The time to be satisfied with a series win over Cincinnati was several weeks ago for the Orioles.
Instead, it’s just the latest example of their inability to sustain anything beyond a three-game winning streak as Baltimore fell to 0-7 when faced with a chance to win a fourth straight game in 2026. It certainly doesn’t help that Sunday’s 3-2 loss was a game ripe for the taking against a Reds team that has the worst record in baseball (20-37) since May 1. Regardless of whether manager Craig Albernaz should have stuck with Kyle Bradish or gone to the bullpen with two outs in the eighth inning, the right-hander deserved more support from his offense.
But the real reason why winning two out of three over the weekend didn’t feel good enough has been the Orioles’ inability to do exactly that over this last month. With the trade deadline just four weeks away, a team entering Monday’s off-day seven games below .500 is running out of time for the “slow and steady wins the race” approach when it comes to charting a path of being buyers.
The time for that was early June when the Orioles were coming off a rejuvenating 10-4 stretch that lifted them to 31-33, the closest they’ve been to the .500 mark since early May. At that point, they had the luxury of steadily winning series rather than needing a long winning streak to make up the disparity. But Craig Albernaz’s club instead won only one of the next eight series before the trip to Cincinnati and owns an 11-16 record since June 6.
With Sunday’s loss, the Orioles are now guaranteed to be under .500 at the All-Star break, and even if they finally managed to follow the aforementioned methodical route of winning two out of three in each of the next seven series — much easier said than done, of course — leading up to the Aug. 3 trade deadline, that would only get them to the .500 mark. Given the mediocre state of the American League, that would be good enough to keep them firmly in the wild-card mix, but that’s still not all that inspiring in the big picture, especially when president of baseball operations Mike Elias faces an uncertain future and has already expressed the wish to be a buyer at the deadline.
Of course, falling further below .500 would likely make Baltimore sellers looking to deal pending free agents such as outfielder Taylor Ward and starting pitcher Trevor Rogers at the very least.
Perhaps the most frustrating development for the Orioles has been how painfully mediocre they’ve remained despite ranking fourth in the AL in starter ERA (3.59) and second in starter innings since May 22. Despite the early-season injuries and struggles for their starters, the performance of the rotation has matched — or exceeded — what the organization likely imagined needing to climb out of its 21-29 hole to begin the season.
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But the whole continues to be less than the sum of its parts.
Nothing conveys that better than Baltimore’s 6-14 record in one-run-games, which is the worst mark in the majors. Some would argue that a club’s record in one-run games is as much about luck and variance as anything else and is bound to regress to the mean in the long run, but consider how often the Orioles’ deficiencies — the poor defense, running into outs on the bases, inconsistent situational hitting, etc. — show up in the biggest moments of ballgames this season. They play neither smart nor fundamentally-sound baseball on any kind of consistent basis and now face the prospects of another long-term absence for closer Ryan Helsley, which puts even more pressure on a bullpen already feeling too light on high-leverage depth.
Is any of that going to change?
Are the Orioles suddenly going to start playing like a winning club when they haven’t done it for more than a week or two at a time for two calendar years?
Will Gunnar Henderson finally start playing like the aircraft carrier we all believed him to be?
Is this team a deadline addition or two away from making you a believer?
Depending on how these next four weeks go, will Elias do what’s best for the organization’s future?
8Where does ownership stand with all this?
Is this team capable of a stretch of reeling off nine wins in 10 games?
The urgency should be sky high across the board at this point, which is why settling for a series win over the Reds rather than completing a sweep wasn’t good enough. The Orioles only have themselves to blame for being in such a position.
