The Orioles are in the midst of their longest homestand of the season with the Guardians, the second of three opponents, visiting Camden Yards tonight for a three-game series. Cleveland is 8-7 but only 3-6 on the road.

The latest off-day arrived with the Orioles still in search of their first series and back-to-back wins. They’re batting .235/.302/.383 for a .685 OPS that ranked 18^th in the majors yesterday, 66 runs scored that ranked 13^th and 116 hits that were 16th. The offense can be described as “mid.”

Perhaps a better word is “inconsistent,” with enough ups and downs to cause nausea.

The bats really can’t be blamed for Sunday’s 7-6 loss to the Blue Jays except for the inability to bring home the automatic runner in the 10^th inning. The sport is set up now for one run to score in extras, with the burden placed on teams to do more. The Orioles got Jordan Westburg to third base on a ground ball and struck out twice.

The first eight losses this season occurred with the offense producing two, one, zero, four, two, one, three and zero runs. Six should be sufficient, but the bullpen allowed three in the eighth with the Orioles ahead 6-3.

Major League Baseball has reached another important deadline today, with teams required to offer contracts to arbitration-eligible players. It’s known as the “non-tender” date. Good for baseball, bad for steakhouse chefs.

The Orioles went a surprising 17-for-17 last year and they have 13 players to consider this afternoon. As usual, there are the slam dunks and the shaky on the perimeters.

The list stood at 16 before the Orioles did some whittling, including the decision to pick up left-handed reliever Cionel Pérez’s $2.2 million option for 2025. They could have declined it and negotiated a new deal.

Pitchers Matt Bowman and Burch Smith elected free agency rather than outright assignments.

At the risk of being wrong again, which never stops me from trying, I’ll predict that the Orioles go 13-for-13.

We’re kind of just thinking out loud here today. But as the Orioles look to win more games and get back on top of the American League East next season, I believe changing or making some slight alterations to how the Orioles do business could be helpful moving forward.

Over the next few weeks, I will take a look in this space at some ways that could happen. 

Less aggressiveness on two-strike counts

Going back several years when I started hearing about and writing about the O’s working hard to make better swing decisions on the farm, I reported that this means essentially that a hitter does not shorten his swing with two strikes.

The thinking was, always put your best swing on the ball and try to drive it. In all counts. Shortening up the swing to just make contact works against that.

The Orioles will wrap up their next-to-last road trip of the season this weekend when they play three games in Detroit at Comerica Park.

The Orioles have not played the Tigers all year and now they will see them in back-to-back weekends and in six of their next nine games.

While the Orioles have struggled lately going 1-2 at Boston to start this trip and they are now 1-4 the last five games and 2-5 their past seven, Detroit is doing the opposite.

The Tigers had a four-game win streak snapped Thursday when they lost 4-2 at home versus Colorado. The O's will miss ace Tarik Skubal who allowed one run in six innings in that game.

So Detroit is now 75-72 and are 3.5 games behind Minnesota for the last AL wild card spot. Detroit needs a bunch of wins to make a late run and if they get them at the Orioles expense, it could be quite damaging to Baltimore's AL East title hopes.

DENVER - The reaction is about what you’d expect. Players watch a teammate sustain an injury and struggle to comprehend the reasoning or keep count.

Zach Eflin is reinstated from the injured list and starts yesterday’s series finale in Colorado, less than 24 hours after a 103.1 mile line drive slams into Dean Kremer’s right arm, creating a Rocky Mountain high welt above his wrist. The Orioles were dumped again into their gain-one, lose-one way of life.

Kremer has avoided the injured list and perhaps the off-day Thursday works in his favor. But he lasted only 3 1/3 innings and manager Brandon Hyde used six relievers in a 7-5 loss. Hyde said yesterday that he’d be surprised if Kremer started in the next four or five days.

Ramón Urías is hit on the nose by a 93.8 mph sinker, stays in the game and rolls his ankle covering third base. He’s on crutches and the 10-day IL, putting the Orioles’ hottest hitter on ice for an indefinite period.

If it wasn’t for bad luck …

LOS ANGELES – In front of a sellout crowd on the road, with a chance to gain a game on the Yankees, against a hot team with the best record in baseball, the Orioles pitching made three runs stand up. 

The Orioles bullpen – the much-maligned O’s bullpen – stood tall.

They had repeated chances to give up the big hit, the soul-crushing hit, the hit to blow the game. But they did not.

The same bullpen that had struggled so badly in recent weeks? Yes, that bullpen.

In what had to qualify as one of the O’s best and most impressive wins of the year, they beat the Los Angeles Dodgers 3-2 Tuesday to open a big three-game series.

