BALTIMORE (AP) — If the second half of 2024 was a reality check for the Baltimore Orioles — their first real stretch of mediocrity since they became contenders again — the start of this season is a near-crisis.
This young Baltimore team experienced very little failure while winning 101 games in 2023, but now the Orioles are well aware of what baseball's more humbling side feels like.
“I think we’re getting a little more familiar (with adversity) than we wanted to be," general manager Mike Elias said before Friday night's 3-0 win over Kansas City.
Elias met with reporters to address his team's 12-18 record in April. The Orioles aren't just in last place in the AL East, they also had the worst run differential in the American League before Friday's game.
The young core of hitters that was so fearsome early last year has struggled mightily in 2025. Elias has reason to view that as a temporary blip, but the other main culprit this year — the collapse of the starting rotation — might be harder to fix.
Zach Eflin, Grayson Rodriguez and Albert Suarez are on the injured list and Dean Kremer took a 7.04 ERA into Friday's start before breaking through with seven scoreless innings. Tomoyuki Sugano has been fine, but Charlie Morton is 0-6 with a 9.45 ERA and will work out of the bullpen for now. Kyle Gibson allowed homers to four of the first five batters Tuesday in his first big league start of the season.
“It is difficult to contend with that level of injuries, but even that aside, they’ve had a poor start, and that’s my responsibility. I’m in charge of baseball operations," Elias said. "When we have a bad record to start the year, that’s my responsibility.”
Elias opened himself up to second-guessing in the offseason when the Orioles lost Corbin Burnes to free agency and he gave one-year contracts to Sugano, Morton and Gibson. One-year deals are usually considered pretty safe — even if they work out badly, they expire quickly. But Baltimore committed over $33 million to that trio, so if they keep performing this poorly as a group it would constitute a real misuse of resources.
In fairness, a rotation of Rodriguez, Eflin, Sugano, Kremer and Cade Povich could have been serviceable — with Kyle Bradish and Tyler Wells expected back at some point from elbow surgery — but the injuries to Eflin and Rodriguez have forced Morton and Gibson to produce, and thus far they haven't.
Baltimore's 5.47 ERA entering Friday ranked 29th among the 30 teams, lower than only Miami’s 5.89.
The Orioles did manage to take two of three from the first-place New York Yankees earlier this week, but even that required a pair of one-run wins sandwiched around a 15-3 loss. There have simply been too many games in which Baltimore finds itself way behind because of poor pitching.
“Nobody’s happy with how we’ve performed so far. We have higher expectations for ourselves," manager Brandon Hyde said. "I talk with Mike multiple times a day. We’re not satisfied in the least bit. We know our team can play better than we have.”
Elias said he remains confident in Hyde.
"When things are going great — and they have at times here, we’ve had that — and then when we’re experiencing failure, it’s really important in that job and in my job too to be consistent with your approach," Elias said. "He’s doing that.”
Eflin (lat strain) and reliever Andrew Kittredge (knee) are expected to make minor league rehab appearances Sunday, and Elias said Rodriguez (elbow inflammation) might be able to throw by the end of this month.
“We are all working very hard and we have a lot of faith in this very talented group," Elias said. "Piece by piece, step by step, we're going to get guys healthier, we're going to get guys performing more to their norms. If there's something we can fix with a player, we're working on that.”
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Baltimore Orioles starting pitcher Kyle Gibson, right, reacts during a pitching change in the fourth inning of a baseball game against the New York Yankees, Tuesday, April 29, 2025, in Baltimore. (AP Photo/Stephanie Scarbrough)
Baltimore Orioles starting pitcher Charlie Morton, front, walks back to the dugout after he was pulled during the third inning of a baseball game against the Cincinnati Reds, Sunday, April 20, 2025, in Baltimore. (AP Photo/Nick Wass)
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Widening protests in Iran sparked by the Islamic Republic's ailing economy are putting new pressure on its theocracy.
Tehran is still reeling from a 12-day war launched by Israel in June that saw the United States bomb nuclear sites in Iran. Economic pressure, which has intensified since September when the United Nations reimposed sanctions on the country over its atomic program, has put Iran's rial currency into a free fall, now trading at some 1.4 million to $1.
Meanwhile, Iran's self-described “Axis of Resistance” — a coalition of countries and militant groups backed by Tehran — has been decimated in the years since the start of the Israel-Hamas war in 2023.
A threat by U.S. President Donald Trump warning Iran that if Tehran “violently kills peaceful protesters” the U.S. “will come to their rescue," has taken on new meaning after American troops captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, a longtime ally of Tehran. Iran has installed a banner in Tehran warning the United States and Israel that their soldiers could be killed if they take military action there.
Here's what to know about the protests and the challenges facing Iran's government.
Demonstrations have reached over 170 locations in 25 of Iran’s 31 provinces, the U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency reported early Sunday. The death toll had reached at least 15 killed, it added, with more than 580 arrests. The group, which relies on an activist network inside of Iran for its reporting, has been accurate in past unrest.
