For a little longer than five minutes, general manager Mike Elias rattled off the injury prognosis for several Orioles players. He needed a piece of paper to keep them all straight — seven starting pitchers, one reliever, one outfielder, and two minor league prospects.

The updates epitomized the state of baseball currently, but it also shined a light on one of the reasons the Orioles have begun the season slowly.

“Is it a factor in our slow record to start the year? Yes,” Elias, Baltimore’s general manager, said. “Is it an excuse or a totality of the reason? No.”

There are plenty of other factors at play, including the league-worst 5.30 ERA for Baltimore’s starting pitchers entering Tuesday. The offense has been hit or miss. And, of course, the Orioles are without many of the players they hoped to have at this point.

Still, Elias echoed what many of his players have expressed in recent days. They have played only 15 games out 162. The outlook for October is far from set, and Elias maintains that the Orioles are headed for a strong remainder of the campaign.

“Everybody has a ton of injuries nowadays, but we’ve had more than our fair share of injuries,” Elias said. “Didn’t have Gunnar [Henderson] for the early part of the season; he’s just getting going. So there’s a lot there. But yeah, overall, would like to have a better record at this point, and there’s a couple of close games that we feel like we could have won. But still see an enormous level of talent in this team. Still see a playoff team. We’re going to keep pushing away and working to get things back into place, to the degree that they aren’t in place, and doing everything we can across the organization to improve things and improve our record, and I think it’s going to happen.”

The extended volatility from one night to the next extends beyond the first 15 games this season (although, fittingly, they’ve yet to win two consecutive games in 2025). Since June 20, 2024, the Orioles are 48-56.

The healthy return for several key players might help. Elias offered the following updates:

• RHP Zach Eflin (mild lat strain) will begin playing catch in a few days. Elias is hopeful his injured list stint will “be measured more in weeks than in months.”
• RHP Grayson Rodriguez (sore triceps/elbow) has thrown two bullpens, including one with off-speed pitches. He has another scheduled this week. Elias said he wasn’t ready to pin Rodriguez with an exact timetable, considering there’s “a lot ahead of us” in Rodriguez’s buildup.
• RHP Albert Suárez (strained subscapularis muscle) is in the healing phase. He’s still weeks away from playing catch, and his return will be “much later in the season,” Elias said.
• RHP Andrew Kittredge (knee surgery) is progressing well. He could face live batters in a controlled setting late this month, and Elias figured Kittredge could be in a position to return before the end of May.
• RHP Kyle Bradish (elbow surgery) threw his first bullpen since last year’s elbow surgery last week. He could return in the latter half of the summer.
• RHP Tyler Wells (elbow surgery) hasn’t thrown off a mound yet but is close behind Bradish. Elias said the Orioles expect Wells back “well before the end of the season.”
• LHP Trevor Rogers (knee dislocation) has thrown multiple bullpens and will face live hitters in Florida next week. He could be in the mix for a return from injury before the end of May.
• RHP Chayce McDermott (lat strain) is on a similar timeline as Rogers, with a live bullpen session scheduled next week. He’s also a candidate to return by the end of May.
• OF Colton Cowser (fractured thumb) has a target date of late May or early June to return.
• OF Enrique Bradfield Jr. (mild hamstring strain) underwent an MRI after he pulled up while running the bases for Double-A Bowie on Thursday. Elias said it’s “not a huge deal,” but it will require a few weeks to heal. The prospect could return to games in mid-May.
• C Samuel Basallo (elbow soreness/hamstring pull) will return to the Triple-A Norfolk lineup as the designated hitter in a couple weeks. Elias is hopeful Basallo will catch at some point in May.

“We’ve just got a lot of guys injured right now,” Elias said. “Can’t wait to get a number of them back, hopefully all of them back.”

The injuries leave an opening in Baltimore’s rotation Friday or Saturday. The most likely call-up would be right-hander Brandon Young, who was transferred from Triple-A Norfolk to High-A Aberdeen on Tuesday. The transfer keeps him closer to Baltimore; Norfolk is playing this week in Omaha, Nebraska.

The need for Young this early in the season showcases the rapidly deteriorating starting staff.

“On the pitching staff side, I feel like we’ve already tapped into, basically, the depth,” Elias said. “To say that on April 15 was not the plan. Obviously, we knew Bradish was going to be out. But to have Grayson and Eflin on the shelf simultaneously this quickly into the season, at no point were we forecasting that, or expecting that. And that’s just the truth. We’ve also had a number of the depth starters go down during spring training or very late into the winter time, so there’s a combination of things that I think just speak to the unpredictable nature of pitching.”

Those are challenges that might exist even if the Orioles went out and signed an ace. But looking at the state of the rotation doesn’t inspire confidence in Baltimore’s chances of turning its season around immediately.

Still, as Elias and others emphasized, there are many months remaining in the season. And while the Orioles are three games below .500, the other teams in the American League East haven’t gotten off to rip-roaring starts, either.

“We’re going to push ahead, we’re going to get as healthy as possible,” Elias said. “The guys who aren’t performing the way they’re used to, we’re going to get them on track, and we’ll see where we’re at here a little later this season.”