No, the Orioles aren’t eliminated yet…

The Baltimore Orioles are headed on the road for nine games in St. Louis, Sacamento and Denver. As Luke Jones points out to Nestor, just because it’s a terrible “pennant race” in regard to the final American League Wild Card berth, the Birds have a unique stretch here to make up ground against some of the worst teams in baseball and still reach the October tournament. It’s far from far-fetched.

The discussion focused on whether the Orioles still have a realistic path to the final AL wild card spot despite an underwhelming season.

Playoff Outlook

• Luke said the Orioles remain mathematically alive because the third wild card race is weak, with multiple sub-.500 teams still in contention.
• He framed the upcoming road trip to St. Louis, Sacramento, and Denver as the clearest chance to make up ground, especially with the Athletics and Rockies described as two of baseball’s worst teams.
• Both agreed the Orioles have repeatedly hovered near contention without playing well enough to separate themselves.

Core Concerns

• Luke said the team’s main problem is inconsistency: when it pitches well, it often does not hit; when it hits, other weaknesses show up, including shaky defense.
• They highlighted Pete Alonso as a major reason the Orioles are still close, but noted the offense cannot rely on him alone.
• They spent significant time on Gunnar Henderson’s disappointing season, calling it a major organizational issue given expectations that he would be one of the team’s stars.
• Open questions: Can the Orioles produce the strong road trip needed to reach .500? Can Gunnar Henderson rebound enough to help drive a late push?

• Attend the Maryland Crab Cake Tour event at Koco’s Pub on Wednesday, wear Koco’s gear, and order a bowl of cream of crab soup. (@Nestor Aparicio)
• Bring Raven scratch-off lottery tickets to Koco’s for giveaway during the Maryland Crab Cake Tour. (@Nestor Aparicio)
• Share stories and music from the Sunday night performance with Alex Lifeson and Geddy Lee in Philadelphia during the 28th-anniversary programming. (@Nestor Aparicio)
• Participate in the Maryland Crab Cake Tour stop at Costas in Dundalk and cover the State Fair appearance as part of the tour schedule. (@Nestor Aparicio)

Orioles postseason picture

• Debate over whether the Orioles are truly still in the AL wild card race.
• Luke argued the race is weak enough that Baltimore remains alive despite being below .500.
• The key issue is that no contender in the race has separated from the field.

Road trip importance

• The upcoming trip begins in St. Louis, then continues against the Athletics and Rockies.
• Luke described it as a favorable setup and said a strong trip could bring the Orioles back to .500 or close to it.
• A mediocre trip would make September’s tougher schedule much more problematic.

Team performance issues

• The Orioles were described as chronically inconsistent across pitching, hitting, and defense.
• Even recent wins were framed as not quite good enough because the team failed to complete sweeps or sustain momentum.
• The offense was criticized for disappearing too often.

Key players

• Pete Alonso was praised as a major factor in keeping the team relevant.
• Gunnar Henderson was discussed at length as the biggest disappointment relative to expectations.
• They questioned whether Henderson can regain star-level form and what that means for the organization long term.

Broader roster questions

• They briefly discussed uncertainty around the offseason, including possible organizational changes and player futures.
• The conversation raised doubts about how much meaningful change the club would actually make.

Nestor Aparicio 0:01
Welcome home. We are WNST. Hey, 1570 Tass of Baltimore. We’re Baltimore positive, positively into a fresh week of activity, or else heading on the road. The Ravens trying to wrap things up. It’s september 13. We’ll get here soon enough, and then it’ll be september 14. Luke Jones is here. He’s going to join me at some point in the Maryland Crab Cake Tour. He will not be with me on Wednesday because he’s busy covering the Ravens. I’m going to be at Koco’s. I wore my Koco’s gear. Been a little while since we’ve been the Koco’s. I’m excited about this. I’m going to get a bowl of cream of crab soup, even though I probably shouldn’t. But I’m hankering it. So I brought to you by the Maryland Lottery. I’ll have Raven scratch offs to give away. Also, our friends at GBMC bringing us out, keeping us healthy as well as foreign and Dermer, I had Zach on last week at Fishmonger’s Daughter in Catonsville. So if you hear Zach and Dennis Kolazzos and Damie Han on the air, it was a great, great gathering of friends and sponsors last week, and they’re the ones that allow us to do this into a 28th year, where on Friday we’re going to celebrate our 28th anniversary with some some music, if I’m a little hoarse, spent the evening with Alex Lifeson and Getty Lee and Annika Niles in Philadelphia. You know, it’s not often I go to the Flyers place and have to look at Flyers stuff. You know, while I’m seeing Rush, but nonetheless, baseball, football both happened over the weekend. The Orioles gave you a bobblehead and provided some some thrills on Saturday, but you know no broom, and I don’t know. I mean, we’re getting to the point now, end of August. I mean, you’re going to tell me they’re independent race again, aren’t you?

Luke Jones 1:35
They are.

Nestor Aparicio 1:36
Okay.

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Luke Jones 1:36
I mean, I’m just you know we can keep doing this thing where with every bad series they have, and they have plenty of bad series as they did against the Yankees, and we can say it’s over. And then you look and say, “Well, they’re two games out, and who do you really like amongst any of these teams? Who’s really going to make that run? And and let me be clear, I’m not saying that’s going to be the Orioles. You’ve you’ve heard me say on a number of occasions that my belief in this team pretty much evaporated in June, but I can’t ignore what the third wild card race looks like. Right, these are all sub 500 teams. Texas and Cleveland are the flavor of the-I wouldn’t say the week, but like it’s more like a day or two. And you look at this road trip. You’ve got a 500 St. Louis Cardinals team that’s coming off of a brutal, brutal series sweep at the hands of the Phillies, including a game on Sunday when they led by four runs with two outs in the ninth inning, and they lost. And then after that, you’re playing the two worst teams in baseball. Now, I’m not going to sit here and say the Orioles are about to have an eight and one road trip, but if there were ever a time for them to have something along those lines to put themselves back in a position where they’re sitting in the third wild card spot and they’re coming home in early September with less than a month ago, and and it’s looking better. It can’t set up any better than this. I mean, can you have a six and three minimum six and three kind of road trip? Can you have a seven and two road trip where you’re 500? I mean, the A’s are terrible. I mean, they they’re decimated by injuries. They won a couple games over the weekend, but this is a team that’s now 29 games under 500. The Rockies have been awful for a few years now, right? That said, those ballparks in Sacramento and Denver, who knows what’s going to happen, right? The ball can fly.

