NEW YORK — During the final series of a season that has realistically been over for months, catcher Adley Rutschman shifted his attention to what comes next.

“Next year, I hope everybody comes back inspired, ready to go,” he said.

That sounded similar to what Orioles players said after being swept out of the playoffs in 2023 and 2024. They told fans the fire had been sparked and they’d stoke it into a blaze.

“I’m going to be sitting at home miserable tomorrow. I came here to win, and I’m going home today.”

Orioles bench coach Robinson Chirinos

But after this season familiar messages about growth don’t land the same way. Robinson Chirinos, the team’s bench coach who was a player just a few years ago, knows that much. No matter what Orioles players are saying now, he hopes they’ll feel something more visceral when they get home and reflect on the season.

“Players, coaches, front office, if we’re going home and we’re sitting at home and we’re pissed watching these guys and others playing in the postseason, I believe we’re going to do everything we can to get back to the postseason and win a championship,” Chirinos said. “That’s where everything starts.”

Chirinos, certainly, is pissed.

“If they’re at home tomorrow and they’re happy and they’re going out on vacation feeling good about this year, then that’s something they have to evaluate as a player, as a coach, as a front office member and maybe make some adjustments, tell yourself that’s not the right thing,” continued Chirinos, who remains under contract next season, according to a source with direct knowledge. “I’m going to be sitting at home miserable tomorrow. I came here to win, and I’m going home today.”

Chirinos said it most overtly, but many within the Orioles clubhouse echoed the feeling. This sucked, to put in plainly. But, as many prepare to disperse across the country, there is a positive spin players at least tell themselves — perhaps as a way to stomach the indigestion-worthy results of 2025.

It begins with hope. For real progress, it can’t end there.

“We should all show up to spring training excited. And the fans, I think, should be excited,” infielder Jordan Westburg said. “Sure, there’s going to be expectations we have to live up to. We certainly didn’t do that this year. But we accept that. I’m not going to sit here and say the fans were wrong for expecting more than what they got. No, they were right. If you looked at us after the past two years, we expected to play better. But we didn’t.

“So, ultimately, it’s going to come down to playing better next year, and how that happens is still to be seen, but I’m sure the guys in here are mature enough to reflect and to work and to come back hungry, excited, motivated, whatever you want to call it, whatever gets them ticking. But it’ll be a fun time.”

It will only be fun if the Orioles learn from this, however. The failures of 2025 began well before opening day, when director of baseball operations Mike Elias supplemented a roster that clearly needed pitching help with the likes of Charlie Morton, Tomoyuki Sugano and Kyle Gibson — none of whom finished with more than 1.2 wins above replacement.

His two best signings — outfielder Ramón Laureano and right-hander Andrew Kittredge — had reasonable contract options for next season. Instead, Elias traded them in July for prospects. And outfielder Tyler O’Neill, the first Oriole who received a multiyear free-agent contract from Elias, spent more time injured than active.

For all the talk within the clubhouse of a positive future because of the young core still intact, that young core needs to perform at a higher level. The offense stumbled to the finish line. No team scored fewer runs than Baltimore after Aug. 1. The regression of Gunnar Henderson, Colton Cowser, Rutschman, Westburg and more varies from minor to major. Either way, they all need to perform if Baltimore is to return to the postseason.

“Priority No. 1 here this winter is grabbing that group of young hitters and getting them back on track,” said interim manager Tony Mansolino, whose status for next season remains unclear.

Asked what he will take from this season, Henderson said he will “learn from what went wrong in the season. … If you don’t, then what’d you go through it for?”

Henderson’s OPS was about 100 percentage points lower this year than in 2024. Cowser’s OPS dropped to .654. Rutschman finished at .673. Jackson Holliday ended at .689, and while Westburg’s .770 OPS was roughly the same as a year ago, he missed ample time through injury.

Injuries impacted Rutschman and Cowser, too. The lineup was consistently inconsistent, and that can’t be completely discounted when considering what went wrong.

“As young guys get more time up here and we find that cohesiveness and that glue that sticks everything together, that’s where I think you get a lot more of that cohesive baseball out there,” said right-hander Tyler Wells, who missed most of the season as he recovered from elbow surgery. “That’s what happened in ’23. We were very fortunate in ’23 to have very few injuries, and you saw exactly what we did.”

Wells compared this season to 2022, the year Baltimore broke out of its rebuild to finish above .500 and spark hope. That hope materialized into 101 wins and 91 wins in 2023 and 2024, respectively, yet those seasons ended with postseason sweeps.

“We have a lot of young guys who are still trying to find their way,” Wells said. “We have a lot of big-time prospects, and some of them came up and did really well, and some of them had a tough time. Then next year [2023] they came out, and everyone just meshed together. All of a sudden, you create something special. That’s why it’s such a positive outlook for what we can take into the offseason that allows us to continue to refine ourselves, refine our own approaches, but also refine our mindsets as teammates and what we want to continue to do.”