The Orioles keep looking to get on a hot streak, playing solid and clean baseball. Given a chance to do that Wednesday afternoon, win a series and bring some momentum back to Camden Yards, they failed to. 

It was a brutal series loss at Citi Field with two walk-off losses, both with Seranthony Domínguez on the mound. Just when it looked like he might be the team’s ninth-inning option, this happens.

It appeared the team had some serious positive momentum when Austin Slater hit a two-run homer to right to tie the game 2-2 in the top of the sixth. It was his first O’s homer and his second of the season.

But even with that swing, a lot went wrong shortly after that on the way to the Orioles’ 54^th loss of the year.

They were held to three hits for the second time in the last four days. They actually won with three hits Sunday, but now they are 1-9 this year when getting three hits or less.

NEW YORK – Mets catcher Francisco Alvarez sat on a fastball last night like it was a clubhouse sofa.

Alvarez got ahead 3-0 against Orioles reliever Seranthony Domínguez – oh, let’s just call him the closer and stop hedging – and unloaded for his first career walk-off hit of any kind. And man, did he enjoy it.

Well, what he saw of it.

Alvarez made contact, held up the bat with one hand, released it and turned to the Mets dugout. He never looked back at the ball, gesturing to teammates with both hands and slapping his chest multiple times before beginning to round the bases. His jersey was pulled below his left shoulder after reaching home plate and being mobbed.

Domínguez struck out the first batter he faced. He struck out three Red Sox in the ninth inning the previous day. But he’s also surrendered home runs in back-to-back appearances.

The next important date on baseball’s calendar arrives today with teams required to tender or non-tender players eligible for arbitration.

You probably memorized the list of 17 Orioles, an unusually high total, but here it is again, with MLBTradeRumors using its model to project salaries:

Anthony Santander: $7.4 million to $12.7 million
Danny Coulombe: $1 million to $2.2 million
John Means: $2.975 million to $5.93 million
Ryan O’Hearn: $1.4 million to $3 million
Cedric Mullins: $4.1 million to $6.4 million
Austin Hays: $3.2 million to $6.1 million
Dillon Tate: $1.5 million to $1.5 million
Jorge Mateo: $2 million to $2.9 million
Ryan Mountcastle: $738,400 to $4.2 million
Cionel Pérez: $732,300 to $1.3 million
Cole Irvin: $737,600 to $1.8 million
Keegan Akin: $731,100 to $800,000
Jacob Webb: $720,000 to $1.2 million
Ramón Urías: $734,700 to $2 million
Tyler Wells: $732,400 to $2.3 million
Ryan McKenna: $725,800 to $740,000
Sam Hilliard: $750,000 to $1.1 million

Santander is going to draw trade interest again and therefore find himself immersed in rumors. He’s a slam-dunk tender, of course. That’s the easy part.

Harder is finding a way to squeeze Heston Kjerstad and Colton Cowser onto a 26-man roster without removing an outfielder. But so would be replacing Santander’s power and run production.

It is only 11 at-bats, but in that small sample, the Orioles’ Ramón Urías is batting .455 with a slugging percentage of .909 against Yankees’ right-hander Gerrit Cole.

Cole (9-2, 2.78 ERA) will face the Orioles tonight for the second time this year and for the 12^th time in his career. On May 23 of this season he had one of his worst starts of the year against the Orioles, allowing five runs and six hits over five innings. Cedric Mullins and Gunnar Henderson hit solo homers that night.

But over 11 career games, Cole is 5-3 with a 2.80 ERA, a .600 OPS and a WHIP of 0.991 against the Orioles.

Urías is 5-for-11 against the six-time All-Star, who has twice finished second for the Cy Young Award. He has two doubles and a homer against Cole.

“I think for me it is about looking for something up in the zone,” he said this afternoon. “I know he is good at throwing his slider down in the zone and he can get chases with that. For me, looking up in the zone is important and look for mistakes. Every time I see the ball down, you try to lay off. And that is how I have had some success against him.”

Ramón Urías is making his second career start at first base this afternoon, as the Orioles concluded their homestand.

Manager Brandon Hyde is stacking his lineup with right-handed bats, including James McCann catching, Ryan McKenna in left field and Joey Ortiz at second base.

Austin Hays is leading off, with Gunnar Henderson in the cleanup spot.

Tyler Wells has posted a 3.24 ERA in 13 games (12 starts), and his 0.853 WHIP leads the majors. He’s allowed five runs in his last three starts over 18 innings.

Wells has made eight career appearances against the Blue Jays, including two starts, and allowed 10 runs and 18 hits in 14 2/3 innings.