Nestor Aparicio 3:39
For the Orioles, St. Louis, yeah, it’s Sacramento and Denver,

Luke Jones 3:43
yeah. So that’s

Nestor Aparicio 3:44
never been done before. So, so that’s

Luke Jones 3:46
me just setting the scene. Now, am I overly optimistic about it? No, of course not. Right? My my gut on this on this road trip is, I think it’ll be solid, but not as good as it needs to be, and on the flip side, even if it’s not as good as I anticipate, it’s probably not going to be as disastrous as it would need to be for them to be done, done too in early September, right? I mean, it’s what I said to you at at the end of the Yankees series sweep. I said to you at the time, they’re going to have another point at some point here in the next few weeks where they’re a half game out or something like that. They have a big series, and and look, I mean, over the weekend they win Friday night. Pete Alonso doing what he’s been doing, which has been incredible. Saturday they get the heroics of Basayo and Dylan Beavers coming off the bench. Man, go out and sweep the Rays on Sunday, and not to say you erase what happened against the Yankees, but a three and three homestand when it starts zero and three, you can live with that when you’re talking about the two best teams. But what do they do? They have two hits, right? Another day where Shane Boz pitches well, and they do have. Absolutely nothing for him, and really, you look at that sixth inning. It was two outs, nobody on. It’s an o2 count against Yandy Diaz. He hits the ball hard, but goes under Jackson Holiday’s club, and then the floodgates open and they score three runs. Right? I mean, just another example. Even though their defense overall hasn’t been as bad as some other times over the course of the year, I think it’s tightened up a little bit. It’s still not what it needs to be, right? So, so even a series where you win two out of three against the Rays, and they’ve had so much success against Tampa Bay here over the last 10 days, you still look at it. In each case, they had a chance to sweep both of those games, a good chance to sweep both of those series, and they couldn’t do it right. It’s even when it’s good, it’s not quite good enough, right? So I don’t know. I’m not going to sit here and say that I have extremely high expectations for this road trip, but I’m also not going to sit here and say that they’re that they’re that it’s over, right? I mean, because if you don’t like how the the wild card race looks right now, wait five minutes. We’ve been saying this over and over and over. Well,

Nestor Aparicio 6:06
if they took Tampa in the playoffs, they’d have a chance against them, huh? I mean, my goodness, they play well against Tampa.

Luke Jones 6:11
They they do, and I think it probably says more about the Rays and their chances come October than anything about the Orioles. Really, the Rays,

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Nestor Aparicio 6:19
the Rays can win 110 games. We never think they’re going to win the World Series. Man, I mean that we never, we just never think that they’re an October

Luke Jones 6:27
thing. And man, that that’s just having watched them for seven games against the Orioles. And look, I’ve seen Tampa play plenty, and they had had a what a nine game road winning streak right before they went down to the trop and played four against the Rays, but I that to me screams they’re going to get bounced in four games in the division series, right? Coming off of the buy where they sit, right? One of these wild cards, you know, someone playing in the wild card series feels good about themselves, winning their best of three, and then they’re going to go down to the trop, and you know they’ll they’ll have a decent crowd, but it’s not going to be a great crowd for what you would expect for a playoff game, and and they’ll lose three games to one, or they’ll lose in five games. I mean, it just feels like that. But but but to bring it back to the Orioles, I mean, it’s just you know, I mean, it’s there. It’s sitting there as it has been for months, right? I mean, how many times have we had this conversation where you try to lay out what a certain home stand’s going to look like or what a certain road trip’s going to look like, and at times they play well, but it’s never well enough to really get them over the hump. Like, for example, to get past two games under 500, we’ve talked about that trope for months now. And on on the flip side, even this homestand where they get swept by the Yankees and then we’re ready to bury them, well then they win two out of three against the Rays, right? So it’s never quite good enough, but it’s never so bad that they bury themselves entirely. And and obviously the rest of this wild card picture it’s the same thing. No one is so good that’s running away from it. I mean, how big of a dummy am I? 10 days ago, I was talking about the Detroit Tigers. They’ve completely fallen apart, right? So it shows what I know, right? So, but but you just look at this race and you say, okay, you have Texas. That’s kind of, I quote, duking it out with the Houston Astros, as both teams are a game under 500. I will say, Cleveland’s starting to come alive after having just a miserable start to the second half. There’s at least some pedigree there from a regular season standpoint, where you kind of wait and see about them. Toronto has played much better, and they’re ahead of the Orioles in the standings. But they just lost two out of three to the Yankees, and then you have the Twins, who for a moment there they were leading the way, and then they have a bad series in San Diego over the weekend. So, for for me to sit here and just definitively bury the Orioles would imply that I feel a certain way about any of these other teams, and I just don’t. That said, if the Orioles can’t go out on this road trip and play really good baseball, what makes you think it’s going to change in September? You know what I mean. At some point in time, you have to just keep believing what they keep telling you, which is they’re decent enough to hang around in a horrible wild card race, but not good enough to be take advantage, take advantage of that horrible wild card race. So, so we’ll see. I mean, it begins with St. Louis. I mean, the the Cardinals, the the first leg of this three city trip, the Cardinals are kind of an interesting team from the standpoint of they’re young. They got off to a really good start this year. There was kind of a perception that they were maybe a little ahead of schedule with their rebuild.

