Baltimore fans will hear less of Jim Palmer’s iconic voice this season.

The Mid-Atlantic Sports Network has reduced the number of Orioles games Palmer will broadcast this season, a source with direct knowledge of the situation told The Baltimore Sun. The source asked to remain anonymous because the network has not announced the change.

An Orioles spokesperson said that Palmer’s two-year deal with MASN was signed in January 2024.

Palmer is normally contracted to call about 81 games — half of the Orioles’ schedule — but MASN has drastically reduced that to 50 in 2025, the source said. It’s unclear why the network chose to diminish Palmer’s role in the booth this season.

Another source said that Palmer’s contract had him scheduled to do between 70 and 80 games in 2024 but he ended up calling 61. Palmer missed several games because of a bout with COVID-19.

“For 60+ years Jim has been the consummate professional and ultimate team player; always willing to support the organization and their needs,” Ric Bachrach, Palmer’s agent, said in a statement provided to The Sun on Thursday. “He embodies everything great about being an Oriole and to Jim, that’s a lifetime commitment. He loves broadcasting and looks forward to continuing as long as they’ll have him. He’s been in Baltimore since 1965 and considers it home.”

Palmer did not immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday.

Greg Bader, the new head of MASN, and Catie Griggs, the Orioles’ president of business operations, also did not respond to a request for comment. A spokesperson for owner David Rubenstein declined to comment.

The change to Palmer’s workload comes amid a rapidly shifting landscape at MASN.

This is Bader’s first season as MASN’s executive vice president and general manager. Bader, a longtime Orioles executive, was previously the ballclub’s chief operating officer, but he was shifted to head MASN this offseason after Rubenstein hired Griggs to lead the franchise’s business operations.

Bader, who got his start with the Orioles as an intern in 1994, reports to Griggs, who was hired in July and is the first woman to lead the organization’s business operations. In a news release this offseason, Griggs said that Bader has “an unparalleled level of expertise” that makes him qualified to lead the network. Former Orioles CEO and Chairman John Angelos, who is no longer with the organization after his family sold the team to Rubenstein for $1.725 billion, served as MASN’s president and COO before the sale in March 2024.

During an interview with lead play-by-play announcer Kevin Brown on MASN before the home opener, Rubenstein praised Griggs and the people she’s hired.

“We think our business side will be as good as our on-the-field performance,” Rubenstein said. “So that will really help the fans because we’ll be able to serve the fans a lot better with the business side being enhanced.”

But the leadership shift at MASN wasn’t the biggest change this winter.

After years of discord between the Orioles and the neighboring Washington Nationals, the two ballclubs resolved “all issues related” to the MASN dispute, Major League Baseball announced in early March. The 2025 campaign will be the final one for Nationals games on MASN. The Nationals will be allowed to choose how their games are broadcast beginning in 2026. The financial terms of the settlement were not announced, but all disputes and litigation were dismissed.

The 2025 season is Palmer’s 62nd with the Orioles since joining the organization as a 17-year-old.

From his time as a Hall of Fame pitcher to a fan favorite broadcaster, Palmer has been the constant throughout the Orioles’ ups and downs, winning three World Series titles as a player and then candidly calling decades of mostly losing baseball as a color commentator.

Palmer, 79, has been in the Orioles’ booth since shortly after he retired in 1984, spanning generations of stars from Cal Ripken Jr. to Mike Mussina and Adam Jones to Adley Rutschman.

When Rubenstein was on the broadcast on opening day in 2024, Brown asked him which players made him fall in love with baseball. Rubenstein, a Baltimore native answered, “Brooks Robinson, Jim Palmer and Frank Robinson,” among others.

Palmer has been in the booth for only three of the Orioles’ first 13 games this season. With MASN reducing the number of games Palmer is broadcasting, that means more work for the other analysts at the network. Ben McDonald, the former Orioles pitcher and No. 1 overall draft pick, is MASN’s other lead color commentator, while former Orioles second baseman Brian Roberts and ex-Baltimore pitcher Dave Johnson are also analysts for the network.

Have a news tip? Contact Jacob Calvin Meyer at jameyer@baltsun.com, 410-332-6200 and x.com/JCalvinMeyer.