They are resetting expectations lower by the day.
The 2025 Orioles are moving rapidly towards the point where it stops being painful to watch them because they have made us numb to the failure. It wasn’t supposed to be like this, but it is. They cannot pitch. They are not hitting. It has reached the point where, like last night’s game, you can think to yourself, “Well, at least they managed to tie the game up after falling behind” even though they went and blew it again later on.
A week ago, in a burst of optimism that the Orioles might be able to do something to pull themselves out of the muck, I asked folks how many games the team would win in the month of May. A plurality 39% of you believed that the O’s would at least slow down the slide by winning 12-14 games for May.
It was a reasonable thing to believe at the time. The Orioles have not won a game since then. They’ve fired the manager. They’ve chucked one of Mike Elias’s offseason mistakes. These things have not fixed anything. A small handful of Orioles are playing well. The rest are not and it’s why they are where they are, diving rapidly towards the White Sox and Pirates near the bottom of MLB’s standings. The Rockies, still with just eight wins, stand alone down there, for now.
This week, I’d like you to think about where it goes from here the whole rest of the season. The Orioles are currently on pace to go 53-109. That would fit them in right between the 2021 Orioles (52 wins) and the 2019 O’s (54 wins). Even having watched these jokers, it’s a shock to think that’s how bad they’ve been, to be compared to those hopeless teams. But that’s what they’ve done.
It’s a mark of how bad things have gotten that when I was setting up the above poll, the “best” answer I included is winning at least 74 games. Even that would be a horrible season relative to our preseason hopes. The Orioles would have to go 59-57 the rest of the way just to reach that number. That shouldn’t be such a heavy lift, and yet, here the O’s are.
Worth keeping in mind that there will be things changing with the roster as the season moves along. Colton Cowser and Jordan Westburg are the two injured guys whose return should seem to be coming up next, though the timetable for Westburg does remain murky. Grayson Rodriguez presumably will throw a pitch eventually. Farther out, we can hope for something like 6-8 starts from Kyle Bradish before season’s end.
Tyler O’Neill might spend a few days off the IL at some point, and might use those days to do something other than demonstrate that Mike Elias chose stupendously poorly in having O’Neill be the first guy to hand a multi-year free agent contract.
There will also be subtractions. It now appears a near-certainty that players who are set to be free agents after this season will be traded away before July’s deadline. Zach Eflin, Cedric Mullins, and Ryan O’Hearn seem like the best candidates for that now. Players who stink could also be removed in one way or another. Gibson won’t be the last DFA.