The Biggest Mistake the Orioles Can't Make This Deadline

Orioles owner David Rubenstein and failed baseball czar Mike Elias really want you to focus on the very bottom of the American League standings.

After spending the winter crowing about learning from the myriad and sweeping failures of the past, they vowed change and they vowed a roster the industry would proclaim should win the might AL East as Elias (seriously) put it. But that’s not supposed to matter now that they have inflicted the same crap baseball on their fans for four full months … now you are supposed to pretend that trying to be a half game better than the Twins to be within yelling distance for the final wild card spot is the goal post.

It’s a con and it’s a grift. And injuries are a cop-out and a lame excuse.

This has been a bad baseball team since June 21, 2024 and has made no gains outside of some starting pitchers exceeding expectations and the biggest mistake the Orioles could make at this deadline is to believe their own spin and fall prey to their own gaslighting about their baseball product.

The biggest mistake they can’t make is to try to buy on the margins to make a team that’s going nowhere get there at a steeper cost. Standing pat, at the very least, couldn’t inflict much harm outside of opportunity cost of keeping players with expiring contracts and dwindling control who need to be deal. Selling is what they should do.

But buying?

That would be ridiculous.

The Rot Is Real

You could get caught up in a winning record this month if you wanted to. And, yeah, they swept the Royals and they are in fact better than the Royals. Hoo-ray.

But the Orioles have been smashed by winning teams the past two years, and even with the expanded playoff fields, only winning teams advance. This team’s core is soft and they don’t win big games and they’ve never won a playoff game. And their best players either never play (Adley Rutschman) or haven’t been good in a year (Gunnar Henderson), and this group does not bring out the best in each other.

They don’t hit starting pitching, and if you think you can survive in the playoffs by beating up on the underbelly of bad bullpens, good luck with that. those teams don't make it. You obviously don’t watch playoff baseball. The O's also can’t hit lefties. And they don’t hit at all on the road, with the higher K rate in MLB away from home and a bottom 10 team in simply scoring on the road.

And while their pen has been far better than expected lately, they get no swing and miss and that won’t play in October. Especially with how absolutely terrible the Orioles are in the field. There is literally nothing about this operation, for years now, that is remotely built for the playoffs (their bench is also backwards).

If you are buying that because the rotation has an elite ERA the last few months that Trevor Rogers – who absolutely needs to be dealt, but let’s say he stays – Kyle Bradish (who hadn’t thrown even 40 innings in 2024 or 2025) and Shane Baz is going to get it done in the postseason? You think Rogers is fortified for that?

This is not a good baseball team. They have shockingly few strengths and glaring and gaping holes, even compared to the rest of the largely suspect AL. They must be handled as such with the deadline now just days away.

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