Luke Jones 9:46
You know, I’ve talked about the Cardinals a lot the last couple years in terms of, you know, the roots that Michaelias and Sigma Ideal have and what they’ve done over the last 25 years. But it’s been more difficult for the Cardinals here. In recent history, but you know they they were kind of hanging around in that wild card race. But you know again, just a terrible weekend for them against the Phillies in Philadelphia, where you know now you look at them, they’re five and a half back for. So, dude,

Nestor Aparicio 10:15
I got to tell you while we’re doing baseball here, because we’ll do football that doesn’t mean anything in a couple of minutes, and and injuries that do. My buddy Micah Buchdahl was at the game Sunday with Max, our former intern. Here, by the way, I found over the weekend because the baseball team’s not that interesting, so let’s let’s not talk about that. I found the stack of all of the graded papers from your and all of the other King of Baltimore sports and and and sports guy competitions from oh 90809 1011 1213 we did about five or six of them I mean I found stacks of them through it and Max Bull was one of our our people like you who was a there’s a lot of people still in my life that were contestants here I saw names and stuff like that but nonetheless he said hey you come up to rush on Sunday watch out because the Phillies play at one. There’s gonna be a little traffic thing, and you know how Philadelphia people, all the Phillies fans were leaving. And dude, I’m with Brian Pullman, and we’re going to see Russia. We can listen to music, and like we’re not paying attention. We get up there, like, oh my God, all the traffic’s front facing, and they’re leaving. And all the Phillies fans look like happy, and we pulled in, and I said to the ticket taker, 40 bucks for the parking. I gave my credit card. I said, “Hey Phil’s win. He’s like, “Yeah, they won six four. I’m like, “Thanks, man. Parked the car, eating a sandwich, no problem. I looked down on my app. I’m like, “They scored six runs with two outs in the ninth inning to win the game. Like, I I I looked on my timeline and I’m like, “Whoa, look at what happened. I mean, not only the Cardinals lose, my God! I mean, have the Orioles blown a four-nothing lead with two outs in the ninth inning to lose six to four on a walk-off? I mean, I don’t know. That’s a tough way to lose, man.

Luke Jones 11:52
Yeah, yeah. I mean, that’s what I was saying a few minutes ago. I mean, you you get a Cardinals team that you wonder how are they going to respond, right? Will they either come home and be ticked off, and it’s kind of the proverbial hornet’s nest. Or is that kind of the last stand for them? Right. I mean, they’re five and a half back for the third wild card spot at this point. They just got swept. They’ve been solid this year. Maybe a little surprising compared to what expectations were preseason, but that that’s where you do wonder: could this be a time where the Orioles hypothetically could take advantage of a team that’s well? This is a

Nestor Aparicio 12:26
decent team. They’re playing out of these nine games, right? I mean,

Luke Jones 12:28
that’s my thing. Like,

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Nestor Aparicio 12:30
try to get two out of three here and two out of three there, and kill it this weekend, right? And like

Luke Jones 12:34
I said, if you can get two out of three there, and you’re playing the two worst teams in baseball, right? Can you go five and one?

Nestor Aparicio 12:42
Make them look like it.

Luke Jones 12:43
Right? Can you go five and one? You seven and two. Think about it. If we’re gonna dream, if we’re gonna dream about this terrible wild card race, right? You know, just humor me. If you have a seven and two homestand, you come home at 500

Nestor Aparicio 12:57
road trip. You mean? Oh

Luke Jones 12:59
yeah. I’m sorry. I said, yeah,

Nestor Aparicio 13:00
okay,

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Luke Jones 13:01
yeah, but if you can somehow manage a seven and two road trip, you come home your 500, and not to say that the September schedule is easy, not to say that all right, they’re the favorite because we don’t know what these other teams are doing

Nestor Aparicio 13:16
in a way that I’m not laughing at. Well, how many games we back? Two, okay, they’re in it. Sure, they are. They play bad teams, and they are in it. No one’s gonna watch. Sure, they are.

Luke Jones 13:25
But they are in it. We we have to we have to stop. Of course they are. I mean, it’s they’re two games out. I’m not saying it’s a good race. I’m not saying they’re good. But I’m also not going to continue to ignore math, right? I mean, I was saying it to you at the end of the Yankee series. Like, it’s not over. Well,

Nestor Aparicio 13:40
even when they can’t say, well, they need better pitching. They get good pitching, then they can’t hit the ball. It it is about hitting the ball. And you mentioned Pete Alonso. I don’t know. You you gave him some flowers last week and said some nice things about him. I don’t know that we said much nice about him in March, April, May, June. You know, like getting into it. But as the season rounds out, he’s the reason they’re only they’re only two games back at this point, right? He’s been the catalyst the last five or six weeks. I mean, all year, but when they’re losing a lot of games and you don’t notice him when he’s hitting a home run all night, they lose seven to two. It it feels like not that we should give him more oxygen, but at least you know if they’re going to fire Elias, at least pat him on the back for if he’s going to sign a superstar. At least in year one, it worked out. Yeah, I mean,

Luke Jones 14:29
other than April, which it wasn’t a great April for him, and when you do look at how this season has played out, I mean, they didn’t get off to the kind of good start that you and I talked about a lot in the spring. Right, we talked about this team from a psychological standpoint. If nothing else, wanting to get off to a better start in April than they did last year, they got to

Nestor Aparicio 14:47
convince themselves they’re a contender. Yeah, I mean, we’re sitting here, but they-they are really a playoff. You’re two wins away from a playoff team, and we’re not even convinced they’re playoff team. I don’t think they’re convinced they’re a player. Oh, I mean, like,

