Jayson Stark had really harsh words to describe Orioles’ 2025 collapse

Eric Cole

San Diego Padres v Philadelphia Phillies / Rich Schultz/GettyImages

By all accounts, the Baltimore Orioles have been colossally disappointing this season. The Orioles won the AL East in 2023, were a wild card team last season, and most thought that Baltimore had one of the more exciting young cores in all of baseball heading into the 2025 season. Instead, the Orioles slipped on a banana peel to start the season and are only just now starting to play a bit better.

As a result, it is completely fair to consider Baltimore among baseball's bigger disappointments in 2025. However, normally very mild mannered MLB expert Jayson Stark recent wrote for The Athletic that the Orioles are actually the "disappointing team of modern times" and that requires a bit of a closer look.

Jayson Stark kind of has a point about the Orioles' brutal 2025 season so far

Now, if this was Stephen A. Smith, Pat McAfee, or Skip Bayless, it would be easy to write off as just another shoutcaster being bored with shouting about football and just wandering into a discussion about a sport that they haven't watched in years. However, this is Jayson Stark who has been one of baseball's greatest cheerleaders over the years and a guy that doesn't throw around criticism blindly like far too many analysts these days.

However, Stark does kind of have a point here. Yes, there are other teams like the Braves (okay, especially the Braves), Rangers, and Diamondbacks that have been disappointments this season. What makes the Orioles stand out is that they had all of these young guys like Adley Rutschman, Gunnar Henderson, Jackson Holliday, and Colton Cowser that were supposed to carry them. Instead, all of them except Holliday took steps back this season and the front office didn't actually build a starting rotation worth having.

The good news is that the Orioles are playing better right now and could still put up a respectable season. Being 12 games back in the AL East feels like an ambitious goal to overcome, but if Baltimore keeps playing well, they could narrow their 7.5 game gap in the AL Wild Card race and at least make things interesting there. Unfortunately, that will do little to mitigate the disappointment of this season given how much promise it initially had.

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Eric Cole

I started my career writing about baseball covering the Atlanta Braves for SB Nation's Talking Chop back in 2015 which has since been renamed Battery Power. After years of writing for those fine folks, I made the decision to take over as Site Expert at House That Hank Built before becoming a full-time MLB Staff Writer for FanSided in 2023. Along the way, I have been a guest on multiple ESPN radio affiliates as well as 680 The Fan and 92.9 The Game to discuss Braves baseball and especially Braves prospects and was a long-time host on the Battery Power podcast. These days, I continue to write about the Braves as well as covering the Astros, Padres, and Angels with particular expertise with minor league coverage, the MLB Draft, and bashing Anthony Rendon when possible. When I am not writing about or talking about baseball (which is seldom), I am an avid baseball card collector (Maddux and Soroka being my primary personal collections) and I also collect shark teeth. All other sports are mostly dead to me as my Bills have broken my heart too many times.