It’s not the end of the world for a baseball team to lose two out of three games in a road series. It’s really not even worth getting all that worked up about.
Unless of course the baseball team in question gets off to such a dreadful start that it’s significantly under .500 in June but looks like it’s finally turning things around and a trip to face a bad team in a minor league stadium should present the perfect opportunity to sustain that strong play and wake up Monday morning within seven games of a playoff spot and as it’s barreling toward the trade deadline it needs to make a dramatic move right now to justify not dealing away pieces and giving itself the best chance of making a playoff run.
Sorry. I should probably catch my breath for a second after that terribly run-on sentence.
Losing two out of three in Sacramento was, indeed, particularly deflating given those circumstances. The Orioles are still a team that has won seven out of nine games overall, but they need to sustain that success. That’s the thing about sitting double-digit games under .500. It’s easy to say things like “there’s still lots of time left in the season” because it’s true. But the end of the season isn’t actually the deadline here. The deadline is.
The Orioles have to make decisions about their primary pending free agents by July 31. There’s no way that they should be considering any sort of full-on fire sale, but their pending free-agent group is notable. They’ll need to decide whether or not they’re “in it” to make decisions about pitchers like Zach Eflin, Tomoyuki Sugano, Andrew Kittredge and (maybe even) Charlie Morton as well as primary position players Ryan O’Hearn and Cedric Mullins.
The question is, “How many games do the Orioles need to be within a playoff spot and by what date in order to consider holding on to these primary free agents?”
The answer begins with the acknowledgement that the answer is impossible. The Tigers weren’t close enough to avoid becoming sellers at least year’s deadline … and yet they not only made it to the postseason, they reached a round beyond the Orioles. There is no specific definitive answer. But imagining your reaction to the potential scenario helps gauge things. If the Orioles were 10 games back of a playoff spot on July 31, would that be close enough to justify holding onto their top free agents? What if they were somehow within four or five games on July 31?
You get the picture. That’s the math the Orioles are working against as they make a decision about the deadline. The trend will matter at that point, too. If they’ve won 10 out of 12 games to get back within six games in the playoff race, the trend could be enough to want to drag things out a bit more.
At this point, the subject of potential extensions should have been dealt with, particularly with Eflin. This organization is going to have to spend money on pitching eventually. The market for Eflin will be robust. But so will the trade deadline, for good reason! He’s really good. The Orioles need really good starting pitching.
Yes, the Orioles could potentially get a ransom for Eflin. But if they do, they’ll need to sign another Eflin type in the offseason. They could try to hold on to the right-hander and make him a qualifying offer after the season to potentially gain a draft pick should he sign elsewhere in free agency. But this organization should be past prioritizing draft picks that won’t turn into big leaguers for years.
The Orioles should try to sign Eflin now. And they should at least have an idea of what the cost would be for others, like O’Hearn.
In the end, there might be wisdom to the Orioles trying to trade players both ways at the deadline. The club could ship off players on expiring contracts who aren’t going to be around after the season when the Orioles look to shift back toward championship contention. The Orioles could also still look into acquiring potential players under club control beyond 2025. That could both help them return to contention next year but also potentially help in the unlikely scenario where they do make a 2024 Tigers-like late season run.
So yes, the series loss in (city redacted) was very much harmful because the Orioles are going to run out of time before they have to at least start to try to shop the guys they’re going to be losing anyway. There’s still SOME time left to change that … but not a lot.
Photo Credits: Colin Murphy/PressBox