As doubts creep in, Orioles must react appropriately to ugly 2024 finish

BALTIMORE — Orioles starting pitcher Zach Eflin has experienced both sides of how abrupt the best-of-three Wild Card Series can be.  

In 2022, Philadelphia limped into the playoffs before sweeping the favored Cardinals in St. Louis and riding that wave all the way to the World Series. Last year, Eflin was the Game 2 losing pitcher as Tampa Bay was swept by Texas, another team that ultimately advanced to the Fall Classic.

For the Orioles, this season was over in a matter of a bad 27 hours.

“At the end of the day, it can happen. Any game in October’s tough,” Eflin said. “Things didn’t really go our way the last two days. This is a hungry group; [we’re] resilient. We’re going to come back stronger next year.” 

Understanding that so many of these postseason matchups are closer to coin flips than we all care to admit, you’d almost be able to talk yourself into brushing off what happened against the Kansas City Royals. That was how the Orioles mostly handled what happened in last year’s Division Series, especially after the Rangers went on to win the World Series. 

However, this was two bad days that followed a bad second half, which made for a more disappointed and emotional post-series clubhouse than witnessed in Arlington last October. And this iteration of the Orioles under general manager Mike Elias and manager Brandon Hyde — winners of 192 games over the last two regular seasons — has now lost five straight postseason games. Even if accepting the coin-flip analogy, that’s only a probability of 3%, making this “a tough pill to swallow” as Ryan Mountcastle said after Wednesday’s 2-1 loss. 

As the doubts and frustration that began with the summer struggles only intensify after a second straight October face plant, the Orioles brass can’t afford to be complacent in determining how to proceed this offseason. Given the litany of injuries that stunted the 2024 club’s ceiling and still impacted its postseason makeup as a few prominent players were playing at less than full health, this still-talented roster doesn’t require major surgery, but some procedures are certainly in order, whether it relates to personnel or the offensive approach that crumbled over the final two months of the season. 

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On Thursday, Elias vowed “to work tirelessly” to adjust and improve the Orioles for next season and beyond. It won’t be easy with ace Corbin Burnes and home run leader Anthony Santander both scheduled to become free agents and Elias — who isn’t one to negotiate through the media anyway — offering no strong indication that either would be re-signed. Of course, new ownership could always have a say in those matters. 

“The main theme that’s pretty evident to me from this season — regardless of the cause — is the offensive side of the team was not there to the degree that I expected in the second half,” Elias said. “I think a lot of my moves and concerns had been toward the pitching side, and that sort of ended up not being our shortcoming in the second half or in October, so that’s on me. But we’re going to take some time to look at things professionally, talk to everyone in the warehouse, [gather] every bit of information that we can, and come up with a plan to not have this happen again.”

Beyond making coaching changes — Elias confirmed manager Brandon Hyde would return while offering no assurances about the rest of the staff — or tweaking the approach that prioritized slugging to a successful degree in the first half and finished with the fourth-most runs scored in the majors despite second-half struggles with runners in scoring position, what else might the Orioles do to refine and recalibrate their offense? 

It begins with fixing Adley Rutschman, who went from being the face of the franchise and a two-time All-Star catcher over his first two calendar years in the majors to one of the worst qualified hitters in baseball over the final three months of 2024. Slump is a euphemism for what we saw in the second half as the 26-year-old ranked among the bottom five qualified hitters in average (.194), slugging percentage (.286), on-base plus slugging percentage (.564), and weighted on-base average (.252) in 281 plate appearances from July 1 through the end of the season.

A club’s struggles should never be placed on a single individual, but one of your best players suddenly producing at a replacement level subtracted at least a couple wins from the second-half total by himself. 

While many have pointed to the foul tip off his right hand in late June that coincided with his seemingly overnight decline and Rutschman himself alluding to challenges with his body after Wednesday’s loss, Elias said “there’s not an injury that I would speak to of any nature” when pressed about his catcher’s health. If that’s indeed the case, the second-half woes are even more concerning without an obvious explanation. 

“He has done so much here, kind of turned our organization around, or a big part of it,” said Elias, who did cite the physical demands and fatigue associated with the catching position. “He turned around cultures, both in the minor leagues and the major leagues. He has been such a key to our ascent that it’s been very frustrating for him and for us to see him experience the degree of struggles that he did in the second half, really for the first time since we’ve had him. But he is an elite competitor, an athlete, and he’s our guy. 

“I have nothing but confidence that he’s going to be back to Adley Rutschman in 2025.”

Of course, Rutschman wasn’t the only 2024 All-Star selection to come up small in this series as he, Santander, Gunnar Henderson, and Jordan Westburg went a combined 3-for-29 with nine strikeouts over the two games. 

While Elias has supplemented the pitching staff with established starters or experienced relievers at various points, he’s only sprinkled in a few veteran position players along the margins to serve as backups or the occasional platoon starter, instead depending on the young core to do the heaviest lifting offensively. Might a veteran hitter who makes significant on-field contributions and provides intangibles such as leadership and postseason experience become a greater priority than the past couple offseasons? 

Coincidence or not, it was interesting hearing Hyde — first base coach of the 2016 Chicago Cubs — reminisce about the impact veteran hitter Ben Zobrist made for that World Series championship team when the Baltimore manager was asked about his club’s problems with runners in scoring position during Thursday’s press conference. Elias and assistant general manager Sig Mejdal can go back to their Houston days to recognize the effect that a 40-year-old Carlos Beltran — his involvement in the sign-stealing scandal aside — had for the 2017 Astros with well over 200 postseason plate appearances under his belt. 

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The franchise’s own history includes the 1966 arrival of Frank Robinson, who fellow Hall of Famer Jim Palmer always credited for teaching a young and ascending Orioles club how to win.  

Perhaps it’s not going to be a future Hall of Famer, but is there a veteran position player out there who could fit a similar profile for the 2025 Orioles? 

Regardless of these bitter feelings that figure to linger into the winter, there’s still so much to like about a club that managed to win 91 games despite its many pitching injuries and second-half difficulties. That’s what makes these questions so challenging.

How to react without overreacting? 

“I need to find the appropriate balance with all the positivity that we’ve achieved with this bad taste in our mouths and bad outcome in the playoffs and a disappointing sort of second half overall,” Elias said. “I need some time to examine striking the right balance between analogizing the positives of what’s going on here with our apparent shortcomings.”