Outwardly, the Orioles put on a brave face for much of the season. They preached all the correct clichés and expressed confidence that, by the end of the year, everything would work out.
But in Denver, after watching a line drive leave a lump on right-hander Dean Kremer’s arm and Ramón Urías sprain his ankle on a base, the even-keeled façade broke momentarily as Ryan O’Hearn met with the assembled media members. He scowled, having watched two more of his teammates suffer injury
“It sucks,” O’Hearn said. “I don’t want to see Dean get smoked by a line drive or Urías hurt his [ankle] or any of that.”
By that point in the year, with the calendar turning to September during a series against the Colorado Rockies, the Orioles had already seen several key players fall to injury. Infielder Jordan Westburg fractured his hand when he was hit by a pitch in late July. In June, a cascade of elbow injuries required surgeries for four pitchers, ending three of their seasons. Ryan Mountcastle would soon hit the injured list; infielder Jorge Mateo was ruled out for the season.
It was a hellish stretch, the inverse of the nearly seamless 2023 season in which this young group broke out and won 101 games. That team avoided many injuries and had a knack for pulling out close games. They were, for the entirety of the year, a feel-good story: A mishmash of young talent and the veterans who’d endured the rebuild, all of them reveling in success, playing carefree baseball, looking at each turn as if they didn’t know this is supposed to be hard.
This year, though, they found out: It is.
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So on Aug. 31, seeing Kremer and Urías exit the same game, there was an understandable edge in the clubhouse after months of injuries and losses stacked up. And it carried over through much of September, when the season became a slog and the energy in the dugout wavered.
On Sept. 18, when the Orioles were in a stretch of nine losses in 12 games, outfielder Anthony Santander’s voice grew quiet. In the corner of the home dugout, he didn’t want to say it too loudly, but he was honest: “Even sometimes lately the dugout is kind of off,” Santander said. “But, I mean, baseball’s tough. Maybe the injuries for our team has something to do with it.”
Looking around the dugout at that point would’ve been jarring. With just two weeks remaining in the regular season, the Orioles were relying on a roster of journeymen, waiting for regulars to return from injury.
There were Eloy Jiménez and Liván Soto and Emmanuel Rivera and Austin Slater. None of them was a part of the organization in June.
“I think the mindset is constantly ‘next man up,’” catcher James McCann said last month. “Obviously, when they start to stack up the way they have this year, you’re really digging into the depths to try to have the next man stand up.”
The Orioles’ season can be defined by what-ifs, stops and starts, and a never-ending list of injury updates that is only now slowing as the postseason is set to begin. It can be split in two, between the highs of spring and early summer and the doldrums of a post-All-Star break plunge in performance.
And it can be equally disappointing and understandable — a line to straddle when contemplating the expectations the team had and the hindrances that cropped up along the way.
“If I were to tell you during spring training, ‘Hey, you’re going to deal with all these injuries, but come Sept. 18, we’re going to be here in the standings,’ I think most people would say, ‘OK, we’ve got a shot,’” McCann said recently. “So it’s all about how you spin the perspective. Yeah, obviously, we wish it would’ve gone like last year, and we were trying to win our 100th game instead of our 90th game or whatever it is, but that’s not the case. Every year is different, and we’ve got to find a way to grind through what we’re going through.”
On Tuesday, as the champagne flowed alongside tears of jubilation and relief within the visiting clubhouse at Yankee Stadium, the Orioles showed a perseverance that has allowed them to reach the postseason for a second consecutive year. Some of the players within the celebration weren’t even alive the last time Baltimore managed postseason berths in back-to-back years — 1996 and 1997.
To get there feels like the bare minimum — a sign of how far the Orioles have come since the dark days of 100-loss seasons — but given the state of the roster for much of the second half, the cigars and hugs and hydration station chugging were worth it.
All the hardship of the second half will slide away when the Orioles host their second playoff series in two years. Many of their injured players are back, and with them comes hope that was hard to feel earlier.
“I think that this is going to be a fresh start,” Kremer said among the madness of celebration. “We don’t have to grind now; we’re in. I think it’s a breath of fresh air for a lot of guys.”
The air earlier, of course, was harsher.
