The Orioles’ 2026 season has gone off the rails in plenty of ways, but Pete Alonso was not one of them. While Baltimore heads toward a losing record and a second straight missed playoff berth, Alonso has given the club exactly what it paid for in his first year in orange and black.
That matters because the Orioles didn’t exactly sneak into the Alonso business. They went after a marquee bat last winter, reportedly making Kyle Schwarber a similar offer before Schwarber chose Philadelphia on a five-year, $150 million deal.
Baltimore then landed Alonso for five years and $155 million. Schwarber has backed up his own contract, leading the NL in home runs and strikeouts, though he has started only 10 games in the field.
Alonso, meanwhile, has given Baltimore a plus defender at first base in addition to the power.
The fit looked even more natural once the season started. The Orioles already had Ryan Mountcastle and Coby Mayo on the roster, and injuries to Mountcastle and Jordan Westburg eventually opened space on the infield.
Still, Baltimore didn’t let a crowded position group stop it from adding a star. That same aggressiveness didn’t carry over to the rotation, where the club sent a king’s ransom to Tampa Bay for Shane Baz but stopped short of landing one of the market’s top starters.
The Orioles may have hoped Baz, Kyle Bradish and Trevor Rogers would form a big three, but that never really happened.
With the season spiraling, the bigger question now is what Baltimore actually learned from all of this. It’s hard to judge the offseason cleanly when the team fell so far short of expectations. A true ace might have helped, but this roster was more than one move away from being fixed.
The issues also stretch beyond the front office’s shopping list. Before the Orioles were all but out of it, there was already plenty of chatter about why a struggling Gunnar Henderson kept getting chances near the top of the order.
Craig Albernaz made his view clear when he said, “this team would not get where it wanted to go if Gunnar Henderson didn’t play like Gunnar Henderson.” He was right about the importance of Henderson’s production, but Henderson never got anywhere close to his 8.8 bWAR season from 2023.
That leaves Baltimore staring at a bigger offseason question: is the 2023 version of Henderson ever coming back, or are 2025 and 2026 the new normal? The Orioles are also in the middle of organizational change, with Matt Blood moving on, while Craig Albernaz and Mike Elias appear likely to stay in place.
There will be money to spend under David Rubenstein, but Alonso’s arrival is a reminder that one splash signing doesn’t solve everything. What it does show is that Baltimore found a hitter with a plan and a clear identity.
Alonso has talked about home runs as “happy accidents” and credited his commitment to driving the ball hard to all fields. That approach has worked just about everywhere this year, and it has worked especially well in Baltimore, where he leads Major League Baseball with 17 opposite-field home runs.
That contrast is hard to ignore when you look at some of the Orioles’ younger hitters. Henderson, Jackson Holliday and Colton Cowser have all had trouble turning their tools into production.
Some of that is on the players, but the broader pattern is hard to miss. Maybe it’s the pull-heavy swing decisions, maybe it’s trying to hit for too much power, maybe it’s the platooning.
Whatever the exact cause, Baltimore needs to figure it out.
Alonso has made the difference obvious. Entering last night’s game, he had 16 more home runs and 45 more RBIs than any other Oriole, and his 4.6 bWAR stood out next to the rest of the lineup. That production has given Baltimore at least one reliable anchor in a season full of problems.
The Orioles still have work to do elsewhere. They should be looking for help in the outfield, the bullpen and the rotation, and they may have a tougher time adding top infield talent with Henderson, Alonso and Jordan Westburg set to return. A quality second baseman could also play over Jackson Holliday and Blaze Alexander, and backup catcher Carlos Narváez has struggled at the plate when hitting for Samuel Basallo.
Baltimore should leave Alonso alone after a borderline MVP season. The real challenge is bigger than that: the Orioles need to rethink how they develop hitters at the major league level. If they can pull that off, Alonso’s success could end up mattering far more than just one expensive signing.
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 🡒]