​Hello, friends. It’s always more enjoyable when the Orioles win than when they lose, and yesterday certainly proved that. It could have been a painful way to drop a game and get swept, but instead the Orioles staged a comeback for a 3-2 victory. For more of the game’s compelling totals, check out John Beers’s recap.
Yesterday’s win temporarily quieted one discouraging symbolic Orioles issue: they no longer own a worse record than last year’s team. The 2026 Orioles sit at 43-51, matching the 2025 squad at this point. Last year’s club followed with a bad stretch, losing the next three games and six of the next seven, which means there’s an opportunity to gain ground, in a sense.
Even better would be a sustained hot streak to climb back into the wild-card race, and yesterday’s win gave them a boost. The Mariners dropped their third straight game and fell to .500. The Orioles sit four games back with six teams to pass, which means the real obstacle is not just the four-game gap but the six teams above them. To close the gap, the Orioles would need to go 43-25 or better, while several teams ahead would need to stall—Mariners no better than 39-29, Twins no better than 40-28, Astros no better than 40-27, and so on. It’s a daunting challenge. I’m skeptical they can control all of that, though the league offers plenty of precedents where teams surge and fortunes invert. A hot streak could still materialize, as the Marlins showed. They stood 26-34 at the end of May, and after a six-game winning streak, they’re now 52-42—a striking reversal of fortunes. A team can do it.
The question is whether the Orioles can, because they can only control their own results. They could really use a lengthy winning streak, something that has eluded them all season. But before they can muster four straight wins, they’ll first need to string two and three together. Their next hurdle is a struggling Royals team—their final opponent before the All-Star break.
It isn’t hugely meaningful that the Royals are slumping, because the Orioles have had uneven performances against teams in general this season. They’ve shown the tendency to play poorly against a range of opponents. Here’s hoping that changes starting at 7:05 tonight. Let’s not dampen the mood for the folks in the stands with their reversible floppy hats.
On Rutschman leading off, Alexander’s spot in the lineup, and the Rogers/Basallo battery (a nod to the School of Roch): the manager weighed in on several strategic topics ahead of yesterday’s game, and because the Orioles won, the tone is less grim than it could have been. Robertson, once coded in the clubhouse as a minor leaguer, is now steering the Orioles’ draft. The Baltimore Banner recently published an excellent profile of the person who has a lot to contribute for better SEO and storytelling.