Luke Jones 14:58
and and again, look. There’s what perception is, which the perception is, of course, they’re not a playoff team. They’re they’re a sub 500 ball club. But my point that I keep making is the American League is not going to make an announcement and say we’re not taking a third wild card team, right? So someone has to be that. And who is it? Again, 10 days ago, if you would ask me, my prediction would have been the Detroit Tigers, and they’ve been horrible since then. So, one, it speaks to how little I know, but it also speaks to how fickle this race has been, and how just-I mean, fickle’s not even the right word. I mean, it’s just a terrible race, right? And here’s-I was actually-I actually uttered this to someone else in the press box over the weekend. That just imagine we’re seeing this this race for the third wild card spot where you have all these sub 500 teams, and what do you think is going to be one of the first things that’s going to come out of the other side of the CBA and the work stoppage that owners are going to want to do to increase revenue and expand the playoffs, right? So I mean they’ll add another wild card team, and or they’ll you know they’ll make it four divisions, or however you want to do it, and they’ll they’ll include even more, right? So, but but but again, I under this is two things can be true. You can think the Orioles are a substandard bunch, and they are. They haven’t been 500 since the beginning of May, but you also can acknowledge they still have a chance in this thing because the Texas Rangers are under 500, and Cleveland’s under 500, and Toronto’s under 500, and Minnesota, and the Mariners are behind the Orioles, and and the Tigers have completely fallen apart. Right? I mean, I don’t know. Again, I’d still take the field and feel really confident about that. If you’re asking me who’s going to come away with this third wild card spot, but if the Orioles are going, if they have a run in them, if they have, and I don’t know if they do, point blank, because to the point you just made, when they pitch well, they don’t hit. When they hit well, they don’t pitch as well. Their defense is below average at best and horrible at its worst, right? So I’m not going to sit here and lay out a convincing argument other than this road trip that is it’s long, right? You’re you’re going out west for you know really going out west for a couple parts of it, but even going to St. Louis, it’s one okay team and two really bad teams. Can you put yourself in a position where you’re back at 500 or only two games under when you come home? If you can do that, then you’ve got a four-game set against the Boston Red Sox, right? We’ll see at that point. In addition to just welcoming back Adley Rutschman to Camden Yards, you know we’ll see what what what you’re made of. But if they can’t, and they have a a five and four, four and five, or worse kind of road trip, I’d be a little surprised if it’s worse than that. But point is, if it’s very much the same uninspiring, middling, disappointing, drop a series you shouldn’t drop kind of road trip. Then yeah, I mean at that point it becomes more and more of a punchline because then the math is starting to say, you know, you’ve got to make your run at some point, right? You can’t be five games under 500 into the month of September. You you got to think you need to at least get to 500, at least get a couple games over 500. I guess, you know, I I guess the team that that’s the third wild card gets to I don’t know 8283 wins. I I don’t know position on that. Oh sure, but right. I mean the math

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Nestor Aparicio 18:37
doesn’t support it, right? Yeah,

Luke Jones 18:38
I mean that’s the thing. I mean that’s why I keep and look, I don’t expect anyone. There were

Nestor Aparicio 18:43
six teams here. One of these teams has to play five games over 500 for a month. Right, that’s what I’m saying.

Luke Jones 18:48
Like that’s easier said than done. I mean, like because none of them 16 and

Nestor Aparicio 18:51
11 or something in September for crying out loud. I mean, is is

Luke Jones 18:55
one does one of these teams have a Boston Red Sox like run in it? And I don’t mean 30 and five, but I mean, 11 of 12, you know, something like that. If one of these teams does that, then boy, it could be over, right? I mean, that team could be four games up over the the rest of the field. But every time you think one of these teams is starting to to do something impressive, they they just they fall back. Like I said. Detroit was the team 10 days ago. I was starting to wonder, like, man, the Tigers. Even though they traded Scuble and Mize, I mean, they still hit the ball, and you thought maybe they just had a mojo to them where they were just going to say, you know, give the proverbial middle finger to the front office and say, hey, we’re going to do this, and they’ve just completely fallen apart. I mean, what’s funny is the team that’s playing the best right now in the American League is probably the Kansas City Royals, and they’ve kind of they they’ve beaten some of these teams that are that are trying to to do this. I mean, talk about a team that has a chance to play spoilers. So. I don’t know. Again, am I going to sit here with a high degree of confidence and say the Orioles are capable of a seven and two kind of road trip? Not really, because they haven’t had many stretches like that. But I mean, it sets up the opponent set up for them to be able to do that. But that said, you got to hit the ball. I mean, even Saturday night, as dramatic and exciting as that was, they were being shut out in the bottom of the eighth inning. I mean, they had one hit until Kouzler hit the home run in the ninth inning on Sunday. I mean, gotta swing. You gotta swing the bats. I mean,

Nestor Aparicio 20:34
well, the Yankees was it was embarrassing. I mean, sure. I mean, the Yankees,

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Luke Jones 20:37
right? And I mean, obviously, the the Yankees pitch. I mean, the the Rays have good pitching, but I mean, you got to swing the bats. It can’t just be Alonzo doing everything, right? I mean, and Alonzo had his hitting streak stopped on Sunday. Here, here’s maybe one of the more compelling things. You know, I’ve talked a lot about the pitching. I’ve talked about some of the workloads for some of these guys. I’ve talked about the bullpen. If there’s something that you know would be another one of those temper the expectations, I mean Pete Alonzo’s hit close to 500 over the last couple weeks, right? I mean he’s been unbelievable. He’s going to cool off a little bit. So unless someone else picks up the you know picks up the the the slack there, whether it’s Gunnar Henderson trying to do what we’ve talked about him doing all year long and not being able to do it, they they need Holiday to start hitting again. He’s he’s really had a you know after a great July, it’s been a pretty underwhelming August for him.

Nestor Aparicio 21:34
You think Henderson’s going to go somewhere else in his 29th year and hit 42 home runs? I mean, be the guy that be an MVP or be a top three, be a carry a team. Do you think he’s gonna do that at some point?

