Added 2024 opponent - expectations

Maybe even the Pecota projection system will expect the Orioles to be good in the 2024 season. Yeah, crazy talk, I know.

When the 2024 season begins the Orioles will have an opponent that is hard to define and one that has no win-loss record or playoff appearances. There are no advanced stats or metrics for it. It is expectations.

For the first time in a long time the team will be expected to do well and maybe even favored to win the AL East. This is uncharted territory for the Orioles in recent years.

Even the 2023 team, which had a stated goal to take the 83 wins from the year before, build on that and make the playoffs, had plenty of doubters.

Go back to March and the oddsmakers listing their over and under numbers – a number for bettors to wager whether the team would go over or under that win total. Coming off 83 wins, the O’s over-under via many outlets was 76.5 wins.

Among AL East teams, that was lowest number going into 2023 with the Yankees at 93.5, Toronto at 91.5, Tampa Bay at 88.5 and Boston at 78.5. Based on that the O’s would finish last. Instead, they won 101 games and finished first.

Heading into 2023, the Pecota projections, which often miss big on the Orioles, listed the Orioles to win 74 games. Again they won 101. The year before Pecota had the O’s at 61 and they won 83.

From 2012 to 2016, a five-year run where the Orioles made three playoff appearances and won one AL East title, Pecota each year projected the Orioles for between 72 and 79 wins. Not even a winning season!

I say Pecota should just punt on the 2024 Orioles. Baseball Prospectus should announce projections for 29 teams and that they have given up trying to project the Orioles. 

I’m sure next year, as always pretty much, there will be predictions and projections that Birdland will not be fond of for the 2024 Orioles. But can even Pecota project a losing record now?

In the quiet of the O’s postgame clubhouse after they lost Game 3 of the American League Division Series, outfielder Austin Hays sized up the club’s future outlook well. He talked about how far they have come and what it might mean moving forward.

"We grew a lot last year (2022) in the summer months. Everything about the organization turned around completely and it filtered right into this season. We were able to win our division, so going into next year that is what we are going to expect out of ourselves. Now we have turned the tables here and we expect to win. To get back here next year and make a run all the way to the end," Hays said.

They expect to win next year and make a deep postseason run. Guess who else expects that? Just about all of Birdland. They can’t say they don’t have playoff experience anymore. They can’t say they can’t win the AL East. They can’t say 100 wins is not within reach. They can’t say they can’t beat the Yankees, Red Sox, Rays and Jays.

The expectations could at times next year, be burdensome.

At a time when any stretch of games, even a series or two, produces more losses than wins, there are overreactions to that. Expectations makes it worse.

In addition to trying to handle the long season, battle the injuries and player slumps that invariably always come, not to mention teams like Tampa Bay, Toronto, New York and Boston, the 2024 Orioles will battle high expectations as well.