I detected the scent of runaway recency last summer when I read in The Athletic that the 2025 Orioles were “the most disappointing team of modern times” in Major League Baseball, according to a sub-headline in an article authored by Jayson Stark.
I’ve known Jayson forever and love his work, which is so good that he’s in the Hall of Fame. And I totally agree with his general assessment that the Orioles’ 2025 season was a terrible disappointment. With a roster dominated by starry young talent, they were widely tabbed as playoff contenders, yet they were never relevant in the American League East after a disastrous start. The manager was fired in May. The white flag went up when nine veterans were traded away at the end of July. The arrival of several exciting, new prospects made things interesting late in the season, but still, it was a profoundly disappointing season.
But was it the greatest disappointment ever in modern baseball? I can’t second that.
To achieve that distinction, you’d have to fall from a towering height of great expectations, right? And anyone who elevated the Orioles in that regard coming into 2025 wasn’t paying attention when they went 42-46 in the final months of 2024, got swept out of the playoffs for a second straight year and lost their best pitcher and most productive power hitter over the winter. That’s hardly a series of events that should produce great expectations going forward, especially given GM Mike Elias’ underwhelming blueprint for replacing the key figures who went elsewhere.
How can you have the most disappointing season ever when, coming in, you already hadn’t won a playoff game in 11 years?
Ah, anyway …
Where I’m going with this is I’m quite sure 2025 isn’t even the most disappointing season in Orioles history, much less the entire modern history of baseball.
On a handful of other occasions through the decades, the Orioles have entered a season with much expected of them only to go flatter than a tire with two nails in it. Put it this way: If their 71-year history was a classroom, each season was a pupil and the teacher was seeking to identify the most disappointing season of all, several pupils would have their hands raised and would be shouting, “It’s me! Pick me!”
Here are the top candidates: (Remember, we’re not talking about the Orioles’ worst season ever, which is a different creature and easier to quantify. We’re comparing the level of disappointment individual seasons produced.)
1962
Coming off a 95-win season, easily their best to that point, the Orioles were expected to challenge for the American League pennant. But manager Paul Richards had departed and discipline evaporated under his replacement, Billy Hitchcock. “The inmates were running the asylum,” one player told me years later. The team hovered around .500 for much of the summer, slowly sinking in the pennant race, until two late losing streaks officially stamped the season as a disaster. They ended up with 18 more losses than the year before.
1967
Six months after they swept the Los Angeles Dodgers in the World Series, the Orioles opened a new season as favorites to win a second straight pennant. But pretty much everything went wrong. Frank Robinson took a knee to the head while sliding into second base and came away with a case of double vision that lasted over a year. Boog Powell sprained his wrist and stopped slugging homers. Injuries decimated the starting rotation, sidelining World Series heroes Wally Bunker and Jim Palmer.
They were in first place in late April, but a six-game losing streak suggested trouble loomed. Sure enough, they were below .500 and sinking by mid-June. The culprit wasn’t so much the pitching — incredibly, the ’67 team allowed fewer runs than the ’66 team — as a tepid offense that scored 101 fewer runs than the year before.
By July, the defending World Series champions were buried in the standings and playing out the string. In the end, a quarter-million fewer fans came to Memorial Stadium compared to the year before.
They finished with a 76-85 record, winning 21 fewer games than the year before. By any reckoning, it was a profound disappointment.
1972
I’d argue that no season has begun with greater expectations for the Orioles. In the previous three years, they’d won 101, 108 and 109 games, three pennants and a World Series. Four of their pitchers had won 20 games the year before, an unimaginable feat, and all four were back in 1972. Surely the club would just keep winning.
Yes, new GM Frank Cashen had traded away former MVP Frank Robinson over the winter, but Robinson was 36, his best days behind him, and the Orioles had Don Baylor, a future star, ready to replace him.
Well, Robinson’s subtraction was far more damaging than Cashen anticipated. “We all tried to do too much to make up for Frank being gone,” outfielder Don Buford said in his Bird Tapes interview. The team batting average dropped a staggering 32 points. Of the four 20-game winners from the year before, only Jim Palmer won 20 again. Pat Dobson lost 18. Dave McNally lost 17.
The start of the season was disrupted by the first players’ strike in baseball history, and although every team had to deal with it, the Orioles seemed especially distracted. It was apparent by midseason that another 100-win season wasn’t forthcoming.
