The Baltimore Orioles Are Built to Win the World Series — Just Not This Season
The Baltimore Orioles Are Built to Win the World Series — Just Not This Season
We found 15 teams in MLB history that resemble the 2023 Orioles. Of those teams, 11 reached the World Series within the next five seasons, with seven winning at least one title.
Baseball’s postseason can stomp out a team’s hopes in a hurry. Just ask the Baltimore Orioles. After winning an American League-best 101 times during the regular season, Baltimore’s playoff run ended just three games later, as they were unceremoniously swept out of the Division Series by the Texas Rangers on Tuesday night. The O’s scarcely had time to appreciate the franchise’s best season in 44 years before having to clean out their lockers until next spring.
For a team that entered October with championship aspirations and raucous fan support, this might feel like a major setback. It wasn’t too long ago that Baltimore was among MLB’s most downtrodden franchises, and the version that got run off the field in Texas brought back ugly memories of those bad old days. But as abrupt and disappointing as its ending was, Baltimore’s season could be a sign of even greater success to come — more on that in a minute.
First things first, the Orioles' performance against the Rangers was admittedly a serious letdown. Baltimore became only the seventh team in MLB history to win at least 101 games in the regular season and then fail to win a single playoff game, joining the 2019 Minnesota Twins, 1980 New York Yankees, 1976 Philadelphia Phillies, 1971 Oakland Athletics, 1963 New York Yankees and 1954 Cleveland Indians. (Note that most of those teams also predated the postseason’s wild-card era, which offers more rounds and therefore more chances to rack up wins.)
Despite having a 30-16 record in one-run games during the regular season (which ranked second behind only Miami), the O’s dropped Game 1 by a score of 3-2 after Gunnar Henderson was thrown out trying to steal second base on a failed hit and run as the potential tying run in the bottom of the ninth.
Then, in a surprising twist for a squad based heavily around its pitching, Baltimore was knocked around early by Texas in Games 2 and 3 — allowing 15 total runs through the first 3 innings of those games. The irony is that we might have expected Baltimore’s bullpen to struggle late without closer Felix Bautista, who was lost for the season with an elbow injury just before the playoffs. But Game 2 starter Grayson Rodriguez and Game 3 starter Dean Kremer were chased after recording just five outs apiece. The Orioles’ young lineup couldn’t muster enough offense to overcome the poor pitching, particularly as they were held to just a single run by Nathan Eovaldi and company in Game 3.
The good news for O’s fans, though, is that this team is positioned to have a lot more success over the next several seasons. This is based on historical data for teams that were built similar to this Baltimore squad.
To find that group of similar teams, we searched for clubs that were among the top 10 in Wins Above Replacement from both batters (Baltimore was No. 8 in 2023) and pitchers (also No. 8) while ranking among MLB’s 10 youngest teams (the Orioles were No. 10) with a farm system rated among the five best going into the season, according to Baseball America (Baltimore was No. 1). Since farm system ranking data was first available in 1984, there have been 21 teams that fit those criteria — of which 15 came before 2019, giving us a sample of five full subsequent seasons to see how they fared in the future.
On average, these teams tended to do quite well over the five seasons that followed their equivalent to the Orioles’ 2023 campaign. They averaged 94.5 wins the next season, 96.1 wins the season after that, and 459.7 total wins over the five-year period in question (or an average of 91.9 wins per season). Of those 15 teams, only three — the 2011 Tampa Bay Rays, 2007 Colorado Rockies and 1994 Montreal Expos — failed to average at least 89 wins per season over the subsequent five-year period.
Of those 15 teams, 11 also reached the World Series within the next five seasons, with seven winning at least one championship during that period. (Some, like the 1990s Atlanta Braves, made it to multiple future World Series.) In other words, teams as good and young as the 2023 Orioles tend to have a lot to look forward to.
And Baltimore might have even more wins ahead of them than most: Remember, their No. 1 prospect, Jackson Holliday (son of seven-time All-Star Matt Holliday) hasn’t even reached the majors yet — he has a .941 OPS in 125 games across four different levels in the minors this season, and he should be a Rookie of the Year candidate next year. Meanwhile, Adley Rutschman and Gunnar Henderson are both still under the age of 26. That trio alone ought to provide the Orioles with plenty of playoff opportunities in the years to come.
Nothing is guaranteed, of course, and that might be what scares Baltimore fans the most right now. To win 101 games is to set up expectations for a deep postseason run; to fail in capitalizing on that naturally feels like a huge missed opportunity. We could look back on this season as the high-water mark for this era of Orioles baseball, but that seems unlikely. In fact, given that the Orioles would have been among the 25 youngest champs ever if they had won it all this year, they were probably ahead of schedule. That means this young core will have every chance to make it back to the playoffs and make more runs toward a World Series title.
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