The grind
In hindsight, it’s clear the trade for right-hander Corbin Burnes over the winter was as much reactionary as it was to bolster Baltimore’s chances to build on a breakout season. By that point, the Orioles already knew right-hander Kyle Bradish had suffered a UCL injury in January.
They wouldn’t confirm it at the time, but when general manager Mike Elias met with reporters in Sarasota, Florida, as spring training began, he announced Bradish had suffered a non-season-ending elbow injury.
Bradish, it turns out, was the first of many. Over the next several months, the hits kept coming to Baltimore — including when Bradish returned, then exited again, this time requiring Tommy John elbow reconstruction surgery.
It was the first sign this season might not go so smoothly.
During Baltimore’s 101-win season of 2023, when it won the American League East for the first time since 2014, there was relative ease to all of this. The offense was one of the most potent in baseball, generating the most comeback victories of any team. And, before closer Félix Bautista suffered an elbow injury in August, the pitching staff was stout.
They entered 2024 knowing Bautista would miss the season and sought a short-term solution by signing right-hander Craig Kimbrel to a $13 million deal. To bolster the pitching staff, Elias made a late-January trade for Burnes, the 2021 Cy Young Award winner, who was necessary to step in for Bradish.
But those were the only major moves. Nothing else, it seemed, was necessary — not with so much of the roster returning and with a farm system stacked with highly rated prospects.
The reality has been different. The prospect depth has been cleared out in many ways due to midseason trades. Other prospects, such as Jackson Holliday and Coby Mayo, have required an acclimation period that is natural but not conducive to a pennant race. And, as injuries and slumps mounted, the roaring pace of the first half slid to a halt.
When McCann and others look back, injuries were a central piece of the slide. But O’Hearn pointed out that “you can say that about a lot of teams.”
“I think it’s a bit of an excuse, to be honest,” O’Hearn said Aug. 31. “I don’t know any team that does get through an entire season and only uses 26 guys. Think guys understand that going into spring training. There’s obviously been a lot of moving parts here, but the ultimate goal is to win and to have the Baltimore Orioles win the East, go to the playoffs and do what we’re capable of.”
But another point that can be made is the schedule. June featured one day off. That grind of a month, with 29 games, went well — Baltimore finished with 17 wins.
But in July the first signs of instability began. McCann wondered if there was a mental letdown after a grueling June.
“Going into the All-Star break, we didn’t play our greatest baseball,” he said. “Coming out of the break, it kind of continued.”
The Orioles entered the break with five losses in six games. They exited it with five losses in eight games. From then on, this has been a team playing .500 ball.
In 60 games, from July 19 to Sept. 22, the Orioles were 28-32. Their team-wide batting average plummeted to .239 — down from .253 in the first half — and their run production sagged. Part of that came as players pressed to make up for absences in the lineup.
“I got caught up doing that not too long ago,” shortstop Gunnar Henderson said. “We weren’t doing great, so put even more pressure on myself to try to do that.”
But Henderson wasn’t alone. Self-imposed pressure combined with — or led to — slumps from key players, such as catcher Adley Rutschman, who hit .201 from July 19 to Sept. 18. Only now, as the postseason arrives, has Rutschman found more success. But so frequently Rutschman’s performances have dictated how the Orioles performed, and as he stumbled in the second half of the year, so did his club.
“I can hopefully look at this and be like, ‘That sucked,’” Rutschman said in early September, “but we’re going for a playoff run, and that’s the most important thing.”
Even as players neared returns in late September, Baltimore was mired in a rut of five straight series losses. It left the Orioles holding on to a wild-card spot, with the American League East out of reach.
“Between now and the All-Star break, we’ve had struggles all across the board,” Burnes said last week. “Unfortunately, it’s caused us to be a .500 team since then. But we’ve shown that, when our offense clicks and our pitching clicks, we play good defense, we can still kick the crap out of teams. So we just gotta be more consistent from here on out and into the postseason.”
In the early stages of this slide, the trade deadline at the end of July offered a chance to rekindle Baltimore’s winning ways by improving the roster. In a way, though, by adding at the deadline, the Orioles only marginally improved the major league roster while losing key depth pieces.
