The Same 'Ol Issues Are Plaguing The O's, And It's Not Too Early For Real Concern

It’s early.

Plenty of people who chronicle the Orioles for a living, or something close to it, will beat that drum. Rookie manager. It’s still April. Nothing to see here.

The people who get paid to make excuses for a horribly flawed fundamental baseball team will preach this like they believe it. But if they know baseball, then they know this franchise still suffers from low IQ rot, and its as deeply interwoven into their fielding and overall baseball execution as ever.

Because if you know even a little bit about baseball and you’ve watched Mike Elias rosters with any regularly since he took over the franchise, well, you’ve seen more than enough Bad News Bears crap on a nightly basis than a 100 Mr. Buttermakers.

Unfortunately, the 2026 Orioles picked right up where the June 2024-2025 Orioles left off. Series after series. Everything's not fine. It's all happening again.

Sure, plenty of time is left to buck a bunch of lingering trends, and, yeah, the rest of the Al East looks meh at best so far. But systemic flaws are systemic flaws and when it’s year after year, then there is a very good chance that the smart baseball people who saw this for a second-rate team a year ago have a really good chance of being right again when they looked at the Opening Day roster and projected 82 wins.

A lack of positional flexibility, insufficient average (let alone plus) defenders, a novice skipper coupled with a struggling front office, way too much swing and miss and a starting staff that might be pressed to cover a requisite amount of innings are already flaring up with far too much regularity. And damn right it’s a cause for concern. It's not the 9-9 record; it's how they got there.

This Team Was Begging For a Proven Skipper

When you don’t have a strong spine defensively and your GM doesn’t believe in paying for defense or putting together a player development system that can produce quality defenders then you probably need a taskmaster who has built expansion clubs from the ground up and perfected every fundamental drill known to man. Like Buck Showalter.

Elias, bloodthirsty for power and wielding more of it than ever after he promoted himself, was only going to hire a noice. Of course he went and got a guy who would be going through everything for the first time, with a lot of holdover assitants from former staffs that have proven to be horribly flawed. So we have pitchers melting down and not catching the ball when its thrown to them and balls thrown to the wrong base and ridiculous back picks that have no chance to do anything but allow the opposition to advance and score more tuns.

It’s a bleepshow on an almost daily basis. And the lack of outfield defenders is an outright blight that’s costing games every week.

There is not an everyday MLB quality centerfielder on the roster, and the need for a plus-defending veteran, proven third catcher was glaring even before Adley Rutschman went back to the IL. Just figuring out how to handle a bench and a bullpen for the first time was going to be a chore with a learning curve for Craig Albernaz. Thinking he was also going to be able to clean up a yearslong defensive slog and flawed mentality about sound fundamental baseball was always going to be poppycock. Ideal skipper for a team in this window – Adley about gone and Gunnar not far behind – with these expectations would have already done the job and won before.

Oh yeah and guys like that have strong opinions about medical teams and rehab teams and how you stretch and recover. The Orioles quietly pushed out one of the more distinguished trainers in MLB so Elias could bring in his own people a few years back. How’s that working out?

Far Too Much Swing And Miss

The Orioles better lead the league in home runs – and they might – because they are back to making ordinary pitchers look great. Their overarching pursuit of launch is getting the best of them again. They are bottom 10 in K-rate and 22nd in MLB in contact percentage and bottom eight in swinging strike percentage. On the positive side, they are working deeper counts than in years past and walking more and are a top 10 team in on-base percentage; it’s imperative those become more carrying traits.  

The weather will stay warm and Pete Alonso is going to be fine and the Taylor Ward trade will prove to be sage and Gunnar Henderson will be an MVP candidate… But if they fall into a home-run-or-bust team again, they will bust.

So Much For That Surplus Of Starters

This is going to be a rotation of innings eaters and guys fighting through stuff (Kyle Bradish) and dudes trying to reach their potential (Shane Baz). There’s one guy you can truly depend on right now and that had best change relatively soon.

Chris Bassitt, at age 37, can’t possibly be as bad as Kyle Gibson (2.0) or Charlie Morton or Tomo Sugano or Cole Irvin or Jack Flahery or name the older starting pitcher Elias has danced with … But this he’s already trying to get by on guts or guile and Elias is a sucker for getting starters a year too late.

The O’s have failed to handle any of their pitcher’s Tommy John/major surgeries/lingering injuries with aplomb (John Means, Flexi Bautista, Tyler Wells, Grayson Rodriguez) or had them come back on a normal timeline, so it should come as a surprise that Bradish is really going through it. I love his stuff and love the pitcher he was before they decided to delay what was almost surely an inevitable surgery, but that controversial decision has now complicated his 2024, 2025 and 2026 seasons. It might be a while before he’s himself.

Big Baz guy since I first saw him pitch in the Eastern League, but when he misses he misses spectacularly and that’s a huge work in progress. I will forever believe the Rays knew Zach Eflin was a ticking timebomb when they traded him here, and his season’s already over.

 So this rotation is Trevor Rogers and everything else. Gulp.

Baltimore ranks 19th in inning pitched by the starting staff. They’d best be at least league average in that regard.

Good news is this bullpen is going to be way better than I anticipated and their experiments are working almost across the board and guys like Rico Garcia and Anthony Nunez and Grant Wolfram pass the eye test and the Statcast test.

If only more of the composition of this roster did the same.

Then again, these are all just exhibition games ‘til Memorial Day, right?