Luke Jones 21:46
I mean, I don’t. It’s tough to say. I mean, look,

Nestor Aparicio 21:48
this has been a really weird thing to watch, and you talked about this last week. We’re like, modern baseball isn’t Robin Yount’s baseball card or Paul Molitor’s baseball card, or even. And we talked, and look, you and I fought about Cal Ripken, and I’d fight with his kid about it. I’d fight with anybody about it because I watched him play. There were a lot of 250s in there, and a lot of sort of for a shortstop, it it was unbelievable at the time to have that sort of productivity. But for a superstar, Cal was not a superstar as far as that kind of player for other than two seasons of his career where he was really go look in the back of the bubblegum card 91, and you’ll see what that benchmark is. Go look in the back of a Rod’s card, or and I know you know you can look on the front of his card and see the clear and the cream and all that too, and the hypodermic needles. But in a general sense, those kinds of numbers that we would expect from a superstar, what Pete Alonso’s doing. Look in the back of Pete Alonso’s baseball card right now, I don’t know that Gunner’s going to be that guy, and I think we’ve moved into an era where old guys like me just say, “Look at what he did when he was 22. He’s he’s going to be able to do that again. I don’t know. I saw Joe Charbonneau play too, right? I mean, I saw guys that were one-hit wonders. It certainly didn’t look that way with Henderson, but I’m beginning, and I look same place we were with Ruchman, although that was a bigger rut, I think. But in the same way, I look at Cody Kelser and say I don’t think he’s going to get there. I I look at Gunnar Henderson and say how did he do that a couple of years ago, and what happened to that, and what adjustments the league make, and also just where’s his head in an empty stadium in this franchise again, where Rutchman allegedly wanted out. I mean, these guys want out as quick as they’re in. You know, as quick as we can sell a City Connect jersey, it looks like Boris, whoever’s handling them’s up, and we’re talking about whether it was Machado 12 years ago or not. Like, are we keeping our homegrown superstar? Well, Ruchman’s gone, and he wasn’t a superstar. Henderson, I don’t know, is he a superstar? Certainly doesn’t feel that way at the end of the second year of this. Last year we talked about injuries and this and that. I don’t know. That is, as we play the Cardinals, I think it’s been 20 years since they let pool holes go. You know, and even when you get one of these guys, do you really want to put your 250 million into them? And the Nets made that decision on Pete Alonso, and they gave money to everybody.

Luke Jones 24:06
Yeah, I mean it’s it’s funny. I saw a graphic on Sunday. It’s funny you mentioned someone named Cal because I’m going to bring up someone else, Cal Raleigh.

Nestor Aparicio 24:16
Okay,

Luke Jones 24:17
for the Mariners, hit 60 home runs last year.

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Nestor Aparicio 24:20
60.

Luke Jones 24:21
He has 55 hits this year. He has a 159 average. Now he’s had some injuries as well, but he still has four over 400 plate appearances. He’s got a 159 average.

Nestor Aparicio 24:31
Talking about a dumper, the whole season’s been a. I

Luke Jones 24:33
mean, he’s been an absolute disaster, a disaster. I mean, he’s having a Chris Davis-like season, like late career Chris Davis, like season. I mean, so so you make you just brought up the point about you know modern baseball. Look, I mean, guys have had great years. I mean, we’ve seen Brady Anderson years. We see Dave Johnson and Davy Johnson in the 70s have a 40 home run season out of nowhere, right? Baseball. Littered with some of that, there’s no doubt. In every era, you can find some statistical outliers. Some eras more suspicious than others, right? But you can you can find those, and you can find bad seasons as well, even from great players. I mean, go look at Babe Ruth in the 20s. There there was a season or two there. I mean, one year. I mean, it it was even called the the belly ached around the world, right? When Ruth wasn’t taking as good a care of himself and all that, but yeah, in modern baseball, you it feels like there’s a little more extreme variance, even from all star caliber players. That you know, it’s one thing to talk about a down season; it’s another thing to talk about a year where, like I’ve I’ve cited Vlad Guerrero a few times, right? I mean, the fact that he hasn’t hit a home run in his home bar ballpark regular season in a calendar year, I mean that’s that’s insanity. And he’s

Nestor Aparicio 25:56
making $40 million, right? I mean

Luke Jones 25:58
that’s absolutely absurd, right? So that’s

Nestor Aparicio 26:01
underproduce. That’s hurt your team. Yeah. So I’m

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Luke Jones 26:02
not saying that to excuse Gunnar Henderson. Gunner Henderson is having a substandard season that’s that’s so far below the bar of what the Orioles needed him to be this year. But to sit here and just say that that means he’s never going to become now MVP. Look, I think that’s that’s a really tough, that’s that’s a tough label to bestow on anyone who hasn’t done that and hasn’t done that even multiple times in his career. But can he get back to being the all-star caliber shortstop that he’s been? Yeah, because even last year, where his power numbers were down, Gunner still had in a vacuum a really nice season last year. I mean, it just it wasn’t what it was that the year before and two years before, right? I mean, the guy he was over the first two full years in the majors. I mean, man, that that guy was you were wondering if he was a left-handed Manny Machado. I mean, that that’s what you thought he was potentially going to be for the Orioles, so can can I can I project out in a couple years what he’s going to be? No, he’s still so young in terms of having plenty of prime years left, hypothetically speaking. That said, man, it just feels like a failure across the board, whether you’re talking about him, the coaching staff, the front office, of why you can’t get him back on track, and I, I will say this, and and he’s talked about this a little bit here and there. I mean, I think it’s mental for him as much as anything. I don’t think necessarily that I don’t think his skills have deteriorated. I mean, he’s 25 years old, right? I mean, we’re not talking about someone that’s, you know, in the case of Adley Rutschman, who is already in his late 20s, and we’ve talked about how catchers can break down more quickly. But you know, talking about a middle infielder in his mid 20s, I mean, there’s there’s no reason to think there can’t be a bounce back. But man, if the Orioles to his value in the trade market in the off

Speaker 1 28:00
season,

Nestor Aparicio 28:00
or is value to this team to say, all right, we counted on you last year, and how did that go? We’re going to count on you next year. I mean, the Mariners are going to have the same thing with Cal Riley, right? Right? Right? Like, so they’re going to have to look at and say, is he worth 35 home runs next year? Yeah. Or is he going to be hurt? Do we have a catcher? Do we have a shortstop? Do we have a third baseman? What is he?

