Four Takeaways From Orioles First Half That Will Make Them Deadline Sellers

The Orioles are what we told you they would be.

The same fundamentally broken, low IQ baseball operation they have always been under Mike Elias. We projected a .500 season and they are six-under, now 82 games into a 162-game slog. When they showed the same signs of systemic rot back in April we identified it as no fluke but part of ongoing issues woven into the fabric of the entire org down to the low minors.

It was clear by May that this skipper was also over his head, and this team constructed to go nowhere and compete on the fringes of a wild card . We had them pegged for this tumble since Jun 20, 2024, when it was obvious this front office needed to go all-out to add to this core to put them over the top and they never would; the Orioles are more than 20 games below .500 since.

We know the charlatans in The Warehouse better than they know themselves – and, most sadly of all, far better than the private equity billionaires who will decide their fate know them. We see their future way before they do, consistently, and this second half is going to be more of the same. Elias will fail miserably at the trade deadline – because he is at his most foolish and stubborn and incompetent then (which is really saying something). And this will be another lost season in a near decade-long, perpetual rebuild.

There are four macro-level takeaways that resonate most strongly from a first half of baseball filled with unspeakably bad fielding and base running and mental acumen on the field, cosigned by puppet skipper Craig Albernaz who clearly wasn’t up this humungous challenge Elias put before him – turn an 80-win roster into a team that contends with the Yankees to win the AL East, his boss's stated objective.

Sammy Is A Real One, As For The Rest Of The “Kids” …

The single greatest development for this entire franchise is that their revamped international program finally produced a player (one, singular) – and he is a stud. Smauel Basallo, still 21, has had more thrust upon him than any reasonable front office would ask and he keeps delivering.

They developed him to split time at first base and DH, at the expense of innings caught in the minors, so that is always going to be a process up here. Thriving in the majors this young in a broken, losing clubhouse culture with unsound players throughout and at a time when the entire rest of this young core – Adley Rutschman, Gunnar Henderson, Jackson Holliday, Jordan Westburg, Coby Mayo, Colton Cowser, Heston Kjerstad (surprised I still remember how to spell his name) are all failing to come close to what Elias projected for them is special.

Doing so despite his overmatched skipper trying to clown and shame him publicly is even more unique around here, or anywhere for that matter.

If Rutschman, at age 28, caught 10 innings the day after a night game – and caught day after night for the second time in four days total – and hit two two-run home runs within the first three innings of that second day game off one of the better starters in the AL, they’d build a statute for him. Of course, none of that would ever happen and Basallo has now caught nearly as many innings as Rutschman this season. He’s also outhitting him by an ungodly margin since May 1.

Basallo can handle being in the middle of this lineup no matter where he plays. Give him some work at first base and let Pete Alonso DH. The next wave of this perpetual rebuild needs to be built around Sammy. None of these other prospects/projects/regression victims among the position players are ever getting a real contract here.

Long Looks At Mayo And Holliday

If Mayo is just going to face lefty starters and be the primary righty bat off the bench against lefties, that’s okay, I guess. But then no more Tyler O’Neill ABs ahead of him. Give Mayo at least that mandate and sprinkle him in at third base some, enough to keep the glove active at least once or twice a week. Find any and every opportunity to give him plate appearances because if he’s just another tweener in an organization that only seems able to evaluate and produce those types, and if Westburg can never stay healthy, then you are going to need an everyday infielder from outside your system for 2027.

As for Holliday, where’s the toughen up speech for him? When does Albernaz tell him – now in his third season in MLB – to get real about his present and future and show he’s more than fringy? He needs to face lefties to find out if he is an everyday guy. You took him first overall for goodness sakes; have some conviction in it.

Do I think he will be an impact MLB bat? Probably not. (I was begging them to make him part of Tarik Skubal package years ago)

However, he needs to at least be able to get on base 35% of the time and go opposite field and steal some bases. And he needs to play second base five days a week for the final three months of the season and see what that looks like. And if it’s still below average then he needs to try to train all offseason as a corner outfielder. Can we get him on a Dominican League in the winter in the outfield and try to build up his arm strength? Will anyone of note in this entire franchise ever do anything other than the Arizona Fall League (and even that is usually projects not prospects)?

Especially kids like Holliday who haven’t stayed healthy enough to play as much as you would like and could benefit from being around a climate that might make them uncomfortable and cull something else from them.

The Bullpen Is Toast … Time To Sell

The Orioles need to be serious sellers at the deadline for a number of reasons – lack of anything close to a league average bullpen is big one. They don’t have a closer who can throw strikes and whose fastball has been destroyed the last two seasons.

The rest of the “A Team” is Rico Garcia, who has a 9.00 ERA this month allowing four homers in 9 appearances, and Andrew Kittredge, who is at the end, who like closer Ryan Helsley can’t throw strikes (1.60 WHIP), and who unlike Helsley gets not nearly enough swing and miss. Groundball specialist Yennier Cano is the best of the bunch by far, and should be given more chances to close between now and the deadline to further boost his stock in a sterling bounce-back season.

Tyler Wells is an unconventional closer but he has done it before – and done a little bit of everything – and it’s worth looking at him back in that role once Cano and Helsley are dealt by the deadline. Get Keegan Akin out of here and try Cade Povich as a lefty-lefty guy who can also go bulk innings in the pen when he’s healthy.

The Rot Is Real

Elias trying to earn Brownie Points for having Cal Ripken start to work with his minor leaguers nine years into a miserable rebuild devoid of any basic baseball understanding about to teach kids to catch the ball and throw to the right base and handle a rundown ... is cute, I guess. It’s also horribly late and it gets out in the media at the same time the MLB product is as Bad News Bears as ever.

This one strikes me as BS optics by a hack GM trying to stay in power as long as humanly possible. It will take years to take root at the minor-league level, let alone improve anything in MLB. It's akin to him mumbling about the introspection and change that would come when he finally got around to answering questions about whacking Brandon Hyde last May.

Albernaz didn’t bring any special sauce for “Guards Ball” with him from Cleveland and Elias does not value defensive metrics in roster construction. So, yeah, you are going to be stuck with more epic slop five days a week or so with this bunch.

They were not built to play clean baseball. This front office killed The Oriole Way years ago. The 2026 O's were built to fail The Elias Way.

And anyone who consumes their baseball product will have to sit through that muck all summer long.

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