TORONTO -- For those American League Wild Card hopefuls wishing the Orioles would help their fate this weekend, the final day of the regular season came and went with disappointment. Instead, Baltimore fell flat in its final series, finishing the second-losingest season in franchise history with a sweep via Sunday afternoon’s 12-4 loss to the Blue Jays in Game 162.

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“It’s been a tough year,” manager Brandon Hyde said. “I liked to see our young players continue to get better. That’s the bottom line. Cedric Mullins, Ryan Mountcastle, Tyler Wells, Austin Hays, I think watching these guys, they can be core pieces. I think that’s the real bright spot in a year that has not been easy in a lot of ways.”

As the Orioles begin to look ahead, those individual developments will remain the focus for an organization expecting top prospects Adley Rutschman and Grayson Rodriguez to debut in 2022 as the keys to the club's emerging core. That the O's finished 52-110 -- one game worse than Hyde and general manager Mike Elias’ first season in ‘19 -- masked how in three years, the organization’s talent base seems to be improving.

At the big league level, Mullins burst onto the scene as one of the game’s premier leadoff hitters and a down-ballot AL MVP Award candidate. Mountcastle owns the franchise rookie home run record and is in the mix for the AL Rookie of the Year Award. Trey Mancini’s inspiring return from Stage 3 colon cancer proved one of the game’s best stories, and John Means’ May 5 no-hitter provided the club’s primary highlight. Hays, Anthony Santander and Wells look like winning players. Baltimore’s farm system ranks as the best in baseball.

“As a team, obviously our record isn’t where it needs to be,” Mancini said. “We have a long way to go. But a lot of really good things happened this year, and a lot of guys made names for themselves. That’s my biggest takeaway from the season. We have a core group forming in the lineup, and that’s really big, having continuity there. As the season went on, we really gelled together. I’m looking forward to being back with all these guys next year.”

The Orioles struggled to historic proportions on the mound, endured a 19-game and a 14-game losing streak, and drew their fewest fans since 1965. They finished the year with a 5.84 ERA, the highest in team history and the ninth highest by any team in the modern era. They surrendered 258 home runs, tied for the fifth most in a season (the '19 O’s hold the record with 305). They used a franchise-record 42 pitchers and came three runs away from becoming the third team in MLB history to play to a minus-300 run differential.

Those dubious distinctions helped Baltimore earn the top overall pick in next year’s Draft, its second in four years. The Orioles did so by virtue of Arizona’s 5-4 win over the Rockies on Sunday, winning the second tiebreaker over the D-backs by virtue of Baltimore’s worse 2019 record.

To that end, Sunday’s loss could’ve been any of the 110 the Orioles endured to contenders like the Blue Jays, who were eliminated from postseason contention when both the Yankees and Red Sox won. Rookie left-hander Bruce Zimmermann could not get out of the first inning, and Toronto homered three times against Baltimore’s bullpen to pile on. Tyler Nevin’s 442-foot solo homer served as one of the O’s few highlights, the longest first career tater by an Oriole since Statcast began tracking in 2015.

Throughout the year, Hyde pointed to clubs with young, productive cores like the Blue Jays as examples of the type of team the Orioles might turn into. He also stressed the difficulty of doing so in the AL East, which Baltimore was routinely reminded of. It’s true that Toronto -- as well as Tampa Bay, Boston and others -- endured dark periods in the recent past before blossoming into contenders. But the O's are the first AL East team to rebuild on such a scale.

Three years in, the Orioles aren’t ready to jump with both feet into free agency, meaning 2022 will likely mark another development season. But perhaps it’ll bring with it more urgency, once Rutschman, Rodriguez and others arrive. What’s certain is that the roster will turn over extensively in the months to come. The O's don’t have a player signed to a guaranteed contract for '22, and they could have as large as an eight-player arbitration class, in addition to potentially exploring trades for Means and Mancini, among others. More than anything, those decisions will signal their direction for '22 and beyond.

“We have a lot of work to do in a lot of areas, and we just want to continue to get better,” Hyde said. “I’m excited about some of our young guys who I think could be core pieces going forward on a good team, and we’ll have players making debuts next year, also. We’ll have some exciting players. We’ll be young, but I think we’re starting to get more talented, and for me, that’s the key.”