November 6, 2026
November 6, 2026
Baltimore entered the spring expecting October baseball for a third straight year. Instead, the Orioles’ 2025 season became a story of collapse, a fired manager, and a summer sell-off. The club finished 75-87, last in the American League East and 19 games behind the champion Toronto Blue Jays. Yet the wreckage also revealed pieces of the next contender, and that made the year more than a footnote.
The stakes could hardly have been higher. Baltimore had won 101 games and the division in 2023, then claimed a Wild Card berth in 2024. That October ended in a two-game sweep by Kansas City, and the window felt wide open.
The winter tested that belief. Ace Corbin Burnes left in free agency, and slugger Anthony Santander departed as well. Baseball operations chief Mike Elias answered with short-term moves rather than a blockbuster. Tyler O’Neill signed for three years and $49.5 million, the first multi-year free-agent deal of the Elias era. Veterans Charlie Morton and Tomoyuki Sugano joined the rotation on one-year contracts. Reliever Andrew Kittredge and catcher Gary Sánchez rounded out the additions.
The bet was clear. A young lineup led by Gunnar Henderson and Adley Rutschman would carry the load. Patched-together pitching only had to hold the line.
The pitching plan fell apart before Opening Day. Grayson Rodriguez complained of sluggishness after a March 7 spring start and never threw a regular-season pitch. Lat and elbow trouble eventually led to surgery to remove bone chips. Zach Eflin, another expected anchor, landed on the injured list three times and made only 14 starts.
The bleeding spread from there. Morton struggled badly in his first weeks in orange and black. A 24-2 thrashing by Cincinnati on April 20 captured how thin the staff had become. By season’s end, 29 players had spent time on the injured list.
The breaking point arrived in mid-May. Baltimore started 3-2, then lost 26 of its next 38 games. In Brandon Hyde’s final game, the Orioles struck out 15 times and stranded 15 runners in a loss to Washington. On May 17, with the club sitting at 15-28, the organization fired the manager who had won AL Manager of the Year just two seasons earlier.
Third base coach Tony Mansolino took over on an interim basis. His tenure opened with four straight losses, and the hole only deepened.
The Orioles steadied under Mansolino, but too late to matter. The club went 60-59 the rest of the way, a respectable pace that never threatened the standings. Flashes of the old offense surfaced in lopsided wins. Baltimore pounded Tampa Bay 22-8 on June 27 and shut out Colorado 18-0 on July 26.
Two arms kept the rotation upright through the chaos. Dean Kremer took the ball all year and went 11-10 with a 4.19 ERA. Sugano, a rookie at 35 after years of stardom in Japan, finished 10-10. Unheralded contributors also seized their chances. Jeremiah Jackson, called up after hitting .377 at Norfolk, batted .276 across 48 games.
The injuries never stopped coming. Rutschman strained an oblique on one side, returned, then strained the other. He finished at .220 with nine home runs in 90 games. O’Neill went on the injured list three times and hit just .199 across 54 games.
The cruelest blow fell on the closer. Félix Bautista had returned from Tommy John surgery looking dominant, with 19 strikeouts in 11 June innings. He recorded his 19th save on July 20 with a 34-pitch effort. He never pitched again that year, undergoing labrum and rotator cuff surgery in August.
The summer sell-off confirmed what the standings already said. Elias moved eight players in July, stripping the roster of veterans. Bryan Baker went to Tampa Bay, Gregory Soto to the Mets, and Seranthony Domínguez to Toronto.
The final day cut deepest. Cedric Mullins, a fixture in center field for years, was dealt to the Mets. Ryan O’Hearn and Ramón Laureano went to San Diego in a six-prospect package. Laureano had been the club’s best hitter, batting .290 with 15 home runs. Morton landed in Detroit, and Kittredge joined the Cubs. The full ledger is recorded on the club’s 2025 season page on Wikipedia.
Those trades reshaped the farm system rather than the present. The Orioles’ 2025 season was now about evaluation, not contention.
No individual story mattered more than Trevor Rogers. Acquired from Miami in July 2024, he posted a 7.11 ERA in four starts down the stretch that year. He opened 2025 at Triple-A Norfolk. He returned as a 27th man in Boston on May 24 and threw 6 1/3 scoreless innings.
He never looked back. From July 6 through August 30, he made 10 starts of six or more innings while allowing two runs or fewer. That run set a club record for such starts. Rogers finished 9-3 with a 1.81 ERA over 18 starts, worth 5.5 WAR. He was named Most Valuable Oriole, and Baltimore suddenly had a frontline starter it had nearly given up on.
The future announced itself in August. Samuel Basallo, the organization’s top prospect, made his debut on August 17. Five days later, the club signed him to an eight-year, $67 million contract before he had homered in the majors.
He hit just .165 in 31 games, but the moments outweighed the numbers. On September 5 against the Dodgers, he crushed a walk-off homer off Tanner Scott for a 2-1 win. He also threw out five of 13 base stealers, a sign of real catching promise.
The established young bats held steady without breaking out. Henderson hit .274 with 17 home runs and 30 stolen bases. Jackson Holliday, in his first full season, matched him with 17 homers and added 17 steals. Jordan Westburg also reached 17 home runs despite his own injury stints. Full season totals are available at Baseball Reference.
The closing weeks delivered the year’s most electric night. On September 6, Yoshinobu Yamamoto carried a no-hitter and a 3-0 lead into the ninth inning at Camden Yards. Two outs stood between the Dodgers and history. Holliday broke it up with a home run, and six batters later Emmanuel Rivera lined a two-run single. Baltimore stole a 4-3 win from a game it had no business winning.
The pitching staff also got healthier at last. Kyle Bradish returned from Tommy John surgery on August 26 against Boston. It was his first big league outing since June 2024. Tyler Wells followed in early September, and the club shifted to a six-man rotation. Those starts carried no standings weight, but they mattered enormously for 2026.
Mathematical elimination came on September 16. The Orioles also used 70 players, which briefly tied the major league single-season record.
The Orioles’ 2025 season ended an era of easy optimism in Baltimore. The rebuild that produced a 101-win team proved fragile once pitching depth disappeared. Mansolino was not retained. On October 27, the club hired Craig Albernaz, Cleveland’s associate manager, for his first big league managing job.
The year still left real assets behind. Rogers emerged as a genuine ace, Basallo signed on for the long haul, and Bradish and Wells were back on the mound. A haul of deadline prospects deepened the system. The 2025 club fell hard, but it handed its successor a clearer picture of who belongs in the next contender.
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