Orioles Playoff Hopes Ride On 10-Game Road Trip

The Orioles’ ineptitude is masked by American League standings that provide abundant cover.

It is the great safety net that allows a failed baseball executive like Mike Elias to continually guy his team and shed payroll in-season year after year and sell fans on the prospects of the final Wild Card spot. It helps ownership run their perpetual grift amid a bad baseball team with terrible fundamentals still winning about as much as it loses while not even trying to spend competitively – The Elias Way! – and then still bitch about a non-existent salary cap.

The balls on these guys.

Anyway, because of that, even if they sold as we thought they would, the Orioles can remain very much in the playoff hunt, at its fringy bottom (where they belong). The standings are what matter most in the end, and if they can tread water during this 10-game road trip, they are going to be in great position to sneak into the playoffs, despite all their warts (and then get waxed).

Elias really might get to have his cake and eat it too, doing his two favorite things. Running a suspect payroll, dumping vets for teenagers and still getting into October to be chum in the water. This upcoming stretch really is their season, and if they can manager to do what they pulled off on their last trip West – at Seattle and both LA teams (going 4-5)– then things could look up for them into September.

Here are the keys to the series:

Win Four Of The Next Six

The Rangers and Twins are right in this ugly muck of quasi baseball teams with them. They are beatable. And with this trip ending with four games against the Rays – a club that usually owners the Orioles and who absolutely unmasked them early in the season in Tampa – they’d best be on their win to a .500 trip at the front end of this excursion.

Like them, the Rangers can’t hit and their young core either can’t stay healthy or can’t produce as expected – difference is they won a World Series, wiping out the overmatched Orioles in the process – with a real manager.

So, yeah, kind of a meaningful distinction.

Texas is sending out three of its best starters, but Nathan Eovadli looked awful against the O’s earlier this season and his change-up ain’t what it used to be.

Be Careful With Bradish

Kyle Bradish is still in his first full season for the first time since 2023 and he didn’t reach 40 innings pitched the previous two season. And he has tended to be up and down this season and his last two outings have been weird and truncated with a lot of loud contact. Overmatched rookie skipper Craig Albernaz keeps poo-pooing the idea of inning’s limits and being careful, but this is a hugely important arm who is now signed to a long-term extension.

Alter Bullpen Usage

Albernaz isn’t very innovative and isn’t very good. And he likes to use his “A Team” relievers in a cluster, but then you end up with all of them having pitched two or three straight days when this inept team does reel a few wins together.

Now without Tyler Wells, who could cover multiple high-leverage innings, and with Rico Garcia giving up home runs all over the place and Andrew Kittredge looking like he’s hitting a wall (it’s nuts he is still on this roster), he’s going to have to fold a few other arms in.

I have a feeling the one they just got from Seattle, who was nothing short of abysmal with the Mariners, is going to be foisted into a big role by Elias, because he traded Taylor Ward for him (who stunk), and there aren’t a lot of other options.

Grant Wolfram is incredibly important to this team right now and he has to hold up if the run to the mediocrity of the final Wild Card is to continue.

Get Healthy/Mix Up Lineup

Getting Blaze Alexander and Samuel Basallo back during this trip would be huge. Are they going to pretend that Christian Encarnacion-Strands hasn’t come back to reality in a big way after like 9 RBIs in his first six games? Will Coby Mayo get a run?

The lineup is stagnant and brutal, especially against starting pitching. Gunnar Henderson needs to be batting like 6th. Try something new and stop playing favorites.

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