As the Washington Nationals take on the Orioles, I wanted to get some inside information about Baltimore’s slow start
The Washington Nationals and Baltimore Orioles have both gotten off to slow starts. Washington is 9-13, while the O’s are 9-12. The slow start isn’t totally unsurprising for a young Nationals team struggling to come out of a rebuild. However, the Orioles are a team that has World Series aspirations, so panic is in the air in Baltimore.
I wanted to understand why things have gone wrong in Baltimore. For that, I talked to Mark Brown, the managing editor of the Orioles SB Nation page, Camden Chat. Here is what he had to say.
Q: What is going on with the Orioles and why are they struggling?
A: The problems with the Orioles are kind of a (gestures at everything) matter, but for my money it all begins with the fact that the starting rotation is a disaster area. There’s a whole rotation worth of guys who are on the injured list and the ones who are active and pitching are generally failing to go five innings while getting absolutely torched.
Placed in frequent deficits, the offense is not proving capable of overcoming the holes that the starters keep putting them in. One other aspect flowing from this is that the bullpen has barely been tested in high-leverage situations at all, with closer Félix Bautista having only two saves, so it’s 21 games into the season and we don’t really know if any of these guys can be relied upon to get the job done.
Q: What do you think of GM Mike Elias’ offseason? From afar it seems like he is struggling to go from a rebuilding GM to a contending GM.
A: What you said about Elias not adjusting to being a contending GM is a common feeling. I don’t think he’s demonstrated yet that he can consistently act to improve upon an already-good Orioles team. The best thing he’s done in that regard was last year’s trade for Corbin Burnes, which, while good, only benefited the team for one season. As for this past offseason, Elias took a cautious approach that saw him spend a lot of money on the 2025 payroll while committing almost no money to 2026 or beyond.
The one-year contracts included $15 million to 41-year-old pitcher Charlie Morton, who has an ERA over 10 (sorry, you won’t be seeing him in this series), $8.5 million for backup catcher Gary Sánchez, who’s worthless so far, and $10 million for reliever Andrew Kittredge, who was hurt after one spring training outing and then needed knee surgery.
The ostensible benefit of these moves is that it was supposed to raise the floor of the Orioles performance, but it hasn’t worked out that way and I think Elias deserves blame for aiming low and thinking he was playing it safe. For the time being, this plan is looking like it could end up as a failure.
Q: Is manager Brandon Hyde on the hot seat, there have been some rumblings about that?
A: I think that Elias has shown a lot of loyalty in keeping Brandon Hyde, his rebuilding manager, into when the team is good again. It would take something drastic to lead Elias to go for a midseason firing of Hyde and I don’t think that we’ve seen anything remotely like that yet.
As far as the idea that Hyde is on the hot seat, my opinion is this is just fans or writers projecting their own feelings onto the situation rather than something that has any real meat to it. Elias keeps his business away from the media to an almost fanatical degree. If he WAS thinking about moving on from Hyde, he’s probably only told at most three people and they’re not talking to anyone else, let alone reporters.
Q: Who are some O’s players to watch for Nationals fans?
A: The best Orioles player so far has been Cedric Mullins, who is OPSing over 1.000. If something good happens to the Orioles in this series, he’s probably going to be at the center of it.
A couple of interesting ongoing storylines involve struggling hitters. Infielder Jordan Westburg just recently snapped out of an 0-30 hitless streak with three hits in his last two games. Is his slump busted or will he keep struggling? Also down in the dumps is catcher Adley Rutschman, who’s been pretty bad at the plate since around the All-Star Break last season and whose 2025 results have not yet done enough to dispel that concern.
Q: How is the Jackson Holliday experience going in 2025?
A: From Holliday, this is basically the kind of performance that I was hoping he’d be able to do early on after he was called up in April of last year. He’s currently batting .220/.270/.373, which is not good exactly but is good enough that I can tell myself that he’s showing some quality and that with time he’ll be able to make adjustments and do as well as the other hyped young Jacksons from last year (Chourio of the Brewers and Merrill of the Padres) have been able to do in their big league careers so far. Those other guys also had struggled in their first couple of months before going on to great years.
Those are Mark Brown’s thoughts on the O’s. They seem to be kind of in a weird spot. After bursting on to the scene a couple years ago, they have not taken that next step. Rather, they have stagnated a bit. However, they are still a dangerous team, especially offensively. Their matchup with the Nats this week will be fascinating.