The 2025 Season Is O’s-ver

At the end of April, I wrote about whether the Baltimore Orioles could salvage the 2025 season after a dreadful start. Their record stood at 11-17, a decent-sized hole to be sure, but it wasn’t deep enough to be considered a grave. Baltimore still had a chance to turn things around and make a playoff run, so long as the team started winning quickly. Now, nearly two months later, the O’s are 10 wins under .500, and considering we’re one week away from July, the mathematical task to get back into the race is daunting.

The Orioles have actually played better baseball lately, which highlights the fundamental problem with getting to play meaningful games in October. I’d call May 24 their nadir, when the first loss of a doubleheader dropped them to a 16-34 record, just barely ahead of the White Sox, and a 110-loss pace. Charm City has seen some abysmal teams, but only two years of Baltimore baseball featured at least 110 losses; those were 2018 and 2021, during the franchise’s notoriously painful rebuild. Even the 1988 Orioles, who infamously started the season by dropping 21 straight games, recovered enough to manage 54 wins! Beginning with the second game of that May 24 doubleheader, Baltimore has put up a solid 18-10 record. While that sounds promising, it’s actually kind of bad news when we’re talking playoffs. Those 28 games represent just under a fifth of an entire season, and playing really well over this stretch was only enough to increase the team’s playoff probability from 1.5% to 4.4% using the FanGraphs Depth Charts odds, and from 2.6% to 5.0% in the ZiPS projected standings.

A lot of the talk about the Orioles was that if they could just get adequate pitching, they could turn the season around. Well, they certainly did get that over this time period, with the most WAR of any pitching staff in baseball!

In other words, a key condition to getting back into the race has been fulfilled for the last month and… it still just barely moved the needle.

Another positive of the last month or so was Adley Rutschman, who had finally caught fire after a brutal start to the season. The All-Star catcher had an 84 wRC+ through May 20, as Davy Andrews noted earlier today, but has a mark of 129 since then. Unfortunately, Rutschman was placed on the IL over the weekend with a left oblique strain and is expected to be out through the All-Star break.

For all these reasons, even though Baltimore’s chances of reaching the playoffs aren’t exactly zero, the odds are long enough that it’s hard to make the case for staying the course or trying to improve for this season. The 2024 Tigers, of course, made an improbable postseason run and then took out the Astros in the Wild Card Series, but it would be irresponsible to use that Detroit team as evidence to inspire a similar turnaround. At this time last year, the Tigers were only five games below .500, and at their worst, they were nine games under — only half as bad as the Orioles were at their lowest point this season. And even then, the Tigers didn’t act like they had a real shot at the playoffs. Before the deadline, they traded Jack Flaherty, Carson Kelly, Andrew Chafin, and Mark Canha to contending clubs for prospects.

If this were fundamentally the end of the line for this O’s core, I could see the argument for rolling the dice and trying to make one final push for the playoffs, even if banking on that outcome would be a wild gamble. But most of Baltimore’s impactful offensive players are set to return next season, so there isn’t any cause for desperation. Moreover, it doesn’t look like next year’s team will have remotely enough pitching to support its lineup, either. Here are the updated 2026 ZiPS projections for the plausible in-house rotation candidates:

Nobody here currently projects to reach 2.0 WAR in 2026, and neither of the Orioles’ top two pitchers — Kyle Bradish and Grayson Rodriguez — has thrown a pitch in 2025 due to injury. Bradish was excellent in 2023 and still has upside, but 2026 will be his first full season back from Tommy John surgery. Rodriguez, whom I’m as high on as anyone, has seen his season derailed by elbow inflammation and now lat issues. A team with playoff aspirations can hope for both to return in top form, but it would be reckless to count on it.

The organization is also devoid of pitching talent in the upper minors, so reinforcements aren’t on the way from within, and as this past offseason made clear, there’s no guarantee that Baltimore will improve its pitching through free agency. Instead, trading players who are eligible to hit free agency at the end of this season would give this team an opportunity to add some arms who could contribute to the 2026 or 2027 pitching staffs. Including the Orioles, there are currently eight teams with less than a 5% chance of making the playoffs, according to our Depth Charts odds; of those eight clubs, the O’s have some of the best deadline players to offer. Selling this summer could set them up well for the short-term future.

Below are the rest-of-season projections for all the players on those eight teams who are eligible to hit free agency after 2025 or 2026.

Not every player on this list will be seriously shopped. For example, I don’t expect the Angels to throw in the towel on 2025 unless July is a disaster; if anything, I could see them soft buying, as Mike Trout isn’t getting any younger. There are also some potential trade candidates who aren’t listed above, such as Sandy Alcantara, and more teams will enter the fold in the coming weeks; after a few recent injuries to key contributors, the Diamondbacks seem more likely to sell than their playoff odds would suggest. But I think overall this is a good, quick look at the types of players who could be available at the deadline.

As you probably assumed, the Orioles have a few of the best hitters to offer before the deadline. Cedric Mullins and Ryan O’Hearn would be great additions to almost every contending club’s lineup, and many postseason hopefuls could certainly benefit from acquiring depth pieces like Ramón Laureano, Ramón Urias, Jorge Mateo, and Dylan Carlson. The O’s also have the top ZiPS-projected pitcher on these eight teams, and three of the top five pitchers overall. There’s always the option to hold onto these guys in order to sign them long-term, but if that’s the case, Baltimore should be negotiating extensions right now instead of trying to bring them back after they’ve hit free agency. If the two sides can’t work out an extension over the next month and a week before the deadline, then the O’s should trade them.

Despite some red flags in the rotation, there were plenty of reasons to like the Orioles when this season began. Things just haven’t worked out. But that doesn’t mean they are destined for another extended playoff drought. Indeed, the foundation is still there for them to win, as long as they properly build upon it. This season is over. It’s time to focus on 2026 and beyond.