2026 ZiPS Projections: Baltimore Orioles

For the 22nd consecutive season, the ZiPS projection system is unleashing a full set of prognostications. For more information on the ZiPS projections, please consult this year’s introduction, as well as MLB’s glossary entry. The team order is selected by lot, and the preantepenultimate team is the Baltimore Orioles.

Batters

Baltimore’s pitching looked to be a problem entering the 2025 season, but the lackluster offense turned what was a good team with a run prevention problem into a losing club. After ranking second in the American League in runs scored in 2024, the O’s dropped to 11th in 2025, and suffice it to say, the pitching didn’t bail them out. A 75-87 record looks bad in a comparatively mild way given some of the clunkers the team has crafted since 1997, but it was one of the biggest O’s letdowns in at least my memory (I’m from Baltimore). But like the Blue Jays going into 2025 or the Yankees going into 2024, people tend to underrate good teams coming off of crappy seasons, sometimes horribly. There’s this belief that the lousy year is some baseline expectation and you have to start counting wins added from that point, which is a very poor way to make projections.

Have the O’s done enough with the offense? If the projections here are accurate, probably. With so many underperformances, some righting of the ship was always going to happen anyway, but the O’s didn’t just wait for the magic of regression to do the job for them. I don’t think the end of the Pete Alonso contract will be pretty, but he’s a legitimate big bat in a way the franchise tried to pretend Ryan Mountcastle was for a long time. Taylor Ward isn’t great, but you know who Taylor Ward is. The O’s are now in a position where they don’t need Coby Mayo or Heston Kjerstad to get back on track, though it would of course be nice.

ZiPS is starting to worry about Adley Rutschman, but it’s still giving him a pretty solid 2026 projection. I imagine this is a make-or-break year in his long-term projections. Samuel Basallo might not be ready-ready to be a catcher from a defensive standpoint, but he’ll likely be fine as a backup and part-time DH, and hopefully get enough time behind the plate to smooth out his rough edges.

Gunnar Henderson is absolutely terrific and the best player on the team, and if not for Bobby Witt Jr., he would be the favorite to be the best shortstop in baseball. If the Orioles really want to boost the confidence of the fanbase, getting an extension done with Henderson sooner rather than later would go a long way. O’s fans aren’t that far removed from the dread of watching Manny Machado march closer to free agency every year, with the team never really going all in to try and keep him.

Surprisingly, Jackson Holliday may be woefully underrated at this point. He needs to trim down his very large platoon splits and play better defense at second, but we also have to remember that he turned 22 just a month ago. There’s still tremendous upside here.

I think the O’s lineup will be fine.

Pitchers

The Orioles still need a dude. Or, if you prefer, an ace. Or maybe a Big Hoss? Acquiring Shane Baz from the Rays and re-signing Zach Eflin to a “prove-it” deal are nice moves, and getting more Kyle Bradish is a good thing. Trevor Rogers was damn good too — so good, in fact, that I no longer get random DMs angry that I voted for him for NL ROY over Jonathan India — and Dean Kremer is a perfectly serviceable innings-eater. If this starting five is healthy all season, it will be a respectable rotation. But that’s a really big if. Everybody but Kremer has a significant injury history, and I mean significant — this isn’t simply some cowardly bet-hedging on my part. Cade Povich projects as a pretty acceptable fill-in option, but after him, both ZiPS and I have basically zero confidence in the team’s depth. Adequacy is attainable here, but it’s very, very fragile. This is a team that got very few pleasant surprises in 2025 outside of Rogers. Chayce McDermott, for example, seemed for a bit like he might be getting things together, but looking at his season as a whole, I don’t think that would be a very good bet (though I think he could be useful as a reliever).

Baltimore didn’t get Dylan Cease or Ranger Suárez, but there are still options out there. This may be the team that could most use Framber Valdez, and if they go the whole offseason without getting a significant starting pitcher in free agency, I think they’ll come to regret it by June. They may still win a bunch of games and get to the playoffs, but I strongly suspect that without further additions, this rotation will look like a real problem at the trade deadline. The market gets very unexciting very quickly after Valdez, and I also don’t think an incentive-laden deal for someone like Lucas Giolito or Aaron Civale is sufficient.

Even with Félix Bautista out for most of the year (again), this time with rotator cuff surgery, ZiPS actually does like Baltimore’s bullpen. Ryan Helsley ought to be just fine as the closer, and ZiPS sees a lot of Orioles with ERAs in the 3.00 as relievers: Andrew Kittredge, Keegan Akin, Dietrich Enns, Yennier Cano, and Tyler Wells. Even the pitchers ZiPS hates, it doesn’t really hate hate, and there are some off-the-radar relievers who ZiPS is highly interested in, such as Micah Ashman and Alex Pham (as a reliever). Another arm never hurts, but I think the Orioles need to be spending their time, energy, and cash shoring up the rotation some more.

I generally agree with ZiPS on the Orioles and see them as being in the second-tier of AL East teams with the Yankees, a few wins behind the Red Sox and Blue Jays up top.

Ballpark graphic courtesy Eephus League. Depth charts constructed by way of those listed here. Size of player names is very roughly proportional to Depth Chart playing time. The final team projections may differ considerably from our Depth Chart playing time.

Players are listed with their most recent teams wherever possible. This includes players who are unsigned or have retired, players who will miss 2026 due to injury, and players who were released in 2025. So yes, if you see Joe Schmoe, who quit baseball back in August to form a Ambient Math-Rock Trip-Hop Yacht Metal band that only performs in abandoned malls, he’s still listed here intentionally. ZiPS is assuming a league with an ERA of 4.16.

Hitters are ranked by zWAR, which is to say, WAR values as calculated by me, Dan Szymborski, whose surname is spelled with a z. WAR values might differ slightly from those that appear in the full release of ZiPS. Finally, I will advise anyone against — and might karate chop anyone guilty of — merely adding up WAR totals on a depth chart to produce projected team WAR. It is important to remember that ZiPS is agnostic about playing time, and has no information about, for example, how quickly a team will call up a prospect or what veteran has fallen into disfavor.

As always, incorrect projections are either caused by misinformation, a non-pragmatic reality, or by the skillful sabotage of our friend and former editor. You can, however, still get mad at me on Twitter or on BlueSky. This last is, however, not an actual requirement.