Understanding the scale of the protests has been difficult. Iranian state media has provided little information about the demonstrations. Online videos offer only brief, shaky glimpses of people in the streets or the sound of gunfire. Journalists in general in Iran also face limits on reporting such as requiring permission to travel around the country, as well as the threat of harassment or arrest by authorities.
But the protests do not appear to be stopping, even after Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Saturday said “rioters must be put in their place.”
The collapse of the rial has led to a widening economic crisis in Iran. Prices are up on meat, rice and other staples of the Iranian dinner table. The nation has been struggling with an annual inflation rate of some 40%.
In December, Iran introduced a new pricing tier for its nationally subsidized gasoline, raising the price of some of the world’s cheapest gas and further pressuring the population. Tehran may seek steeper price increases in the future, as the government now will review prices every three months.
The protests began first with merchants in Tehran before spreading. While initially focused on economic issues, the demonstrations soon saw protesters chanting anti-government statements as well. Anger has been simmering over the years, particularly after the 2022 death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in police custody that triggered nationwide demonstrations.
Iran's “Axis of Resistance," which grew in prominence in the years after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion and subsequent occupation of Iraq, is reeling.
Israel has crushed Hamas in the devastating war in the Gaza Strip. Hezbollah, the Shiite militant group in Lebanon, has seen its top leadership killed by Israel and has been struggling since. A lightning offensive in December 2024 overthrew Iran’s longtime stalwart ally and client in Syria, President Bashar Assad, after years of war there. Yemen's Iranian-backed Houthi rebels also have been pounded by Israeli and U.S. airstrikes.
Now Venezuelan ally Maduro is in U.S. custody. Iran’s Foreign Ministry has condemned the “illegal U.S. attack against Venezuela." U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth likened the attack to the U.S. strikes in Iran last year, saying that “Maduro had his chance, just like Iran had their chance.” He added that adversaries of the U.S. should “remain on notice” that “America can project our will anywhere, anytime.”
China meanwhile has remained a major buyer of Iranian crude oil, but hasn't provided overt military support. Neither has Russia, which has relied on Iranian drones in its war on Ukraine.
Iran has insisted for decades that its nuclear program is peaceful. However, its officials have increasingly threatened to pursue a nuclear weapon. Iran had been enriching uranium to near weapons-grade levels prior to the U.S. attack in June, making it the only country in the world without a nuclear weapons program to do so.
Tehran also increasingly cut back its cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog, as tensions increased over its nuclear program in recent years. The IAEA's director-general has warned Iran could build as many as 10 nuclear bombs, should it decide to weaponize its program.
U.S. intelligence agencies have assessed that Iran has yet to begin a weapons program, but has “undertaken activities that better position it to produce a nuclear device, if it chooses to do so.”
Iran recently said it was no longer enriching uranium at any site in the country, trying to signal to the West that it remains open to potential negotiations over its atomic program to ease sanctions. But there's been no significant talks in the months since the June war.
Iran decades ago was one of the United States’ top allies in the Mideast under Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who purchased American military weapons and allowed CIA technicians to run secret listening posts monitoring the neighboring Soviet Union. The CIA fomented a 1953 coup that cemented the shah’s rule.
But in January 1979, the shah, fatally ill with cancer, fled Iran as mass demonstrations swelled against his rule. Then came the Islamic Revolution led by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, which created Iran’s theocratic government.
Later that year, university students overran the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, seeking the shah’s extradition and sparking the 444-day hostage crisis that saw diplomatic relations between Iran and the U.S. severed.
During the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s, the U.S. backed Saddam Hussein. During that conflict, the U.S. launched a one-day assault that crippled Iran at sea as part of the so-called “Tanker War,” and later shot down an Iranian commercial airliner that the U.S. military said it mistook for a warplane.
Iran and the U.S. have seesawed between enmity and grudging diplomacy in the years since, and relations peaked with the 2015 nuclear deal, which saw Iran greatly limit its program in exchange for the lifting of sanctions. But Trump unilaterally withdrew America from the accord in 2018, sparking tensions in the Mideast that intensified after Hamas' Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel.
FILE - An Iranian security official in protective clothing walks through part of the Uranium Conversion Facility just outside the Iranian city of Isfahan, on March 30, 2005. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi, File)
FILE - A customer shops at a supermarket at a shopping mall in northern Tehran, on Sept. 28, 2025. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi, File)
FILE - Current and pre-revolution Iranian banknotes are displayed by a street money exchanger at Ferdowsi square, Tehran's go-to venue for foreign currency exchange, in downtown Tehran, Iran, on Aug. 28, 2025. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi, File)
FILE - People cross the Enqelab-e-Eslami (Islamic Revolution) street in Tehran, Iran, on Sept. 27, 2025. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi, File)
FILE - Protesters march on a bridge in Tehran, Iran, on Dec. 29, 2025. (Fars News Agency via AP, File)
People wave national flags during a ceremony commemorating the death anniversary of the late commander of the Iran's Revolutionary Guard expeditionary Quds Force, Gen. Qassem Soleimani, who was killed in a U.S. drone attack in 2020 in Iraq, at the Imam Khomeini grand mosque in Tehran, Iran, Thursday, Jan. 1, 2026. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)
