Perhaps it’s fitting that the Orioles are about to play a weekend series at Dodger Stadium.
After all, this week marks exactly two years since this might have been hyped as a showdown between two heavyweights that even included a national TV game or two. Instead, it’ll barely register a ripple as local fans — the ones who will actually stay up for late-night baseball Friday and Saturday — brace for the kind of result that will push the Orioles even further away from .500 in a season continuing to look listless and irrelevant.
Truthfully, this is more about vibes than the standings, the math, or what an unlikely series win would mean at this point. That the best argument in support of this year’s Orioles nearly three months into the season is a deficit of just 2 1/2 games for the final wild-card spot reflects only a lowering of the bar and the AL’s overall mediocrity.
You’d like to say this series against the two-time defending World Series champion Dodgers could serve as a referendum that might prove something meaningful about the Orioles, but we’re long past the point of the result of a single series win meaning much, no matter the opponent. The true indictment of this series is the perpetual feeling of treading the waters of mediocrity or worse for two full years now rather than there being any meaningful buzz or excitement.
Do you remember that June 2024 weekend set at Camden Yards in which more than 133,000 people watched the Orioles — fresh off their first 100-win season in more than 40 years — take two of three from NL-leading Philadelphia? Or the ensuing heated series in the Bronx that resulted in Baltimore taking the rubber match in a 17-5 demolition of the AL-best Yankees?
The 49-25 Orioles had won back-to-back series from the only two clubs with a better record, staking their claim to be baseball’s best team at that moment. They had played like a 100-win team for nearly two full calendar years and only appeared to be getting better, which made the painful rebuild under Mike Elias feel like a worthy price to pay.
Then, seemingly overnight, it came to a screeching halt with no one understanding exactly why or knowing how to fix it.
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The franchise has gone 152-174 since those two series wins in June 2024, which equates to a 75-win pace over 162 games. The prolonged stretches of winning from the second half of 2022 through June 2024 have been replaced by the occasional fleeting streak like the recent 10-4 run in which we try to talk ourselves into believing this club is about to take off before being disappointed a week later.
This week’s piece from The Athletic at least reflects a self-awareness of the need for change that runs deeper than a new manager and coaches at the major league level or even spending more money on free agents. But that doesn’t mean Elias and his lieutenants — or even Cal Ripken and Mike Shildt — will be able to salvage this or deserve the opportunity to continue trying beyond 2026.
The last two years aren’t what was promised when Elias arrived after a disastrous 2018 that necessitated an entire organizational rebuilding and modernizing. Multiple tanking seasons resulting in just two playoff appearances — both ending in swift sweeps — and an abrupt fall back down the mountain wasn’t the deal for fans asked to endure years of extreme losing and to continue paying higher prices today.
It’s certainly can’t be what David Rubenstein, Michael Arougheti, and the rest of the new ownership group anticipated they were buying a couple years ago.
From top to bottom, none of this is good enough, and frustration only grows upon realizing that, especially when you remember how exciting a weekend series such as this one felt two or three years ago. Now, there’s not even a promise of a top-ranked farm system on the horizon.
No, the Orioles aren’t bad in the way those rebuilding clubs were, but they’re not good, let alone resembling anything with a chance to be truly special.
8The front office doesn’t have the answers.
A new manager and revamped coaching staff are getting the same disappointing results.
And with few exceptions, players hyped as franchise pillars, elite prospects, or veteran difference-makers range from underperforming to just plain disappointing.
This team’s strengths aren’t all that strong, and its weaknesses continue to be too detrimental to sustained winning.
Even with the obvious payroll disparity that exists between the Dodgers and virtually everyone else, a weekend like this was once supposed to be a buzz-worthy test and a dream of a World Series preview.
Instead, it’s a series to which the rest of baseball will be paying no attention and disappointed Orioles fans will be bracing for pain — if they haven’t already tuned out.