Right-hander Zach Eflin has performed at a high level, and relievers Gregory Soto and Seranthony Domínguez have been welcome additions. But right-hander Trevor Rogers was demoted to Triple-A Norfolk soon after arriving, outfielder Austin Hays went to the Philadelphia Phillies and designated Eloy Jiménez was designated for assignment Tuesday. Kimbrel, whose success early in the year helped the Orioles build a strong first half, collapsed down the stretch and was released.
The loss of infielder Connor Norby and outfielder Kyle Stowers proved particularly gutting, especially when Urías and Westburg suffered injuries that forced lengthy absences.
“Whenever you lose a guy of his caliber, it’s not something you want in that part of the season,” Henderson said of Westburg.
The injured list throughout the course of the season has been extensive. Bradish wasn’t alone as a key starter absence. Tyler Wells and John Means also required elbow surgery. Right-hander Grayson Rodriguez was lost for the season too. Left-hander Danny Coulombe missed several months due to his own elbow ailment, and right-hander Jacob Webb missed time.
They were a series of gut punches, and “those are huge innings that we’re needing to cover,” McCann said.
Elias attempted to fill those absences at the deadline, but the moves created a lack of depth among the infielders.
Mateo collided with Henderson and injured his elbow, requiring season-ending surgery. Westburg broke his hand when he was hit by a pitch. McCann took a pitch to the face, broke his nose, then remained in the game. Mountcastle sprained his left wrist, and Urías sprained his ankle.
Seeing those injuries stack up frustrated the Orioles — particularly when they came via an opponent’s lack of control.
“The other part of McCann getting hitting in the face, Westy going down with a hit by pitch, oof, that’s something that piss off (sic),” Santander said. “We understand they don’t try to hit our guys, but damn, bro, throw that shit over the plate, you know?”
It felt as though Baltimore’s clubhouse had a revolving door of depth pieces. The trainer’s room was overcrowded. The reliance on journeymen increased.
“The continuity of this team has been completely different than last year,” McCann said. “Last year, we had pretty much the same group of guys from opening day through the end of the season, add a few guys here or there, right?”
Right. Last year went relatively smoothly. This year? The injuries occurred to key players, potentially disrupting the “mojo,” as Elias said, of the team.
“I wouldn’t say it’s for lack of chemistry. I think the guys get along great,” McCann said Sept. 18. “With what we’ve gone through in the second half, it would be very easy for us to turn on each other, and we haven’t done that. You could say lack of people speaking up or leadership, and I don’t think that’s the case, because every day someone is trying to infuse positivity or wisdom or whatever it is, and for whatever reason, it just hasn’t clicked.”
But then Urías and Westburg came back. So did Mountcastle. Coulombe and Webb are pitching again.
One by one, as September came to an end, the group got back together.
Getting healthier
For so much of the second half of the year, this was the refrain: Just wait until we’re healthy.
The Orioles had hoped to get Rodriguez back from his shoulder strain, and that was another blow to the pitching staff. But, barring Mateo, the infield is back at full strength and the reinforcements provided immediate support.
In their first games back, Urías and Westburg recorded hits. Urías then blasted an important home run Tuesday, helping to increase Baltimore’s lead against the Yankees and ensuring that a celebration would ensue. Mountcastle came back Tuesday, as well, and he chipped in with a knock.
There’s something psychological about having familiar faces return; now that they’re here, a confidence could return to a squad that has been devoid of it since July.
“I look back to the beginning of the season when we were pretty much at full strength, full health. That offense, that team was steamrolling teams,” O’Hearn said in early September. “My hope is that come [late] September, we get some pieces back and guys continue to compete, and we are right there in the thick of it at the end.”
Now that the regular season is over, the Orioles’ record returns to 0-0. All the consternation regarding the second half of the season was warranted — the offensive downturn, the losing record, the slip-up en route to a second division title.
But with the playoffs ahead, and with many of their players healthy again, the Orioles have hope.
“We have dealt with so much crap the last three months, and you guys continue to fight,” manager Brandon Hyde called out to his players before champagne bottles popped. “We got in, so let’s get it on.”
They wore shirts that read “October Ready.”
The Orioles weren’t ready for August or September. They slumbered until the last week of the regular season. But, now, maybe they really are October ready.