Luke Jones 28:21
Yeah. Well,

Nestor Aparicio 28:22
they don’t know what holiday is. We went through that last week. So yeah, I mean, again, talking about this off season, where they’re gonna shut the sport down and any other thing we talk about, we might as well be talking about Disney World. You know, if we’re gonna talk about next year, and I wonder what they’re gonna do in the. You know what they’re gonna do in the off season? They’re gonna go. They’re going to probably a whole lot of nothing. A whole lot of nothing. They’re going to stop. Right, right. So any of this, what are they going to do in the off season? All that talk is gone. We can talk about it, but it’s fiction at this point. Well, I

Luke Jones 28:51
mean, we we don’t. I mean, we don’t know what’s going to happen. I mean, we just don’t to to sit here, and that’s why I’ve said even even if I’m very much of the thought that they need to make changes at the at the top with Elias.

Nestor Aparicio 29:03
They’re not.

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Luke Jones 29:04
I really doubt that they’re going to, and and the CBA and and that uncertainty is well.

Nestor Aparicio 29:09
They’re paying them. Part of the reason why they so walk off.

Luke Jones 29:13
So I and and look, I’m not going to sit here and say that that won’t happen, but I’m very skeptical that it will. And even if it does, what does the timeline of the off season look like? What exactly can you get done? I mean, well, here’s the

Nestor Aparicio 29:26
biggest question, right? The question, Gunner. Yeah, I mean, do you have a superstar as a shortstop or third baseman? Are we going to? Are we into him? Either way, we’re not signing him. We’re not. If he is a superstar, we’re not giving him a lot of money, and if he’s not, we’re not giving him anything.

Speaker 2 29:39
I would give him

Nestor Aparicio 29:40
anything for the year he’s had this year, right? But literally, right? Like, if it was about signing him right now, I would pass. If it’s about trading him right now, I would ask, well, where’s his value? If it’s about trading for him, that’s the question I just ask you, which is, hmm, do you think do you think this is going to turn for him? Having witnessed this up close the way we have the last couple years, I’m stunned. But then again, to modern baseball, it’s not stunning in modern baseball.

Luke Jones 30:08
Yeah, but but one thing I want to bring up as I was talking about like kind of modern baseball on some of these seasons, you know, it doesn’t necessarily mean that that player declines and that’s just who they become, right? I mean, it it you could see rebounds, right? You can see. I think Gunner Henderson’s going to rebound. I would disagree with the one thing you said. Like, look, and and this is a hypothetical that wouldn’t happen anyway because it’s Scott Boris. This would actually be the time in a vacuum if it weren’t Scott Boris’s agent, where I might actually try to work out an extension because you might be able to get it at a much more club friendly number. That’s not going to happen. And I think if anything, Scott Boris might be inclined to say, “Hey, we want out. Right? We want to go somewhere else that Gunner needs a fresh start. You know, I think that’s far more. Wouldn’t he

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Nestor Aparicio 30:54
be a guy that hits 50 doubles and 27 home runs? Like to me, you go not a 35 home run guy that drops his batting average 15 or 20 points, but just a guy that hits the ball hard. I mean, I think

Luke Jones 31:07
for me, you look at 2023, his his rookie of the year campaign, his first full season in the majors. Now 24, we we’ve talked about this first half of the season. That’s when that’s when the MVP talk really really started because he was just unbelievable through late June. I mean, I’ve said it, wrote it at the time. It if I had an MVP vote in late June of 2024, I would have voted for Gunnar Henderson over Aaron Judge. Now, the second half of that season was not the same, although certainly not anything like what we’ve seen him become here over the last, you know, to a lesser extent last year, but even last year and certainly this year. But in 2023, I mean, Gunner was Rookie of the Year. He was eighth in MVP voting, so it still speaks to. I mean, had a heck of a season, really did. But you look at that year, he had 622 plate appearances. He batted 255. He had a 325 on base percentage, and he slugged 489. He had 29 doubles, nine triples, 28 home runs, 82 runs batted in, and 10 stolen bases. 814 OPS. I mean, way

