Early Birds: The Plight and the Promise of the 2024 Baltimore Orioles
The O’s have tried to build a World Series contender without abandoning their long-term plan. Ahead of the 2024 wild-card series against the Kansas City Royals, an Orioles fan tries to reconcile his faith in the process with a season that went a little bit sideways.
I had a theory last October that the Baltimore Orioles would ultimately benefit from the crushing sweep that the Texas Rangers delivered to them in the 2023 American League Division Series. My rationale stemmed from the great dynasties in sports history; harsh losses tend to turn good teams into great ones. Michael Jordan’s Bulls faced multiple defeats from the Bad Boys Pistons before they rattled off six NBA titles. The Chiefs lost to Tom Brady before they could ascend to the top of the NFL. And similarly, in my view, the Orioles had to lose to the eventual champions on their way toward dominating the rest of the 2020s.
My expectations, while high, weren’t totally unreasonable. After inheriting a last-place squad in 2018, general manager Mike Elias completely renovated the Orioles. He tore the team down to the studs and then nailed draft pick after draft pick, building a stacked farm system that MLB Pipeline ranked no. 1 in baseball from the middle of the 2021 season to March of this year. The first player Elias drafted, Adley Rutschman, was promoted early in the 2022 season; he was the start of a long line of highly touted prospects who will define the next era of Orioles baseball. And then, in 2023, a year after winning 83 games, the young O’s arrived ahead of schedule.
That season, Baltimore took the AL East with a staggering 101 wins, establishing itself as not only baseball’s best young team but also one of its best teams overall. The subsequent disappointment of the postseason caused some fans to wonder whether Elias should have been more aggressive at the 2023 trade deadline—when the O’s opted not to trade a single one of their top 25 prospects—but it was easy to see Elias’s vision for the future. With Rutschman, Gunnar Henderson, and a slew of other promising prospects on long-term contracts, Elias chose to forgo more immediate help in favor of keeping the runway clear.
Now, as Baltimore prepares to host the Kansas City Royals in the wild-card round of the 2024 playoffs, the Orioles will get their next crack at the postseason—but it’s interesting how much has, and hasn’t, changed in a year.
The first half of 2024 went almost exactly as planned. Corbin Burnes, newly acquired in an offseason trade with the Brewers, got off to a historic start. Henderson raced out to an MVP-caliber start. The Orioles were locked in a battle with the Yankees for the AL East at the top of a wide-open American League. No. 1 prospect Jackson Holliday had a rough first stint in the majors before being sent back to Triple-A, but even his demotion highlighted the luxury of having both a first-place team and a top-ranked farm system.
I can pinpoint the moment when I felt the 2024 season start to shift. It was a quintessential Baltimore day. I made a stop by Babe Ruth’s childhood home a mere two blocks from Oriole Park, followed by a pit stop at Pickles for pregame orange crushes. Then I entered the stadium with four of my friends, who happened to be Yankees fans, and looked around at the vast number of people in attendance. After years of rumors that the O’s would leave Baltimore, and after the harsh rebuild, a packed Camden Yards for a series against the Yankees was a welcome sight. There’s magic in Baltimore baseball, but on that day, it was starting to run thin. Injuries to Kyle Bradish, John Means, and Tyler Wells—on top of closer Félix Bautista—had decimated the pitching staff, and the offense was mired in a slump. The game dragged on; it was an Orioles loss made worse by the July heat and the aftermath of the orange crushes, offset only by the satisfaction of knowing that baseball in Baltimore was meaningful again.
Coming out of the All-Star break, the Orioles remained in a dead heat with the Yankees. For the second year in a row, Elias found himself surveying the trade deadline landscape as a potential buyer. There were reports that the Orioles engaged with the Detroit Tigers for Cy Young favorite Tarik Skubal, but Elias was unwilling to part with Holliday. Still, the Orioles were more aggressive than last year. They traded prospects Kyle Stowers and Connor Norby to the Marlins for Trevor Rogers, who boasted a 2-9 record with a 4.53 ERA at the time. They also acquired Zach Eflin from the Rays, sent former All-Star Austin Hays to the Phillies for more bullpen depth in Seranthony Domínguez, and traded for reliever Gregory Soto.
