forward unless a young player like Jackson Holliday takes some sort of quantum leap towards stardom.

The pitching is just too terrible.

I guarantee you that Mike, Sig and company are already crunching the numbers, trying to figure out how to leverage this “surprise” flop of a season into a bounce back 2026.

If the Orioles limp into June continuing to play terribly, these would be my top considerations:

Reload (barf) the SP Depth

I’d be remiss not to mention, if the Orioles had just signed Nick Pivetta (3.05 ERA) and Nathan Eovaldi (1.78 ERA)– neither of whom are even premium aces you had to overpay for– over Charlie Morton and Kyle Gibson, I might be writing an exciting article about how the Orioles could fortify their roster for a playoff run.

It needs to be said: under no circumstances can the Orioles make that mistake next season. They need to put the supposed money being fronted by David Rubenstein to make sure the rotation isn’t relying on Kyle Bradish to immediately return to ace-dom and instead runs at least 10 deep with big league quality pitchers. Cade Povich and Chace McDermott should be AAA depth. Re-sign Zach Eflin. Maybe Tomoyuki Sugano too, if cheap.

One of the few bright spots in 2025 for the Orioles organization has been the steady rise of a modest, but intriguing, wave of starting pitching prospects into the upper levels of the minor league system.

In no particular order:

Braxton Bragg (A+/AA; 0.80 ERA, 12.6 K/9, 2.7 BB/9, 1 HR allowed, 5.6 H/9)

Nestor German (A+, just promoted to AA; 3.60 ERA, 13.3 K/9, 3.6 BB/9, 2 HR allowed, 8.3 H/9)

Blake Money (A+; 2.18 ERA, 11.2 K/9, 2.5 BB/9, 4 HR allowed, 7.1 H/9)

Trey Gibson (bad surface numbers but everything under the hood looks good)

These guys are all getting a ton of whiffs and are intriguing me with their stuff.

I would like to see these four all in the Chesapeake Baysox rotation ASAP. This positions each to serve as much-need actually talented depth to a 2026 MLB rotation fortified by real FA spending. Also, other teams promote SPs straight from AA to MLB, and it would be nice to see the Orioles get a better grasp on what players this would be tenable for as well (cough Braxton Bragg cough).

Trading guys like Cedric Mullins and Ryan O’Hearn at the deadline could help replenish the type of players we traded away last year from our SP depth (Jackson Baumeister, Moises Chace, etc). This should introduce some additional interesting arms into the top of the system to fill out the depth better for 2026. Maybe even Ryan Mountcastle fetches something (though probably not, he should have been traded over the offseason).

This also leads into my next point…

The Orioles Are Unfathomably Bad

Get the Young Hitters Adjusted ASAP

If it’s going to take young Orioles hitters a minimum of 300 plate appearances to get adjusted to big league pitching (the fact that this is always the case is a different issue altogether, but I digress…), then the Orioles need to let Coby Mayo and Samuel Basallo get that out of their system THIS YEAR.

Listen very closely, Warehouse: THEY NEED MLB AT-BATS AGAINST SAME-HAND PITCHING.

Other than rest days, the Orioles lineup should look like this, day in and day out.

Jackson Holliday (2B)

Jordan Westburg (3B)

Gunnar Henderson (SS)

Tyler O’Neill (LF)

Adley Rutschman (C/DH)

Colton Cowser (CF)

Coby Mayo (1B/DH)

Samuel Basallo (C/1B/DH)

Heston Kjerstad/Dylan Beavers (RF)

Someone slip the manager a sharpie for filling out the lineup card the first game after the trade deadline. Just leave it hanging there for the rest of the year.

Most of us knew, deep down, that the SP wasn’t going to cut it. The offense has been the real disappointment, going on a complete calendar year now.

This offense needs to find its soul and sync up as the fearsome big-league rainmaker it has the potential to be.

Finally

If this is a lost season, two of the few useful scraps the Orioles can salvage from it are restocking the pitching, and getting the young hitters acclimated.

None of us want to be here. Yet here we are.