One Key Change the Orioles Must Make Immediately After the Break

There are no easy solutions to the Orioles rot.

They haven’t been able to hit consistently enough or excel in key situations or field remotely well enough or run the bases with any acumen for over two years. They are not clumped with the dregs of MLB since June 21, 2024, by accident, at this point. Sending Cal Ripken and former MLB manager Mike Shildt through their minor league system to try to fix their systemic issues seems like too little, too late.:

With around 60 games left in the regular season. The idea that all of a sudden they are going to be a clean and sound operations feels silly. It doesn’t pass the eye test or the smell test. But there is a crisis that perhaps could altered for the better during this pause for the All-Star break.

If this horribly flawed front office and overwhelmed and seemingly overmatched coaching staff could get together and start to avert one simmering tempest, maybe, just maybe, they could straighten out their approach to launch angle and pullside power and get the hell out of the way.

Less Could Be More With Gunnar Henderson

Maybe they could step back. Maybe they could let the talent shine.

Maybe Gunnar Henderson has enough natural ability that a few fewer stats and a few less tablets and less data and a few less meetings will help him find a way to be more than a .695 OPS performer in the second half of the season.

Maybe backing off and backing away is in order.

Maybe they could learn from two years with Adley Rutschman in the abyss and how poorly that worked out, and make a few course corrections.

Like, it is too much to ask and too crazy to think that the people running this franchise can find a way to let the most talented player – by far – to come across their endless rebuild – flourish again? Like even if that means more than just six days as the DH, like in their first 100 games?

Could they possibly be open-minded about moving him somewhere other than the top three in the lineup? Just, you know, for a few games? Could it really hurt?

For all of the yammering for years about introspection and change and learning from mistakes, it’s sad and pathetic for this many players that the baseball world thought so much of not that long ago to be this middling or worse. It says much more about their front office than it does any of these still young or relatively young ballplayers.

I’m not going to get greedy here and ask for them to put a quality product on the field five nights a week and fix their bullpen on the fly and get all of their struggling young players going and find some real help in their broken farm system and, crazy as it might sound, actually win a playoff game for the first time in this regime.

I wouldn’t dare think that big let alone actually have the audacity to request it in this space. But maybe stop messing up your best player quite so much and find someone in your entire org who can connect with him in on a human level to get him looking like himself again.

Few more smiles; few less helmet tosses.

I’ll settle for a micro-level win with a franchise this lost at the macro level.

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