It’s officially over: Orioles eliminated from postseason contention

Join the dugout. Sign up here for Orioles updates in your inbox.

The Orioles’ season may as well have ended at the MLB trade deadline, when president of baseball operations Mike Elias shifted his focus toward the future. Or perhaps it ended when the New York Yankees swept Baltimore in August, and again when the Boston Red Sox took all four games in an early-September series at Camden Yards.

But it wasn’t until Thursday, while the Orioles watched from hotel rooms in Midtown Manhattan, that Baltimore’s season officially ended. At 4:45 p.m. on the East Coast, the Chicago White Sox beat the Royals in Kansas City.

That was it. This long slog, in which the outcome was all too predictable for all too long, ended.

There are three games to play against the Yankees in New York, although rainy weather may have something to say about those.

But the Orioles are officially out of it and the introspection that has gone on for months will be the focus. Baltimore entered the season with postseason aspirations. The Orioles, under first-year manager Craig Albernaz, fell well short of the playoffs, even though the miserable American League left the door open for a sub-.500 team.

The Orioles entered Thursday needing a miracle — they needed so many things to go right, including their first sweep of the Yankees in the Bronx since 1986. The White Sox put Baltimore out of its misery, however, by taking care of the Royals on Thursday afternoon.

Even on Wednesday, as the Orioles maintained their slimmer-than-slim hopes of October baseball, players understood reality enough to acknowledge this had all gone wrong.

“I wish that we could just wholeheartedly say, ‘Yeah, we have postseason baseball. We’ve got October baseball coming back to Camden Yards,’” said Pete Alonso, who became Baltimore’s most expensive free-agent signing when he joined the club before the season. “That’s the goal of the 162, and once you get into the playoffs, you can start thinking about winning the thing, but you’ve got to get in the dance first. It’s frustrating, you know, because I want that in the worst way for this team and this city. And that’s the standard. That’s the standard, and we didn’t meet that as a club.”

There are many reasons.

Last week, when Elias met members of the local media, he outlined a few. Injuries are a part of it, but the Orioles are far from alone there. A troubling lack of fundamentals at critical times was another. Collapses of epic proportions struck in some games, and in others a severe lack of plate discipline led to strikeout after strikeout.

“We’ve had players that haven’t put up the statistics that we thought, that everybody thought,” Elias added.

He was talking about shortstop Gunnar Henderson, for one. Henderson will finish the year with the second-most wins above replacement on the team, behind Alonso, but this season fell short of his lofty potential.

Henderson finished with an .893 on-base-plus-slugging percentage in his All-Star 2024 campaign. He’s down to a career-low .714 this year.

But Henderson isn’t alone. While Coby Mayo blossomed from an underperforming prospect into a second-half force, outfielder Colton Cowser struggled to build momentum. He is hitting .223 with a .678 OPS.

Jackson Holliday, another young member of what the Orioles hope is a core on which to build, is facing surgery next week on his left wrist. The former first overall draft pick ended his season hitting .229 with a .640 OPS. And catcher Samuel Basallo — the backstop of the future with Adley Rutschman now a member of the Boston Red Sox — hit .222 with a .696 OPS.

“There’s a lot of things, and attention is going to be required in a lot of areas to do better,” Elias said.

The Orioles burst out of a rebuild by winning 101 games in 2023 and 91 in 2024, but they failed to win a postseason game either October. Baltimore fell out of postseason contention early last year, and although the Orioles stayed relevant for longer this year, the outcome is the same. Baltimore hasn’t won a playoff game since 2014.

Elias said the Orioles are committed to adding outside voices to the front office, and a source with direct knowledge of the search said Baltimore would like to add a general manager under Elias who has a player development background. That skill set could complement Elias’ scouting history.

The first of those outside voices arrived in the form of a manager, and Albernaz has been outspoken regarding the way the Orioles have approached the “little things” in baseball. Early in the year, he said “defense hasn’t really been in the forefront here for a long time, and that’s something we’re instilling.”

That was also a topic of conversation throughout spring training. But in late September, as defensive gaffes and baserunning miscues became the norm, Albernaz was asked whether he’s surprised how the conversation hasn’t led to improvement.

“Development’s messy, but also, it’s not just the fundamentals on defense,” Albernaz said. “For me, it’s the fundamentals and focus in every area. Like, nothing can be overlooked. Nothing is too small. ... We have to be able to address those issues, and when it’s not an issue, double down and triple down on what we’re doing well.

“That’s something where we have been doing that. Our coaching staff and players, we’ve been having conversations about it. But now we need to get over the conversations and get the actual on-job application.”

That on-job application will have to arrive in 2027, it turns out, because there is no more time this season for changes to matter. On a late-September off day, the Orioles’ season ended without them on the field.

That’s the reality for a team that has underperformed. The fate was no longer in Baltimore’s hands. What has been expected for too long had finally arrived on a sunny day in Kansas City, as Baltimore watched on TV.