Through the first month and a half of the 2025 season, the Baltimore Orioles’ pitching struggles have begun to feel like a broken record — one that gets more distorted with every passing game. What once looked like a fringe playoff hopeful now looks like a team adrift, clinging to a rotation with no identity or direction. In fact, if there’s a plan in place, they’re doing a remarkable job of hiding it.

After dropping a series to the Kansas City Royals and getting swept by a Minnesota Twins team that was allergic to winning before they welcomed Baltimore to town, the Orioles find themselves dead last in the AL East. The O’s are no longer sniffing a .500 record, and their negative run differential is less a red flag and more a flashing siren. Even when their pitching staff isn’t imploding, the offense isn’t doing enough to save face. And when the bats do come alive, the arms can’t hold a lead. It’s a vicious cycle.

But perhaps most damning of all is what the data says. Baltimore ranks 28th in Major League Baseball in average four-seam fastball velocity (vFA), sitting at just 93.2 mph. The only teams below them are the Washington Nationals (93.1) and the Miami Marlins (92.3) — who, not coincidentally, also rank among the league’s worst in ERA.

The Orioles currently own the league’s worst home run rate allowed at 1.63 home runs per nine innings. These metrics all point to the same uncomfortable truth. Soft-tossing pitchers with limited pitch separation are getting clobbered.

The Orioles’ pitching plan is no plan at all

This isn’t piling on Orioles fans — it’s a reality check. Velocity may not be everything in today’s game, but in an era driven by power and spin, it’s what’s necessary to compete. Without it, you’d better have a wickedly deceptive pitch mix or elite command. The Orioles have neither.

Tomoyuki Sugano has been the lone bright spot in the rotation, largely because of his six-pitch arsenal and willingness to use it. But he doesn’t generate swings and misses — his K-rate sits at a concerning 13.3 percent, meaning regression is likely.

Meanwhile, Charlie Morton and Dean Kremer are offering nothing but soft, predictable offspeed junk. And while young upstart Cade Povich shows flashes of upside — his changeup holds batters to a .143 average — his hesitancy to rely on it makes his other pitches meatballs. Opponents are hitting over .300 on everything but his sweeper, and even that sits at a pedestrian .286.

Fans are already clamoring for Brandon Young and Chayce McDermott to join the fray. They may soon get their wish, but it’s foolish to expect them to rescue the rotation. Both prospects feature fastballs that touch 94 mph and have decent pitch usage profiles, but neither has shown consistent enough command of their secondaries to suggest they’ll break the mold. Inserting them would more than likely recycle the same problem, just with different names.

Baltimore’s rotation collapse calls for a page from Milwaukee’s playbook

If the Orioles are looking for a blueprint to break this pattern, they should turn their eyes to Milwaukee. The Brewers began their season in a similar fashion — short on velocity and buried in runs. Then they promoted Chad Patrick from their Triple-A affiliate, a forgotten name with a heater that touches 95.1 mph. His debut didn’t just halt the bleeding; it flipped the tone in the clubhouse. That one injection of velocity helped stabilize the rotation and allowed the Brewers to recalibrate. Sometimes, it’s that simple — bring the heat and force opponents to adjust.

The Orioles have two choices, and neither is attractive if urgency isn’t a priority. They can continue to wait. Wait for Zach Eflin to return, though he won’t provide the velocity punch they need. Wait for Grayson Rodriguez to recover from a lat strain, though there’s still no timetable. Wait for the rotation to somehow figure it out. But if waiting was going to fix this, it would’ve worked already.

Or they can act. That means targeting a frontline starter with legitimate swing-and-miss stuff. A high-spin, mid-to-upper-90s type who can anchor the rotation and allow the softer-throwing arms around him to survive on sequencing and deception. That move should’ve happened in the offseason. It absolutely has to happen now.

Otherwise, the Orioles will stay in their freefall into the same basement occupied by the Marlins, Nationals, Angels, and White Sox. And if you’ve watched any of those teams lately, you know exactly where that road leads.