The Baltimore Orioles spent 2026 in the same frustrating lane that has swallowed so many teams: not bad enough to collapse, not good enough to matter. ESPN’s David Schoenfield captured that perfectly when he stamped the club with a C- and called the season “meh.”
“Baltimore Orioles: C-. Meh. I mean, you could say that about the entire AL, but the Orioles were especially 'meh' in 2026,” Schoenfield writes.
That verdict fits a year that never really caught fire. After the buzz that followed Baltimore’s 2023 playoff run, the expectation was that the Orioles had arrived as a serious force. Instead, 2026 became another reminder that progress has stalled.
The biggest issue was that the names supposed to carry the lineup largely didn’t. Outside of Pete Alonso, the team’s top players didn’t deliver the kind of season Baltimore needed. Gunnar Henderson no longer looked like the superstar he had been, and Jackson Holliday, while still young, left plenty of questions hanging over his game.
There was also the change behind the plate, where Adley Rutschman was traded to the Boston Red Sox. Samuel Basallo offers something to get excited about, but he’s part of a roster that still feels jumbled rather than settled.
Pitching didn’t offer much clarity either. The rotation came with heavy offseason investment, but it still finished with plenty of question marks. The bullpen was a mess, and the lineup still needs a lot of work.
To be fair, Baltimore’s season didn’t sink into the kind of total wreckage seen in places like Toronto, Seattle, or New York. There is still some hope here, and that matters.
But hope and progress are not the same thing. In 2026, the Orioles were exactly what Schoenfield said they were: underwhelming, plain and simple.
In Other News...
Orioles Still Have Tough 40-Man Calls On Several Young Players
The Orioles took care of six roster decisions on Nov. 19, adding Flix Bautista and Kyle Bradish to the 40-man as part of the usual offseason protection process, even with the 2021 Rule 5 draft canceled. But the bigger work is still ahead. Baltimore is sorting through the rest of its 40-man picture with an eye on the wave of young talent moving through the system, and the next set of choices could say as much about the organizations priorities as anything it has done so far this winter.
Enrique Bradfield Jr., Aron Estrada, Michael Forret, Creed Willems and Nestor German are among the names in the mix, and each brings a different kind of case. Recent performance matters, but so do ceilings, injuries and the bumps that have shaped their seasons. For a club that has built so much of its identity around stocking the pipeline, these are the kinds of decisions that can feel routine on the surface and revealing underneath. [Read more 🡒]
Orioles Suddenly Have A Jackson Holliday Problem This Offseason
The Orioles offseason health picture took another hit as Jackson Holliday is set to undergo wrist surgery later this week or early next week, a development that adds another layer of uncertainty around one of the organizations most important young players. The expected recovery window is about 10 weeks, which at least gives Baltimore a clearer sense of the timeline, even if it leaves the club waiting longer than it would have liked for a full offseason reset.
Holliday was already central to whatever the Orioles hope to build moving forward, and his situation now sits alongside a few other notable injury updates. Samuel Basallo has been placed on the 7-day concussion injured list, while Tyler ONeill received a PRP injection in his shoulder as the team looks toward getting him ready for next spring. For Baltimore, it is a reminder that even in the quiet months, the roster picture can shift quickly before the new season even begins. [Read more 🡒]
Orioles Front Office Move Wont Silence The Bigger Mike Elias Debate
The Orioles have added Ty Holub back into the organization, hiring him as a senior analyst in the scouting department after his time with the Mariners and a previous stint in Baltimore as a Baseball Operations Assistant. Holubs background gives the front office another voice with a track record in both scouting and player evaluation, and it fits a franchise that has spent years trying to sharpen every layer of its talent pipeline.
Still, moves like this tend to raise the larger question around Mike Elias rather than quiet it. Baltimore has steadily tried to build out its staff and improve the process behind player acquisition, and Holubs return is another piece of that effort, but the broader debate over whether the Orioles have enough impact in the front office to match their on-field ambitions is not going away anytime soon. [Read more 🡒]