Four position players, three starting pitchers, and four relievers. Those are the 11 players that currently comprise Baltimore’s injured list. 

Not all stints are created equal. Of the four position players on the IL, two, Jackson Holliday and Jordan Westburg, are everyday players. Ryan Helsley and Félix Bautista, at their healthy best, are good enough to close games for most teams around the league. Trevor Rogers, Zach Eflin and Dean Kremer could start for most, too. 

This is far from the first season in recent history that the Orioles have dealt with an abundance of injuries. Just a year ago, for example, the team infamously used seven catchers, with just one playing over 40 games. With an injured list this lengthy, coming off a season marred by missed time, it’s easy to wonder if Baltimore is uniquely plagued by the injury bug. 

Let’s put that theory to the test. 

As of Sunday’s games, Baltimore ranked fifth in baseball, tied with four others, with 11 players on the injured list. The Astros led the way with 14, followed by the Tigers and Dodgers at 13 and the Mets with 12. The Mets’ struggles have been well documented, with the worst record in the National League, and the Astros are seven games below .500 with the third-worst record in the AL. After a slow start, the Tigers have worked their way back in the standings, and the Dodgers are the Dodgers. 

The Orioles, at 15-19, are middle-of-the-pack results wise. 

The Pirates have just one player, starter Jared Jones, on their injured list, and have enjoyed a pleasantly surprising 19-16  start to the season. The same can be said for the 20-16 Cardinals, who have just two players on the IL and are two games back of the Cubs for the NL Central lead. The Guardians and Athletics, each with just three injured players, lead their respective divisions. 

Clearly, a clean bill of health makes a difference, and has correlated more closely to positive results than a long injured list has to negative ones. But there’s more to the IL than just the total number of players. 

The Orioles have four relievers on the injured list, tied for fifth-most, but that group doesn’t seem to correlate much to team success. The Dodgers, Cubs and Rays are among the clubs with more bullpen injuries than Baltimore, and they’ve each reached the 20-win benchmark. 

The O’s among the many teams with three starting pitchers on the IL. In fact, 20 teams have lost at least three potential rotation members, with a dozen missing exactly three. The Red Sox, Astros and Blue Jays each have a whopping six starters on the injured list, and, unsurprisingly, have all underperformed.

Losing players like Garrett Crochet, Hunter Brown and José Berríos, along with the valuable depth behind them, can have that impact. Houston has the second-worst starter ERA in baseball, while Boston and Toronto are each among the 12 worst teams in the league in that metric. The O’s are fifth-worst. 

Finally, Baltimore’s four position player injuries are tied for fourth-most. Each team with at least four injuries, save perhaps the White Sox and Diamondbacks, has underperformed their early-season expectations. 

Given the breakdown of the data, it’s fair to say that injuries to starters and position players have, in general, correlated to negative results. It’s important to note that this process of data collection is not perfect, as injured players have varying talent levels, injury severity, quality replacements, etc., and this is just a snapshot of time. 

Individual injuries certainly make a difference, but they, too, are a case-by-case basis. The Astros and Mets are surely impacted more than others, missing their franchise shortstops in Jeremy Peña and Francisco Lindor while ranking in the top-five in total injuries. The Dodgers are an exception, with star Mookie Betts on the injured list among a dozen others, but the Dodgers are the games’ exception in general. Only time will tell how the Braves, the class of the NL, will fare without Ronald Acuña Jr., who recently became their 11th member of the IL. 

While Westburg, Rogers, Helsley and Bautista may not carry the same star power as that group, they have combined to appear in five All-Star games. 

Baltimore is also among the seven teams in the league to be missing at least three players from each position group. Those seven clubs have found varying success, ranging from New York’s 12 wins to Atlanta’s 25. 

At least for the 30-plus games in 2026, the Orioles are not alone in their injury struggles, nor are they isolated in the mixed bag of results that have come with it. An injury-free season has strongly correlated to team success, but an injury-plagued one hasn’t necessarily correlated to struggles. 

Baltimore’s injury problems aren’t particularly uncommon, but their troubles in a muddy American League aren’t either. Still just three games back of the third-best record in the AL, the O’s have plenty of time to reverse their fortunes.