Injuries and poor performance have ravaged the starting rotation. It’s not one or two problem spots, it’s everything.

Our worst baseball fears have been realized. The Orioles starting rotation is a disaster. It’s the worst group in Major League Baseball, and no other team is particularly close. Even worse than that? There’s not much that can be done about it at this point.

During the offseason, Mike Elias and the Orioles’ front office reportedly made a push to re-sign Corbin Burnes. When that didn’t pan out, they pivoted to a focus on depth. That landed them with Tomoyuki Sugano and Charlie Morton as their rotational reinforcements, while Kyle Gibson was also added at the very end of spring training.

Sugano has been a mixed bag that has produced solid top line results (3.43 ERA), but possesses scary peripherals (3.43 K/9, 6.41 xERA) that are probably going to poke their head above the surface at some point. Despite that, Sugano is still the team’s best healthy starter at the moment.

Morton has no such positives to point to. His 10.89 ERA is the worst in MLB among pitchers with 11 or more innings thrown this season. He has a ridiculous 2.226 WHIP and over 20.2 innings has walked 15 batters. It’s all been bad.

While Morton is the team’s worst offender, it’s not as if the rest of the current rotation has been tremendous. Dean Kremer and Cade Povich both have ERAs in the mid-6s, and each of them has had just one good start in four tries.

On most teams, at least one of those four would be pushed aside for another internal option. The Orioles just don’t have much to choose from right now.

Injuries have taken a serious toll on the depth that the Orioles thought they built up over the winter. The team already knew that Kyle Bradish and Tyler Wells would be out until the second half of the season following elbow surgery. They were joined on the shelf during the offseason by Chayce McDermott (lat strain) and Trevor Rogers (knee subluxation).

Since spring training started, the Orioles have gotten nothing but bad news on the pitching front. Zach Eflin is out until May with a lat strain. Albert Suárez won’t be back until June or so with a right subscapularis strain. And on top of it all, Grayson Rodriguez’s entire season is in question. The former top prospect began the season on the IL with elbow discomfort. He has since experienced shoulder issues, and is currently seeking an ominous second opinion.

Brandon Young represented one of the few healthy and viable internal options the club had. They brought him up over the weekend for his MLB debut.

That went…OK. The 26-year-old only lasted four innings, but kept the O’s close in a game they ultimately won. Are the Orioles confident in him pitching every fifth game? Their confidence could be irrelevant to their needs. For now, Young was optioned back to Norfolk after the game to give them an extra bullpen arm

Gibson will probably be up sometime soon. His contract has a May 1 opt out if he isn’t with the big league club. His most recent start down in the minors was good. He lasted five innings and allowed just one earned run, albeit at High-A Aberdeen. But even if the 37-year-old Gibson can be the guy that he was in St. Louis last year (4.24 ERA over 169.2 innings), it’s akin to putting a band aid on a broken leg.

The Orioles don’t have one or two problem spots in the rotation. It’s the whole unit. Even if Gibson is an improvement, he wouldn’t even be replacing anyone right now. He would simply be slotting into the empty spot that exists because of the injury list.

It seems like May will at least bring the Orioles some options. Eflin resumed throwing on April 16, and he shouldn’t need a huge ramp up period, since that represented only a week off. McDermott and Rogers are essentially just starting their spring training routines. That puts them in position to be big league ready by the end of next month.

While it’s nice to have options, Eflin is the only one that is a clear and obvious upgrade. McDermott has oodles of potential, but still needs to prove it on the big league stage. Rogers feels like a pet project for Elias. Once upon a time he was good, but that was four seasons ago, and he was dreadful for the Orioles last year.

And who is to say that even more injuries won’t befall the Orioles by the time some of these potential reinforcements are fit to pitch? We might all be clamoring for the 2021 version of Matt Harvey before it’s all said and done. Just give me someone that can survive 4-5 ugly innings every time out!

If it was June or July, trades could be avenue to add. But right now, that market is quiet. Teams are still trying to figure out their plans. That’s not to say you can’t go and pull something off, but good luck being the lone team on the hunt with a rotation that is bleeding. Any team with a pitcher to deal is going to ask for the moon. Elias has never been one to pay top dollar.

The only sliver of hope the Orioles have is if the healthy pitchers they do have start to play to their career averages. Morton, Kremer, and (eventually) Gibson are 4-4.50 ERA guys.

They need to pitch like it. Once Eflin is back, they need him to be the guy he has been the entire time he has donned an Orioles uniform (2.70 ERA over 73.1 innings). Pair that with Sugano continuing to tip top around hard contact and you have the mediocre, but competitive, rotation that Elias was hoping for.

That would buy the Orioles enough time to get to the trade deadline, where they can seek upgrades and give this team the type of rotation they need to actually make a postseason run.

But all of that feels like a pipe dream. July is eons away. Morton is getting worse, not better. And even if the rotation can be passable, that would require the offense to be consistently productive in order to the team to succeed. To this point, that have not shown an ability to do that.

It’s a nightmare scenario that could sink the Orioles season before summer even arrives.