Are the Birds real?

After a pathetic start to the season, my beloved Baltimore Orioles are on a recent tear. I just hope it actually ends up mattering.

I’ve spent most of the past two months pondering the following question:

What unpardonable sin did the Orioles commit to so wildly enrage the baseball gods this year?

The Orioles have been a really tough watch in 2025. Their pitching stinks. The offense is frustrating. They have no clutch gene.

Most of their young stars have underperformed. The injury bug won’t stop biting their already flawed roster.

They fired their manager before Memorial Day. Fans are showing up to games wearing paper bags over their heads.

All of the good vibes that surrounded the team over the past two years — where the O’s won an American League-best 192 games — have disappeared.

But now they’ve won six games in a row.

As I write this immediately following Tyrese Haliburton’s game winner against the Thunder, the Orioles are coming off of sweeps of the atrocious White Sox and a solid Mariners squad. They’re 25-36 and *only* 7.5 games out of a playoff spot. They have 101 chances left to make up 7.5 games in the standings.

A week ago, the Orioles’ playoff odds sat at 1.3%. Today, those odds have skyrocketed to 3.8%.

Maybe I’m delusional. Maybe I’m concussed. But I still believe in the Birds.

The Orioles have looked like a totally different team over the past week. Everything I’ve hated about them this year has totally flipped. Their pitching is suddenly excellent. The bats are heating up and coming through when it counts. They’re winning close games and mounting comebacks. They finally look like they care.

I’m sure they’ll end up losing on Friday because I wrote this, but this current stretch feels like the beginning of the “team finally gets its groove back and starts winning and having fun” montage from every great baseball movie — the best such example being from the criminally underrated 1994 classic Little Big League.

One of the main reasons why I love baseball so much is how it encourages us to believe in good things to come. At any moment in the game, no matter how dire the circumstances may seem, the unexpected can occur that changes everything. It could be a go-ahead three-run homer, an inning-ending strikeout that amps up the rest of the team or a savvy defensive play that flips the script with a quick flash of leather. Anyone on the roster, whether it be a future hall of famer or the last guy on the bench, can step up and become a hero. It’s chaotic. It’s ridiculous. It’s beautiful.

I would have never thought the Orioles would spend the majority of April and May among MLB’s huge embarrassing failures, so why can’t they right the ship and catch fire now? Why not believe?

When I left for my mission at the end of May in 2019, my hometown Washington Nationals — who I will never, ever abandon my Orioles fandom for, just so we’re clear — were 19-31. A few months later, as I video chatted with my Dad from an Argentine internet cafe, he informed me that the Nats were hosting the wild card game the following night.

WHAT?!

I hadn’t heard a peep about the Nationals since leaving for the MTC, but since then they’d caught fire and stormed into the playoffs to end up capturing the first World Series title in D.C. since 1924.

That Nationals team was more talented than the 2025 Orioles — especially in terms of pitching — but they toppled four superior opponents en route to the championship thanks in large part to belief.

So why not believe that the Orioles can climb out of a 7.5 game hole over the next four months?

The O’s have a ton of flaws. They’re nowhere near where I thought they’d be right now. But why not believe that they can continue this recent surge and keep getting better as the summer rolls on?

I will admit that some of my belief in the Orioles is rooted in fear. I’m terrified of never seeing them achieve what I want them to.

The franchise has been mediocre and poorly run for most of my life. They have the fourth-most losses of any MLB team since the day of my birth and haven’t reached the World Series since 1983.

Orioles leadership elected to blow everything up in 2018 and embark on a full scale organizational rebuild, better known as “tanking,” which is also known as “misery.” The O’s were horrific for a four year stretch in order to load up on a bunch of high draft picks and develop young talent to emerge in the 2020s and carry the team to new heights.

It worked. Kinda.

In 2023, the Orioles won 101 games to earn the top seed in the American League playoffs, where they were promptly swept by the eventual champion Texas Rangers. Savannah and I flew out for game one of that series in Baltimore, and walking out of Camden Yards following the loss was among the most depressing moments of my young life — even worse than getting diagnosed with cancer the year before (kidding, but not really).

Last year, the O’s put up another 91 wins and clinched a home series in the playoffs, only to get swept again by the eternally infuriating Kansas City Royals. More agony for Jackson.

Dating back to 2014, when those same Royals thwarted my lifetime’s best shot at a World Series parade in Baltimore, the Orioles have lost 10 straight playoff games. They’ve been swept in four straight series.

Remember when Taysom Hill broke his leg against Utah State? That feels like forever ago, right? Well, that was two days before the Orioles’ last playoff win.

If the O’s don’t make the playoffs this year, it’s a waste of precious time within a limited contention window. The team’s young core won’t stay together forever — it feels inevitable that Adley Rutschman, Gunnar Henderson, Jackson Holliday and the rest of the bunch will be leaving town for bigger money in free agency eventually. Hopefully I’m wrong and ownership shells out the necessary cash to keep some of those guys around long term, but if it hasn’t happened yet, maybe it won’t happen at all.

Forgive my pessimism. Baltimore isn’t exactly the sexiest place to play when the glamorous, deep-pocketed Yankees and Dodgers exist. Curse them!

This iteration of the Orioles was supposed to be the next big thing in baseball, and there’s still time for such a reality to occur. But I remain afraid of scrolling Netflix in 20 years and coming across a documentary titled “The dynasty that ever was: how the 2020s Baltimore Orioles squandered their championship window and tortured Jackson Payne forever.” That would hit me like a freight train, especially with a title like that.

I’m afraid of ending this era of the Orioles empty-handed. I’m afraid of wondering what could have been. I’m afraid of the Nationals winning another World Series before I ever get to see the Orioles win one.

But it’s so much more fun to believe.

As I wrote earlier, the Orioles are still very flawed. The roster isn’t deep enough and their general manager probably shouldn’t be around next year.

Forget all of that. The O’s have won six straight. They have 101 remaining chances to make up 7.5 games in the standings. Anything can happen.

Why not believe in the Birds? I’m choosing to cling to that 3.8% chance of making the playoffs and watch it steadily grow over the summer.

And even if the Orioles do go back to losing and finish the year in last place, I still have Jayden Daniels to look forward to in the fall.

(Editor’s note: I apologize for taking so long to write my first post on here. Thanks for your patience — I hope this 1,200 word reflection on the Orioles doesn’t dissuade you from coming back to read more in the future. I’ll posting here at least once per week going forward, and if there’s ever a specific topic or anything you’d like me to write about, I’d love to hear it. Let’s have some fun!)