The sentiment is admirable. But what Wells may have discounted in that comparison is the full context of where this franchise should be in 2025 compared to 2022. This marked the first time in Orioles history the club went from winning 90 or more games to finishing last in its division.

This is not a nascent team. They’re still young, but the players have been bloodied by the rigors of the major leagues.

In 2022, when the Orioles played with house money because there were no expectations, there was more freedom. This year, there was more tension in the clubhouse, even if players are reluctant to admit it.

“I think maybe two really good years, two really successful years, in a way kind of gave people this sense of, ‘OK, there’s high expectations but we handled them two years in a row, so we’ll handle them again this year,’” Westburg said. “And then, when we didn’t handle them, the panic button is pressed.”

He quickly walked that back, though.

“I’m not even going to say that’s what happened because we just had so many injuries. We had bad luck. We didn’t play well,” Westburg said.

Added Wells: “Unfortunately, with the injuries we’ve had the last two years, that’s not provided any consistency for anyone. Whenever you’re not a consistent team, or you’re struggling to find consistency in the lineup or rotation or bullpen, whatever it may end up being, it’s very difficult to end up feeling like you’re getting on a hot streak.”

Even with that, Baltimore played better after its disastrous beginning that prompted the firing of manager Brandon Hyde in May. In Milwaukee later that month, Mansolino held a team meeting.

During it, sources said, he didn’t pretend the situation was rosy. Mansolino acknowledged at the time that he may well be fired at the end of this, but in order for any of them to consider themselves worthy of Major League Baseball, everyone needed to step up.

Such meetings weren’t exclusive to Mansolino. There were several of them before Hyde was fired, often led by the beleaguered manager himself. But what players found admirable about Mansolino — although they are quick to emphasize this isn’t an indictment of Hyde’s direction — were his honesty and willingness to criticize players to their faces. The tough love was well received.

“He knows when to push and when to encourage,” Rutschman said. “He’s got good feel for relationships with people and the way he goes about his business.”

The rallying calls from the coaching staff helped prod the Orioles to a more respectable finish, even with a trade-deadline sell-off. In the final 112 games, the Orioles were 59-53. That’s not exceptional, but it signals an upswing that breeds confidence.

“We are still exciting young players,” Westburg said. “We are not the 30-year-old team that has experience in the postseason and in a way can maybe will themselves there. In a way, you’re going to have to stick with us. I know people don’t like to hear that, but, like, everybody’s still learning.”

Added outfielder Dylan Beavers, who was here for only about a month: “If this team stays healthy, there are good players on this team. I feel like we have been playing well recently, besides a couple games. If every guy, one through nine, is trying to take selfless at-bats, help try to scratch across a run, I think we’ll be fine.”

The Orioles will only be fine if they make serious developments this offseason. Chirinos rightly pointed out that the improved fortunes for the team coincided with the improvement of the pitching staff rather than the offense, with Trevor Rogers an especially bright spot.

“Our hitting was not there most part of the year,” Chirinos said.

Baltimore’s line-drive rate was the lowest of any big league team. The Orioles entered Sunday’s finale with a .215 average and an OPS of .651, both the second-lowest marks in MLB.

“If the whole players have credit, the pitching side has most of the credit, because we played a lot better because those guys pitched a lot better,” Chirinos said.

In end-of-season meetings between Mansolino and players, and during a teamwide meeting Saturday, the interim manager emphasized the need to get the offense fixed. That’s part of the honesty players have come to enjoy.

Westburg noted that the fine margins of a baseball season have been apparent for some time, and they’ve only been reinforced this season.

“You can’t take anything for granted,” he said. “The moment you do and the moment you think you’ve arrived, or the moment you think you’re too good for one thing or another, this or that, you’re going to get punched in the face. Now I’m not saying we did that this year, but there’s certainly, my hope for a lot of the guys in this clubhouse, old and young, is that nobody gets complacent with being a big leaguer and the grind and the commitment that it takes.”

Still, Mansolino said he didn’t “think that the world should be lit on fire because we’ve had a bad year.”

That’s all well and good. But, if there’s no directional change in personnel, management or philosophy, how can the team avoid a repeat of this dismal season? The Orioles said many of the right things in the final days of the season. They took ownership of what occurred. But, until there’s a vision for how to fix this, words only do so much.

This is a pivotal winter. There’s nowhere to hide — and that goes for players, coaches, the front office staff and the ownership group.

If 2025 is an anomaly, fine.

If 2026 proves to be more of the same, then did Baltimore really look in the mirror and improve?

“This is a team effort getting back to the postseason and winning a championship,” Chirinos said. “It’s the front office, the coaches, the players. It’s everybody pulling the same way, being in the same boat, and hopefully we open champagne next November as we win a championship.”