The Orioles’ 2026 season kept finding new ways to surprise people, and not all of them were good surprises.
Start with the catcher situation, because that one went from promising to scrambled in a hurry. Samuel Basallo debuted on Aug. 17, 2025 in Houston as the designated hitter, with Adley Rutschman behind the plate that day.
Rutschman then landed on the injured list with a right oblique strain and didn’t come back until Sept. 23.
This year brought two more IL stints for Rutschman, and eventually a trade to the Red Sox, who reinstated him on Aug. 11.
Basallo, meanwhile, was hurt a day after Rutschman, leaving a July 19 game with right shoulder discomfort.
That meant the Orioles never really got the version of the plan they seemed to be building toward: alternating the two between catcher and DH, with Basallo also available at first base. It also wiped out the idea that this could become baseball’s best catching tandem.
Basallo had signed an eight-year, $67 million extension shortly after arriving, and the position had looked settled. Instead, the Orioles now appear headed toward the market for another catcher with more offensive upside than Carlos Narváez and Yohel Pozo.
No. 16 prospect Ethan Anderson and No. 28 Creed Willems aren’t immediate fixes, but both can make their case in camp.
Pitching gave the Orioles its own collection of odd twists. Shane Baz set career highs in innings and losses, going 6-15 with a 4.11 ERA in 31 starts, the most on the team and matching his career high in starts.
He logged 179 2/3 innings, yet far too many of those outings came with very little help. Baz posted a 3.46 run support average, third lowest among qualified major league pitchers behind Michael Wacha (3.36) and Cam Schlittler (3.39).
The lowest run support average for a qualified Orioles pitcher before that was Kevin Millwood’s 3.26 in 2010.
Chris Bassitt lived on the other end of that spectrum. His 6.53 run support average ranked eighth in the majors among pitchers with at least 15 starts and third in the American League, behind Tatsuya Imai (7.75) and Will Warren (6.58).
Bassitt got at least six runs of support in four of his final six starts dating to Aug. 25, when he had a 9.35 run support average that led the majors. It was his highest run support mark since 2019, when he finished at 6.69.
There’s no reason for any of it.
Zach Eflin’s comeback barely had time to get going. After three trips to the injured list in 2025 - the last two for back pain - and a lumbar microdiscectomy in August, he re-signed in December to a $10 million deal with a $25 million mutual option and $2 million buyout.
He won the fifth starter job over Dean Kremer in spring training, then lasted only 3 2/3 innings against the Rangers on March 31 before leaving with elbow pain. It was Tommy John surgery on April 8 in Dallas, which is not exactly how you want to spend your 32nd birthday.
That one start was also the first time in any of Eflin’s 189 career starts that he threw 3 2/3 innings or fewer while striking out at least seven batters. He became the fourth Orioles starter to do that, joining Dylan Bundy, Yovani Gallardo and Daniel Cabrera.
On a brighter note, Eflin reached 10 years of major league service time in August, and Bassitt did the same in May.
Brandon Young, at least, gave the rotation something to hang onto. He posted a 3.56 ERA in 28 starts and earned votes for Most Valuable Oriole.
More than that, he helped keep the staff from coming apart. Young finished 9-6 after going 1-7 as a rookie in 2025, a .600 winning percentage after a .125 one the year before.
According to STATS, that plus-.475 jump ranked as the seventh largest in major league history from a pitcher’s first season to his second among pitchers with at least 10 starts in each year. He also went 7-2 in 13 road starts, and his .778 winning percentage on the road tied for third in the American League among pitchers with at least 10 games, behind Schlittler and Dylan Cease, who both went 8-2.
The Orioles were 19-9 in Young’s 28 starts, including 18-5 through his first 23. That made him part of a short list in team history, with the Orioles having won at least 18 of a pitcher’s first 23 starts of a season only six times before: Dave McNally in 1966 and 1969, Steve Stone in 1980, and Chris Tillman in 2013 and 2016.
Then there was the beginning of the schedule, which had its own strange shape. The Orioles opened by facing 17 right-handed starters in a row, breaking the previous record of 14 set in 1975 before a matchup with the Tigers’ Mickey Lolich.
Former Orioles minor leaguer Eduardo Rodríguez finally ended that streak on April 15, when the Diamondbacks came to town. But the lefty problem didn’t go away.
The Orioles lost their first nine games against left-handers, the second-longest season-opening skid behind 1988, when they dropped the first 11. Overall, they finished 24-27 this season in games started by opposing lefties.
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