Nonetheless, the Orioles were in first place on Labor Day and still just a half-game out in mid-September. But in a rare occurrence under Earl Weaver, they went 6-10 over the final two weeks. The Tigers won the AL East with 86 wins. The Orioles finished third with an 80-74 record. It was the only time in a six-season span (1969 through 1974) that they didn’t win the division.
1984
The Orioles had a very good thing going coming into the season. In the four most recent seasons not truncated by labor strife, they’d won 98, 94, 100 and 102 wins, played in two World Series and won one. They were so good at finding ways to win that they’d kept on doing it even after Weaver retired.
But their core was growing old and it was another team’s turn to win in 1984. The Tigers won 35 of their first 40 games — one of the greatest starts in major league history. The Orioles started slowly, losing 11 of their first 15 games, and by the time they woke up and crept above .500, they were 10 games out. It made for a meandering season. In the end, Baltimore won 85 games and finished fifth in the seven-team AL East. The breakup of their winning nucleus commenced.
1998
Hard as it is to recall now, the Orioles fostered great expectations early in Peter Angelos’ tenure as owner. With Camden Yards filled for every game, Angelos opened his checkbook and signed expensive free agents such as Roberto Alomar, Rafael Palmeiro, Eric Davis and Randy Myers, helping build a powerhouse roster. The Orioles made back-to-back playoff appearances in 1996 and 1997 — winning 98 games and a division title in 1997 before being upset in the American League Championship Series.
They still had many of their stalwarts from those teams in 1998. But trouble lurked. After guiding the team to two playoff appearances in two years, manager Davey Johnson had resigned — on the day he was named AL Manager of the Year. Pat Gillick, the GM who’d put the team together, was quietly waiting for his contract to run out, weary of Angelos’ meddling.
And the roster was old. Really old.
Under new manager Ray Miller, the Orioles started fast, winning 10 of their first 12 games. But a nine-game losing streak in May sent the signal that things had changed. The Orioles were 12 games under .500 at the All-Star break. A surge renewed hopes for another playoff appearance, but the surge was followed by a late fade and the Orioles finished with 79 wins – 19 fewer than the year before.
It was the first of a run of 14 straight losing seasons for the club — a depressing era that lasted so long it became hard to recall the heady days of the late ’90s.
2015
Coming off a season in which they won 96 games and a division title, a season in which the American League pennant seemingly was theirs until the Kansas City Royals shocked them in October, the Orioles had Baltimore buzzing. But Nelson Cruz and Nick Markakis had departed in free agency, major subtractions, and manager Buck Showalter’s magic could only do so much. The Orioles were in wild-card contention until they lost 13 of 15 games in late August and September. They ended up 81-81, with 15 fewer wins than the year before.
2018
Playoff expectations for the Orioles were built mostly on a mathematical coincidence — since 2012 they’d reached the postseason every other year (2012, 2014, 2016) and they’d qualify again if the pattern held. Although they’d won just 75 games the year before, the good vibes generated by recent winning seasons were still strong enough to generate optimism.
Whoa, was that optimism misguided.
After winning their opener, the Orioles soon found themselves with a 6-19 record before the first month of the season ended. Things only got worse from there, and a selloff at the trade deadline made for a miserable final two months. A fun era guided by Showalter and GM Dan Duquette ended with the worst season in Orioles history from a record standpoint — just 47 wins and 115 losses.
CONCLUSION
If the Orioles’ 2025 season had happened a year ago, in the wake of their 101-win season the year before, it might belong in the conversation determining the most disappointing season in club history. But as noted above, signs of trouble appeared late in 2024, enough to make any truly optimistic predictions for 2025 a bit of a reach. My two cents, that disqualifies 2025 from consideration as the most disappointing Orioles season ever, let alone the most disappointing in modern baseball history (please).
My pick for the Orioles’ most disappointing season ever is 1967. Coming off a World Series triumph, with a loaded roster that would carry them to great heights in the coming years, they posted their only losing season between 1963 and 1985. It was a serious stinker, with the team playing out the string by July. The 1972 season also was a major disappointment, but at least the Orioles were still contending for a division title in mid-September, so it didn’t register quite as high on the bummer scale.
*** What’s your pick for the Orioles’ most disappointing season ever? Scroll down and leave a comment.
