Back to back days with a walk-off win show how this Orioles team is different from last year's

When it came to discussing the 2025 Baltimore Orioles, there are a lot of things you could point to as being the reason that team fell short of expectations. There were injuries, there were players the Orioles were depending on who just no-showed the season, and the front office didn't invest nearly enough in the starting rotation. Unfortunately, the 2026 Orioles have a lot in common with the 2025 Orioles. They too, have suffered injuries to key players; they've also gotten very disappointing performances from players they're depending on, and the front office once again inexplicably didn't invest nearly enough into the starting rotation.

With so many similarities between last year's team and this year's team, it's easy to see how the Orioles could be heading towards disaster this year. However, there is one key difference between this year's Orioles team and last year's Orioles team: the 2026 Orioles fight back.

Already this season the Orioles have collected a lot of late inning comebacks that were missing last season

Last year, the Orioles' inability to stage a late-game comeback gradually became a story as the calendar flipped over to August, and the Orioles were the only team not to win a game via the walk-off.  The Orioles did eventually get that first walk-off win, and funnily enough, had a bunch more walk-off wins in the last month of the season, but at that point, their fate was already written.

When the 2025 Orioles season was in the balance, and the results of the games actually mattered, the Orioles were unable to battle back from deficits. They had a lot of games where they just let go of the rope, and after a bad first couple of innings, allowed the game to spiral into a blowout.

Through this point in the season last year, the 2025 Orioles had been shut out six times, and they lost by four or more runs 17 times. Compare that to this season, where so far they have been shutout zero times, have lost by four or more only 11 times. Just looked at those numbers, you can see that the 2026 Orioles, even with all their flaws, are a much more competitive team than they were last year.

Already this year, they were down four or more runs late in the game against the Guardians and Diamondbacks and hit grand slam home runs to get themselves back into those games and eventually win them. In Kansas City, they tied a game in the ninth and then hit a grand slam in extra innings to steal the win. In Miami, they bounced back from a blown save and took the lead in the ninth inning to snap a four-game losing streak. They flipped getting no hit by the Yankees into a 3-2 victory. Now in the last two days, they've added two walk-off home runs off the bat of Colton Cowser.

That's a lot of resilience to have shown so early in the season.

This Baltimore Orioles team is far from perfect. Both of the games they walked off featured costly errors, disastrous base running mistakes, and relievers giving up back-breaking runs late in the game. They've already dug themselves a deep hole that they may not be able to dig themselves out of in time to make the playoffs, but they won't give up.

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