Colton Cowser’s walk-off catch-and-throw moment against the Colorado Rockies looked, at the time, like the kind of play that could steady the Orioles’ season. Less than two weeks later, Baltimore’s playoff path has gone from shaky to nearly wiped out.
On August 31, the Orioles were sitting at 69-69 after beating Colorado for their eighth win in 10 games. They opened September just a half-game out of the final wild card spot, with FanGraphs giving them a 25.4% shot to reach the postseason. Since then, the slide has been brutal.
Baltimore dropped the next two games to the Rockies, which knocked their odds down by 11%. Then came a four-game sweep at the hands of the Red Sox, and the Orioles’ playoff chances fell to under 3%.
Orioles playoff odds on 8/31 - 1 in 4
Orioles playoff odds Monday: 1 in 19
Orioles playoff odds Tuesday: 1 in 45
Orioles playoff odds today: 1 in 25 pic.twitter.com/p6a74gs6u9
- Jacob Calvin Meyer (@jcalvinmeyer) September 10, 2026
The next series against the Guardians, the team Baltimore was chasing for the final playoff spot, became the Orioles’ last real opening. They took game one, and their odds climbed to 5.2%.
Then they lost game two, and the number sank to 1.9%. A win in the finale nudged it back up to 4.4%, but that was still a long way from where they had been.
The six-game losing streak left Baltimore four games back in the final Wild Card race and also behind the Rangers and Blue Jays.
For Orioles fans, the swing has been dizzying. The strong finish to August had Birdland feeling like everything was finally coming together. Pete Alonso was locked in, big hits were coming from different spots in the lineup, the bullpen was handling its business, and the starters were giving quality outings.
That made the collapse hit even harder. Baltimore had surprised people by getting back into the race after selling at the trade deadline, and the roster still looked talented enough to make a push. Instead, the team has drifted back into the same uneven form it showed for most of the season.
After back-to-back playoff trips in 2023 and ’24, even with less success once they got there, it seemed like the rebuild had taken hold. Then came last season’s miss, and now this steep falloff has put the Orioles in a grim spot again. They already moved one cornerstone in Adley Rutschman, and rumors around Gunnar Henderson have only added to the uncertainty.
What felt, just days ago, like a reset of the mood in Baltimore has turned into a far darker question: was last year only a blip, or is another rebuild already creeping back into view?
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