Another Joyless Orioles Season Ended Thursday With No Reason To Expect Any Better In 2027

The Orioles season officially ended on an off day before the final series on the regular-season schedule, but let’s be real it was a lost cause long ago.

We couldn’t have totally known it completely at the time, but we had suspicions from the immediately brown nosing at the introductory press conference, but it was over the moment failure baseball exec Mike Elias chose Craig Albernaz to be overmatched puppet skipper 3.0. We did know it, however, from the moment the time this roster came together in February and they looked like a bush-league operation in spring training and the pieces didn’t fit.

They lacked any real outfield pop and outfield defense – though fringy fourth-OF Colton Cowser could play center (just not enough to overcome is nonexistent bat) and the bench made no sense and the overall defense was going to suck and it was clear by April that Albernaz was going to be the worst of the trio to steward the dugout under Elias.

When Elias had to come out around April 24 and start telling people that 2026 wasn’t going to be anything close to 2025, it was because there was every reason anyone who knew ball could see this was going to be precisely that … and it was. We told you on May 10 this was a below .500 baseball team that should result in everyone getting fired, and before the trade deadline we you that despite this team being just as horribly flawed as we thought, nothing would matter and Elias would be back, and that he will be.

Adley Rutschman, Elias's first decision, was a losing ball player who couldn’t catch regularly or hit when he DHed and as he was being prepped for trade Gunnar Henderson, Elias’s second every draft pick, was already in the role of Rutschman – rapidly deteriorating baseball player across the board. His season would be stunningly bad – and he’ll be the next to go – and all the while Cowser and Jackson Holliday and Heston Kjerstad – all top five picks – would do nothing and the rest of Elias’s pathetic drafts were so bad that by September call-ups we’d get AAAA guys like Christian Franklin and a ridiculous waiver claim on Lius Robert instead of any of the other first-round pick outfielders for even a look-see.

Never A Contender

These Orioles (78-81) last were above .500 on April 14. They are a bottom eight team in baseball since June 21, 2024.

They had one meaningful winning streak the entire season, which shows what an insipid operation they were, as MLB’s runaway leaders in unearned runs allowed. They couldn’t play with good teams and anytime the schedule swung in that direction, they crapped out.

They played horrible ball with horrible at bats and then beat up mostly suspect bullpens and used that as some sort of warped rallying cry with their dugout charlatan covering up for their unprofessional play and hyping all the “fight” they showed and how they “never quit,” omitting that they also never sustained a damn thing that mattered; waiting until the seventh inning to show you care is a fatal flaw, not a hallmark to be championed.

This team was 39-42 at Camden Yards – the park Elias butchered, twice – a primary reason they couldn’t even hang in the lackluster AL til the end of the season. They are 18-24 in one-run games (26th), having a hack for a manager doesn’t help in that regard, and, most telling of all and most indicative of where they stand heading into baseball's new great-unknown economy, they are 28-45 against teams .500 or better, and the AL East will likely have at least four such teams again next year … This will not be one of them.

Waste Upon Waste

Outside of the bullpen, nothing functioned for this team from start to finish. Because Elias has no clue had to build rosters for 162 games, let alone the postseason. The rotation took off from early June to late August but was well below grade the other three months of the season and ran out of gas as expected. The lineup sucked all the way through the season, and this team will finish in the bottom three in strikeout rate and bottom eight in OPS.

Once again, they could not manufacture runs, they stunk on the base paths (Henderson getting picked off twice in the same game was truly the epitome of what they are); they play a selfish, homer-or-bust style (The Elias Way) that also seems to explain why the clubhouse has no juice and they come out flat the first six innings every night. Their fundamentals were morbid, again, low IQ all over (that’s how Mikey drafts ‘em, and signs ‘em!) and they play like a bunch of individuals instead of a collective even with all-around great guy Pete Alonso hitting 40 homers and being their leader and fronting this mess for $30M a year.

With Elias and Albernaz coming back, and a bunch more coaching staffers and middle managers about to be fired like they tossed out Matt Blood, nothing is going to change. The GM hire isn’t really for a GM (plenty on that in the video below), and Elias will never change a damn thing until he’s eventually fired and this feckless ownership only cares about profit margins, so don’t hold your breath.

You know, the way I stopped holding mine way back on May 10. Hate to say I told you so, but I see through these frauds every time. Next year is over before it begins.

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