Other than the trade for Eflin—who has a 2.60 ERA in nine starts with Baltimore—the O’s deadline activity proved insufficient to prop them up. In four starts with the Orioles, Rogers had an ERA of 7.11 and was optioned to Triple-A—all the more disappointing as Norby and Stowers played regularly for the Marlins. And Rogers’s struggles were just the tip of the iceberg for Baltimore’s pitching woes. Injuries had turned relief situations into a nightly adventure. Somehow, the awe of watching the O’s young stars come into their powers had given way to the very specific anxiety of watching a 36-year-old Craig Kimbrel amble his way through one blown save after another. Between the All-Star break and Kimbrel’s eventual DFA, his ERA rose from 2.80 to 5.33.
Meanwhile, the injury bug spread to the position players. Speedy infielder Jorge Mateo went down for the season with a UCL injury, while All-Star Jordan Westburg missed nearly two months with a fracture in his hand. At one point, Orioles beat writer Matt Weyrich tweeted a list of injured Orioles. It looked like a potential playoff team.
More worrisome, the Orioles’ young cornerstones were slumping when the team needed more. Rutschman had an average of .132 in July. His offensive worries were coupled with inexplicable problems on the defensive end—Rutschman ranked 11th in catcher framing last year but has dropped to 40th this season. Henderson had his worst month of the season in August, with a .709 OPS. The Orioles even called Holliday back up, and despite an explosive first week, his early-season struggles returned.
The Orioles finished the second half 33-33, a record that seemed implausible months ago. They hit a meager .239 in August and September. Their revolving door of a pitching staff struggled to carry them to wins; even Burnes fell out of Cy Young contention in the second half. The Yankees figured out their own slump and pulled away with the AL East while the Orioles stagnated. Brandon Hyde, the reigning AL Manager of the Year who guided this team through a rebuild and won 101 games the previous season, came under fire online.
Thinking back to my theory about the O’s postseason loss last year, I looked back at the most successful, sustained runs in MLB over the past 30 years: the turn-of-the-century Yankees, the early-2010s Giants, and the mid-2010s Astros. Those Yankees won a World Series in 1996, in just their second postseason appearance, before winning three of the next four. Those Giants, now considered a dynasty, were great only every other year. And the Astros—Elias’s former team and the closest model for the present-day Orioles—won a World Series in their second playoff appearance. In each of these cases, success came early—and not by accident. What if the Yankees hadn’t hired Joe Torre, signed Darryl Strawberry, or traded for Charlie Hayes? What if the Giants hadn’t traded for Hunter Pence? What if the Astros hadn’t traded for Gerrit Cole or Justin Verlander? Sustained success from the best teams of the century seems dictated by gutsy moves that limit the chances of a missed opportunity. And while the Orioles made a big trade for Burnes (who will be a free agent after this season) and had another bold move fail in Kimbrel, should they have done more?
Progress isn’t always linear in baseball. Championships can come from anywhere. The Rangers were dead in the water last season before they won the World Series, and they didn’t even make the playoffs this season. The Orioles’ second-half slump doesn’t change their sunny long-term outlook, but it does serve as a reminder that nothing is promised in baseball. It’s a fluky sport in which windows of contention can open and shut without warning.
Despite the slump, despite the trades, despite the injuries, the window is still open for 2024. The Orioles finished the season with a glimmer of hope—rediscovering their offense in a series win over the Yankees in the Bronx. Baltimore clinched a playoff berth for the second season in a row: a feat that hasn’t been accomplished by the team in 27 years. I wasn’t alive for the Orioles of the 1960s, the World Series–winning 1983 team, or Cal Ripken Jr.’s career. My experience as an O’s fan has been characterized by mediocrity and postseason heartbreak. This team, and the next decade of Baltimore baseball, carries more promise than any Oriole team in my lifetime.
The expectation of great success is uncharted territory for me as an O’s fan. Each year with a young core brings more expectations and greater urgency, more excitement for what the team can accomplish, and more anguish when expectations aren’t met. Last year’s postseason run ended early, but it felt like a natural step to build on. This year didn’t completely go to plan, but a season competing for a World Series is better than pretty much every other season the Orioles have had in the 21st century.
The turmoil the Orioles faced this season has me once again thinking about the necessary bumps a team must face on the way to achieving its potential. A rocky season clouded in angst and confusion might be what this young team needed most to grow. Will the team capitalize on this moment in the coming weeks? Or will a second straight postseason disappointment send it into a fascinating offseason? In Baltimore on Tuesday, the O’s have a chance to begin what could be the most interesting chapter yet in their ever-unfolding story.