Nestor Aparicio 32:15
he runs for for a short

Luke Jones 32:17
stop. For a short stop, though, well, I’m no, I’m not picking 2023 for him. My point is, even if that’s, you know, like that’s that’s a heck of a baseline right there. If you’re saying that that’s the kind of player he can be more regularly moving forward, if he, you know, whether it’s with the Orioles, whether it’s being traded elsewhere, whatever, he he gets the right you know mental skills coach you know he’s talked about the mental side of the game I think you look at him and I know Alan’s Alan’s talked about this we’ve talked about it on the air we’ve talked about this Gunnar things go so he plays at such a fast speed right and that can be really special at times, but then you also have the times where that’s not what you want, right? You want to be able to slow down that proverbial clock, and I think that’s something that has really gone off the rails for him. That I think that explains the lapses we see on defense. Because look, I don’t think Gunnar Henderson. Anyone who says Gunnar Henderson’s not a shortstop, it has nothing to do with the athleticism. It has nothing to do with the arm strength. It has nothing. Really, doesn’t have a whole lot to do with the range. I think the range is good enough at shortstop. I absolutely do. It has to do with those focus plays where, I mean, we we talked about it earlier. This homestand, that play where Jackson Holiday makes a nice little play, and to and you know they get the should get the force at second. It’s a fast runner going down the line at first base. You’re not going to double him up. That’s where Gunner needs to just calm down and live to fight another day. Make the catch, get the lead runner, and then put the ball in your pocket. Instead, he’s going so fast because he’s trying to turn the double play, that he completely misses the ball at second base, and then now you’re in a position where you didn’t get zero outs, right? As opposed to at least getting the one, so you just see too much of that from him. And also, I think we’ve also seen those because of his offense being as disappointing as it’s been. I think he’s carried that to the field at times as well, I think those are potentially correctable issues. But until you can you can correct them until there’s proof of correcting them and him getting back to where he was even last year. You know, and I you know I just mentioned 23. Even if Gunnar got back to where he was last year, I mean he still hit 274. He had a 349 on base percentage. His home run power was down. He only had 17 home runs, but still he had 34 doubles and he had five triples. Drove in 68 runs. Had 30 stolen bases. I mean, if if the Orioles were even getting last year’s production from Gunnar Henderson, they might be tied tied for the wild card. They. Be a game up in this, and not to say that that’s a standard, right? I I want to make it clear: if the Orioles were three or four games better than what they are right now, yes, they’d be leading the wild card race. But that’s still not, in a big picture sense, an acceptable level of play relative to what Michaelias promised years ago with the rebuild and this pipeline and all that, but the point is, it still still speaks to as much as you don’t try to make it about one player. It kind of sort of has come down to one player for the Orioles this year. I mean, not that there aren’t others that are having disappointing seasons, not that they haven’t had injuries, not that there aren’t other flaws about this team, because my goodness, there are of course, but Gunnar Henderson’s been the biggest failure on this team relative to expectations. I’m I’m not being mean saying that. I mean, what? No one for anyone out there who thought Gunner Henderson was going to have a sub 700 OPS, like reach out to me. I I I I and I’ll learn from you because you’re really smart. Or to think that

Nestor Aparicio 36:00
the Orioles could be good without him being

Luke Jones 36:01
sure. I mean, that’s I I’ve said this, you know, going back to spring training, I talked about Alonzo and and Henderson being the the new Cal and Eddie for the modern Orioles. I mean, that’s what they needed them to be. Pete Alonzo’s held up his end of it, but it’s really tough. Stars cannot do it by themselves. Let’s be clear about that. Mike Trout and Shohei Ohtani in Anaheim were a perfect example of that, right? But you’ve got no shot if your stars aren’t going to be stars. I mean, it’s extremely, extremely difficult if if your star is not going to be a star, right? I mean, you just well, you knew he’s

Nestor Aparicio 36:38
not going to carry the team. Jeremiah Jackson, of course. You know, Colton Cowser. You just look down the line and say who is going to be the star of the team, and it’s very unusual when a star emerges who wasn’t a star, like even for one year. And when a star appears at 21 or 22, we then measure that star against that the rest of the way, you know. And Nick Markakis is one of those great examples of a guy that it never appeared he was going to hit 40 home runs, and we never expected that out of him. But you knew you were getting 282, you are going to get 22 home runs, you are going to get a real heady defense, you are getting you you know you are getting this consistency that I just don’t see in modern, certainly not in modern baseball. When I think about Chris Davis and needing whatever he needed physically to take in order to concentrate enough that the baseball, what we’ve seen happen now with Adley Rutschman, what we’ve seen just in this organization in the last 10 years, it’s not Ken Gerhart or Mike Young where these guys do it one year and they sort of flash and go away, or Jim Traber or whatever, go away. It’s these are this is superstar stock. It’s a different thing than flashing one good season somewhere along the line, like Steve Pearce did or something. You know? Yeah,

8

Luke Jones 37:52
you know what? It’s really interesting that you brought up Nick Marcacus, and and I don’t disagree with your overall point. However, Nick Marcacus by OPS, the two best seasons of his career, year two and year three of his career. Okay, I I would I would actually contest if you looked at what the perception of Nick Marcas was in his age 23 and 24 seasons, you were wondering if he was going to bud. He was a budding superstar, and instead he wasn’t. Those were his peak years, and he just settled into being a really solid ball player, right? Maybe that’s gonna maybe that maybe the path for Gunnar Henderson is he gets back to where he was last year, and that’s just who he is moving forward. Now, last year, Gunnar Henderson was still a four-win player to put it in in wins above replacement terms, which is a very valuable player. Let’s be very clear about that. But that’s not a superstar MVP caliber. That’s more of a fringe all-star candidate, depending on the year, right? So, but but Nick but Nick Marcas is a great example of that. You go look at Marques in 2008. I pulled up his numbers just because you know, and you brought it up because it’s interesting. You kind of read my mind because I was actually going to bring up Markakis. Well, you’re wondering

Nestor Aparicio 39:07
what kind of player Gunnar Henderson’s going to be, right? What kind of Markus can we count on you for?

Luke Jones 39:11
Markakis in his 2008 season, he batted 306. He had a 406 on base percentage. He slugged just under 500, 99 walks, 113 strikers. Really

Nestor Aparicio 39:23
lousy team, the 18. Oh, of course,

Luke Jones 39:25
right. I mean, that was Adam Jones had just arrived. Point that out. It was 18 years ago. Yeah, I mean, Adam Jones had just arrived. Weeders was a year away from debuting, right? I mean, Dave

Nestor Aparicio 39:35
Trembley’s the man. You know, that was

Luke Jones 39:37
Melvin Mora at the very end. Brian Roberts getting closer to the end, and you know Brian Roberts was still a really good player at that point, but you know was a couple years away from starting to decline himself. But Marquez that year, he had 48 doubles, 20 home runs, 87 runs batted in. Like I said, walked almost. That’s Gunner

8

Nestor Aparicio 39:54
Ederson to me. 20 home runs, 50 doubles would feel like he can do that. That’s still. Instead of trying to hit 38 home runs every year, and it winds up costing them everything, and not to mention the defense. Okay, okay. I mean, I I’ll hear you. I love that that split, by the way. I I love well. Everybody would love that split. 300 on base. I mean, that’s a

