CHICAGO–What happened? For weeks the Orioles have known they wouldn’t be playing in the postseason. It became official on Tuesday night when the Seattle Mariners and Houston Astros both won their games. Those wins formally eliminated the Orioles from postseason play.
It didn’t matter that the Orioles beat the Chicago White Sox, 8-7, before 12,048 at Rate Field. The slim possibility that the team could finish with a .500 record is still on the table.
The Orioles are 71-80 and must win 10 of their final 11 games to avoid their first losing season since 2021.
In 2023 and 2024 the Orioles qualified for postseason play, winning 101 games and the American League East two years ago, and 91 games last season, though they didn’t win a single playoff game in either year.
There won’t be any playoffs for the Orioles in 2025.
“They’re not happy,” interim manager Tony Mansolino said. “You go through like the core group in there, they are miserable right now. This has been a complete failure in a lot of ways that we’re at this point, that we are being eliminated from the playoffs, and there is a lot of motivation going forward. I promise you that.”
Samuel Basallo’s third home run, a two-run shot, gave the Orioles a 4-2 lead in the fourth.
The Orioles scored two runs in the third on an RBI double by Jeremiah Jackson and an RBI single by Gunnar Henderson.
They knocked Shane Smith (6-8) out of the game in the fifth when they stretched their lead to 6-2 on Henderson’s RBI single and a triple by Dylan Beavers that scored Henderson.
Beavers hit a two-run home run, his second, in the seventh to put the Orioles ahead, 8-2.
Oriole starter Dean Kremer (10-10) gave up two runs in the first on Chase Meidroth’s single and Kyle Teel’s eighth home run. He allowed the two runs on four hits in 5 2/3 innings. Kremer missed a start because of forearm tightness.
Yaramil Hiraldo pitched a scoreless 1 1/3 innings.
Chicago (58-94) made it close in the eighth when they scored five runs. Chayce McDermott was charged with four runs, and Andrew Benintendi homered against Rico Garcia to make it 8-7.
Keegan Akin pitched a scoreless ninth for his sixth save. Meidroth singled before Akin struck out Teel and Colson Montgomery to end the game.
What does Henderson think about this season? Even Henderson has had a challenging 2025.
“Very weird, very weird season,” Henderson said. “Yeah, just the start of the year got us behind the 8-ball, we had a good little winning streak there for a little bit and just couldn’t get on another one to get us back in the hunt and, yeah, just kind of got ourselves in a deep hole we couldn’t get out of at the beginning of the year.”
The Orioles were 15-28 when Brandon Hyde was dismissed as manager. They’re 56-52 under Mansolino.
“If you look at our record after that pretty terrible start, I feel like we played pretty good ball,” Henderson said. “Yeah, it’s just a matter of I guess limiting those bad stretches and getting back to what do we do and I feel like we kind of found our identity out here and just the way we play, the way we scratch runs across and just playing good defense, I feel like that’s something that we need to appreciate and take into next year.”
How did Kremer pitch? Kremer likely has one start remaining this season, and it’s been an eventful season.
“We’ve had a lot of ups and downs this year as a collective squad,” he said. “I’ve learned a lot about myself again this year like I have every year and trying to put a positive ending to the rest of this year.”
He thinks that the team has learned a lot from a difficult season.
“There’s still a pretty young group in there, and a lot of guys are competing for jobs,” he said. “Most of them are competing for jobs next year. It’s not a veteran-heavy squad, so you’re going to see a lot of the same faces next year, and they’ve got to fight for their spot.”
What happened with McDermott? This was McDermott’s first outing since being converted to a reliever. He was nearly out of the inning when he struck out Miguel Vargas with two outs, but the ball got past Basallo, and McDermott was charged with a wild pitch as a run scored. He allowed two more hits before he was removed from the game.
“We’re up by six runs, we have a bullpen that’s taxed in a lot of ways and everybody needs to pitch right now,” Mansolino said. “So he’s very fresh and very available. Up six runs, we need him to go out there. He did get the third out. Unfortunately, it got past Sammy. We got a lot of trouble right there.
“He hung in there. I thought the stuff was good, I thought the misses were big. So the stuff was good, the misses were big, he ultimately got three outs. Unfortunately, the third out got past the catcher. Kind of a tough night for that. Just really unfortunate right there in that inning.”
What does it mean? The Orioles have 11 to play, seven against the New York Yankees, and it will be a challenge to play well in those games against a team that badly needs the wins.
What’s the stat of the day? The Orioles are 7-1 in one-run games this month.
What’s the word? “It’s a long season, for sure, and you can’t take the day before into the next day or your at-bats into the field or the previous inning into the next inning. I think a lot of growth has come from a lot of these guys in many different ways.”-Kremer on what the Orioles have learned this season.
What’s next? Tyler Wells (1-0, 2.31) will face Martín Pérez (1-5, 3.27) on Wednesday at 2:10 p.m.
Call for questions: Most weekdays, I’ll be answering at least one Orioles question. Please send yours to: Rich@BaltimoreBaseball.com