Analysis: Is the playoff window already closing for the Baltimore Orioles?

Yeah, it’s early, just the first weekend of May, but it’s starting to look like what we had thought not that long ago was a multi-year playoff window for the Baltimore Orioles might already be closing.

Remember when the thinking was that the 2023 and 2024 playoff appearances were just the Baby Birds being ahead of schedule?

Yeah.

Last year’s last-place finish in the AL East, and 75-87 record, is starting to look less like anomaly, and more like, reality.

Baltimore, at this writing, is 15-18, seven games back in the East, and the Orioles have been above the .500 mark for just six of the first 38 days of the 2026 season.

The offense is mediocre – 13th in MLB in runs per game (4.59), 14th in OPS (.713), 21st in batting average (.233).

The pitching staff, also mediocre – 22nd in ERA (4.39), 24th in WHIP (1.437).

And the feeling that hung in the air in 2023 and 2024 – just wait ‘til we get everybody from the farm system up here in the bigs! – no longer valid.

The O’s have just one prospect in the MLB.com Top 100 – Nate George, a 2024 draft pick out of high school who is still in High-A ball, with a Major League ETA of 2028.

The bevy of top picks from MLB drafts past is up in the bigs, and most are struggling.

Even Gunnar Henderson, the 2023 AL Rookie of the Year, and two-time MVP Top 10 guy, is scuffling right now, hitting .207 BA/.748 OPS, on the heels of an underwhelming .274/.787 2025, with 17 homers and 68 RBIs – down from the 37 homers, 92 RBIs and .281/.893 that he’d put up in 2024.

Adley Rutschman, the 2022 AL Rookie of the Year runner-up, is back off a stint on the injured list, and his early returns (.333/1.001, 4 HRs, 17 RBIs) are suggesting the possibility of a comeback year from a plain awful 2025 – .220/.693, 9 HRs, 29 RBIs.

Former top prospects Colton Cowser (.183/.481, -0.3 WAR) and Coby Mayo (.165/.555, -0.7 WAR), for their parts, suck right now.

It doesn’t help, certainly, that Jackson Holliday (.242/.690, 17 HRs, 55 RBIs in 2025) is on an extended IL stint with a broken bone in his right hand, and hasn’t played in MLB at all this season.

He is due to start another rebab assignment next week, so, there is hope that he will be back relatively soon.

The bigger hope: get Holliday back, get Henderson back to his 2024 productivity, get Pete Alonso, off to a slow start (.203/.709, 5 HRs, 14 RBIs), to where you’d expect him to be, and maybe.

I don’t know that there’s enough pitching, which is the part of the game that the GM, Mike Elias, great at drafting and developing position players, doesn’t seem all that focused on.

This is a make-or-break next couple of months for Elias, in particular.

If Baltimore doesn’t get this turned around by the All-Star break, it may be time for the hedge-fund billionaire owner, David Rubenstein, to clean house and start over.