Orioles Rematch With Rays Could Have Quite A Different Outcome

Baltimore had its best series of the season last weekend in Tampa, but a lot has gone wrong since then in Birdland

Aug 16, 2026; St. Petersburg, Florida, USA; Baltimore Orioles manager Craig Albernaz (55) looks on during the fifth inning against the Tampa Bay Rays at Tropicana Field. Mandatory Credit: Kim Klement Neitzel-Imagn Images | IMAGN IMAGES via Reuters Connect

The Orioles went into Tampa last weekend and delivered their most shocking results of another horrible Mike Elias-led season, taking three of four and coming excruciatingly close to a four-game sweep.

The Rays are the best team in the American League, they have owned the Orioles since Elias took over, and they are probably more than little motivated after the hapless O’s got over on them. How the Orioles are 6-4 against Tampa (with a +10 run differential) is beyond, but unless it continues before Baltimore departs on another 10-day road trip, the rest of the season may be moot.

The Orioles had their best month of the season in July – the All-Star break and the schedule fell quite well for them – but they are 7-11 in August, scoring three runs or less in half of their games. They pounded Rays pitching in that four-game set, including the starters (a true rarity), but mustered five total runs and 14 hits against Yankees pitching in New York’s sweep at Camden Yards, the manager sounds like a whiny loser as usual, the only runs they do score lately are solo shots (the skipper cannot instill traits and strategies to manufacture runs and needs to go) and at 61-67, no matter how pathetic the rest of the American League is, getting swept by the Rays will end their season.

If you are looking for hope, don’t turn to Craig Albernaz. His team has won more than three games in row just once this season, it hasn’t been .500 since April 14 and he wants nothing more than to defend Elis til the end trying to keep his job while his baseball product disgraces Birdland most night with a roster put together by calculator-worshipping mooks with no common sense and no baseball sense and no people skills or understanding of how players should compliment one another in a team setting.

“It’s something that, myself, I’ve been actively trying to problem-solve and put a finger on,” Albernaz said of why this is such a bad team so often. “… You have to figure out how to keep our guys playing that consistent brand of baseball, and actively trying to figure that out.”

It’s damn near September, friends, and this is what they give us for staying engaged and tuned in to their gruesome product, overseen by fools.

I’ll let you in on a little secret, this was a bad team coming out of spring training with too much swing-and-miss and power-chasing in the lineup, a horrible fielding team and one without wipeout arms in the back end of the rotation. It has about 3-4 redundant players and a bench that doesn’t work or offer anything beyond trying to win a game with a home run.

“Their roster construction and the imbalance of their roster has been confusing,” longtime GM Dan O’Dows, a former O’s exec who follows them close as an analyst for MLB Network, told me. “As a lifelong Orioles fan, I’m just actually kind of frustrated by the whole thing, quite honestly.”

Amen brother

Reasons For Concern

The biggest issue for this team right now is that the one aspect of play propping it up and keeping it from being truly as bad as the Angels and A’s is the rotation. But it was never build for the long haul – and nothing close to October – and Kyle Bradish is coming undone from pitching 100 more innings already than either of the last two seasons (under 40 IP in both) and this season has become a reach for most of them.

Trevor Rogers, the starter Friday who they need to provide length and quality, has never spent an entire season in MLB in his career (without at least an injury rehab stint). Saturday’s start Brandon Young carried this staff for a while as a rookie and the former un-drafted free agent is closing in on 120 IP and never pitched more than 110 in a season in the minors (Elias was a failure at understanding how to build up arms down there for most of his pathetic eight year run here).

Young has failed to pitch out of the fourth in two of his last three starts, and has allowed 25 hits and walked eight in his 20 innings over his last four starts; he doesn’t have nearly the stuff to survive that many men reaching base. That’s a 5.85 ERA and a WHIP of 1.65 and the Rays bludgeoned him for eight hits and three homers in four innings last time out.

Oh and Shane Baz pitches Sunday and the Orioles save some of their worst ball for him – as he is in the top three in baseball in starts in which he’s gone at least six innings with three runs or less of support, and also in the top five in the AL in unearned runs allowed. Baltimore is 6-19 in his starts.

Any Optimism?

Let’s take our wins where we can get them.

With an off day Monday and Samuel Basallo just back from the IL, he should get a run through the weekend and it might be mostly at first and DH. I’m fine with that in the short term.

Will they continue to look at Jackson Holliday in the leadoff spot? I don’t have a problem with that and with any luck they’ll send him to winter ball to learn the outfield. Hopefully they find ways to keep Coby Mayo’s hot bat in the lineup, too, and give him looks against right handers because, well, Tyler O’Neill is a sunk cost and Christian Encarnacion-Strand shouldn’t get developmental opportunities ahead of Mayo.

And, well, after averaging less than five hits per game against the Yankees, there is reason to believe the offense will tick up this weekend, right?

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