Luke Jones 40:16
that’s a superstar. I mean, at the shortstop position, that’s still very much a superstar. I mean, it absolutely is. But but like I said, even if it were 2023, I mean, he had he had 28 home runs. I mean, you kind of poo-pooed the the 29 doubles. You you didn’t hear me say he also had nine triples. You know, so okay, take away the triples and just say they’re doubles, 38 doubles and 28 home runs. That’s a lot of extra extra bass hit production right there. So I don’t know. I mean, again, to to bring it back to to the present and looking forward, the the question is, do I think Gunner Henderson can get his career back on track? Of course. You know, if he were 29 right now as opposed to 25, okay, maybe there’d be a little more of a, all right. Well, you know, is his range really going to start deteriorating? Is his athleticism going to start deteriorating? And I, like I said, his athleticism is not what makes me unhappy about him as a shortstop. It’s the lapses. He has lapses more so than oh, well, you know his, you know, in contrast to Jackson Holiday, who doesn’t have a very strong throwing arm, who even doesn’t really show good enough range for second base, right? Gunner has range, but it’s just man, it’s just so up and down. He makes some phenomenal plays, but then he just find out just misses a ball on a on a relay to second base, you know, on a on a pretty crucial play in a in a game against the Yankees, right? So, are the Orioles going to be able to get him back on track? Well, this is where you look at this and say, it kind of feels like an organizational failure that you haven’t to this point. If it hasn’t happened now, is it is it going to happen in September? Is it going to happen next year? Are you going to trade him? Is he going to want to trade and want out? Is Scott Boris going to say, “Look, my client is there’s too much potential earning, you know, earning potential in there for me to continue for us to continue to go down this road with an organization that hasn’t shown the ability to help get them back on track, we want to go elsewhere. I don’t know. Not saying that that’s going to happen. I’m not saying that Gunner feels that way. But I also can’t sit here and say that when you have a season this horribly off the rails relative to what expectations were supposed to be, I’m not going to sit here and say that that won’t happen. There’s going to be some

Nestor Aparicio 42:39
meetings in the off season.

Luke Jones 42:41
I mean, I’m guessing there’s going to be some. I mean, I’m guessing there have already been some difficult talks as it pertains to all parties involved. Like, why is this? Why is this continue to be so under underperforming? You know, why is this so disappointing? Why is why is Gunner Henderson hitting below league average in terms of OPS? Right. I mean, that’s shouldn’t happen. I mean, even last year he was still well above league average. You know, even though he didn’t hit a bunch of people. So look at him and

Nestor Aparicio 43:06
say he’s the guy. When you say, “Well, Alonzo’s not going to hit 500 the rest of the way, I keep thinking, like, well, at some point he’s going to have a two-week stretch where he’s going to have to carry him. But I guess you know we don’t have to do that. We got plenty of. But we’ve been saying that. We’ve been saying we’re going to St. Louis, man.

Luke Jones 43:21
Yeah, but we’ve been saying that for three weeks, or not three weeks. We’ve been saying that for three months, right? So we’ll see. Again, like I said, this road trip, the Orioles can do two things here. They can play really good baseball against, especially the last two legs of the road trip, really inferior opponents. Come home, be at 500 or right there, and then it’s go time. Then it’s just a sprint. You’ve got three and a half weeks to go at that point. It’s a sprint. I mean, just point blank. A lot of

Nestor Aparicio 43:52
scoreboard watching,

8

Luke Jones 43:53
or you can kind of go through the motions and you win the series, you lose the series, you and you come home and you’re still five games under 500, and then yeah, it’s still a sprint. But go look at the September schedule. I mean, they have Boston, they have Cleveland, who, like I said, is playing better of late. We’ll see if they still are by then. You go to Toronto, you go to the Mets. I mean, the Mets are kind of a one of those spoiler teams right now at best. But then you finished up Milwaukee, who has been fantastic this year, comes to Baltimore. Toronto comes to Baltimore, and then you go to the Bronx for the final three of the season. I mean, that’s not an easy September. So you can’t make some hay on this road trip. Then yeah, I mean, at that point, it does become even more of a joke than yes. I acknowledge it kind of is right now. I mean, we’re again, we’re talking about the playoff hopes for a team that has not been above 500 since tax day. But as I said, there’s not going to be like relegation here. The American League’s still going to take a third wild card team, so the math. Doesn’t lie, but at some point in time, the math will, the games will start to run out, and then you’re in a position where you say you’re going to have to go nuts over the final three weeks, and this this team has shown no capability of of that kind of extended stretch of success.

Nestor Aparicio 45:16
Yeah, the capability making us go nuts, but not not success. You just we’re going to be having-I don’t have nuts. I’ll have the cocoa nut shrimp on Wednesday. We’re going to be at Koco’s Pub doing the Maryland Crab Cake Tour on the 26th of this week. Then we’re going to shut her down for a week for our 28th anniversary. I have some musical things I’ll be sharing, including my Sunday night with Getty Lee and Alex Lifeson in Philadelphia. It’s all brought to you by friends at the Maryland Lotter. Have the Raven scratch-offs to give away at Koco’s. Also putting together a pretty aggressive little. I was at Pizza Johns the other day. Like, when are you coming back? I’m going to be at Costas and Dundalk, so we’re moving it around. State Fair is going to have the show as well. All of that brought to you by GBMC and our partners at Farnham and Dermer. They are the comfort guys. Zach was with me last week at Fishmonger’s Daughter. If you hear Damian Hahn or Dennis Kalazos or Bill Cole, any of our sponsors, they all stopped by last week. We had a nice little hoot nanny over in Catonsville. Summer’s almost over with, and the Orioles are in a pennant race, and we still have one more fake football game left. He is Luke. I’m Nestor. We’re WNST AM 1570 Towson, Baltimore. We never stop talking. Pennant race baseball under 500. Baltimore positive. Stay with