Only in the heat of a pennant race with the regular season down to the last 21 games could winning two of three from the Rockies and White Sox seem unsatisfactory.

They’re both painfully bad. The Orioles should have swept both series based on their talent and motivation. But the Rockies are better at home and the thin air messes with all logic. And the White Sox … well, there’s no excuse except that it’s the major leagues and no team is gonna go 0-162. It's bound to catch a popup.

Going 4-2 in the last six games is nothing to sneeze at, but please cover your mouth if you do.

I covered the 2002 Orioles who finished 4-32 under manager Mike Hargrove and they were more competitive than Chicago. Requests for comparisons have been brought to me. Also with the rebuild Orioles. Again, not this terrible.

Hargrove’s club was .500 on Aug. 23. I can think of 500 reasons why the White Sox didn’t get close. But I respect the effort Wednesday night, when they could have folded after Gunnar Henderson’s game-tying leadoff home run in the bottom of the first.

As the Orioles added several players in deals at the trade deadline – including two starting pitchers and two for their bullpen – some promising prospects left the organization.

No doubt for coaches, managers, trainers and all staff on the O’s farm and in their player development system, some players they liked and worked hard to help improve, walked out that door. Relationships were developed and now continue, but the players are no longer with the Orioles.

The O’s traded Connor Norby, Kyle Stowers, Seth Johnson, Moisés Chace, Jackson Baumeister, Matthew Etzel and Mac Horvath, among others, during this process.

On a conference call to announce they had signed top draft pick Vance Honeycutt on Thursday, vice president of player development and domestic scouting Matt Blood was asked if some of the top draft picks the Orioles added this year somewhat offset losing some of the prospects they traded.

“I don’t think they’re related," Blood replied. "We’re just very excited to have been able to select Vance. He’s a player that we’ve liked for a long time. He’s a player that we know is a fantastic person and has a chance to make a big impact at the big league level.”

The Orioles score 11 runs in the series opener in Houston, allow 14 and lose because of the pitching. They’re held to four runs over the next three games and lose because of the hitting.

Well, mostly. The Astros scored eight runs Sunday to complete the sweep.

The team erupts for eight runs Tuesday night, collecting 16 hits and belting four home runs, and loses 10-8 because of the pitching. That’s how these things work. The arms, bats and gloves can conspire to create skids.

The brakes finally were applied last night, with only two runs allowed and three home runs hit in a 4-2 win.

Some of the rants on social media are aimed at executive vice president/general manager Mike Elias for failing to react after surgeries removed Kyle Bradish, John Means and Tyler Wells for the rest of the season and reliever Danny Coulombe until perhaps September. Meanwhile, he’s actively searching for pitching. He’s engaged in talks with numerous executives. It just isn’t live-streamed on the internet.

Right-hander Seth Johnson was a promising young pitcher in the Tampa Bay Rays farm system. In college he converted from shortstop to the mound at Campbell University and then Tampa Bay drafted him 40^th overall in the 2019 season.

He had a breakout 2021 season on the Rays' watch at Low-A ball, pitching to an ERA of 2.88 over 23 games but his next season was cut short by an elbow issue and Tommy John surgery was going to be needed.

That was a major setback but not all the big news he was going to have to deal with. Set for surgery that would happen on Aug. 3, 2022, he flew into Arlington, Tex. two days earlier ahead of the procedure and then his phone rang. He was traded to the Orioles in a three-team deal that sent Trey Mancini to Houston.

Time to get a new and improved elbow and a new team.  

“The day I got traded I was in Arlington for the surgery, and I was planning on going to the Rangers game that night and they were playing the Orioles. So, I got to see the team I was traded to about three hours after the trade,” Johnson recalled with a laugh in Sarasota, Fla. recently.

SARASOTA, Fla. – Cade Povich received a mound visit from his catcher this afternoon after only 14 pitches.

Povich issued back-to-back walks to Tampa Bay’s Jonathan Aranda and Curtis Mead with one out in the first inning and fell behind 2-0 to Junior Caminero, prompting Adley Rutschman to call time and offer some counseling.

It worked.

Povich missed the zone again, Caminero fouled off the next pitch, and the Rays’ designated hitter flied to center fielder Cedric Mullins. Jose Siri struck out, and Povich escaped the jam with his pitch count at 21. Only nine strikes, but also no runs.

The organization’s No. 9 prospect per Baseball America tossed two scoreless innings on 31 pitches, 16 strikes, for the split-squad Orioles. He walked two and struck out two.

SARASOTA, Fla. – The Orioles are playing their first split-squad games this afternoon, at home versus the Rays and in North Port versus the Braves.

Adley Rutschman is catching left-hander Cade Povich at Ed Smith Stadium. Ramón Urías is starting at second base and batting cleanup.

Coby Mayo is starting at third base and Colton Cowser is in right field.

Ryan McKenna is leading off and playing center field in North Port. Anthony Santander is the designated hitter, Jordan Westburg is the third baseman, Heston Kjerstad is in left field and Jackson Holliday is the second baseman again.

Kyle Stowers is in right field. Michael Pérez is catching Seth Johnson.

SARASOTA, Fla. – Former Orioles manager Buck Showalter used to make a point about the unpredictability of baseball by quoting one of his favorite sayings.

If you want to make God laugh, tell him about your plans.

It’s supposed to apply to life, but it also works with sports.

Think you have every angle covered before spring training and discover on the first day that two-fifths of the starting rotation appears headed for the injured list.  

Kyle Bradish has a sprained ulnar collateral ligament in his right elbow, the irritation noticeable while working out in January. He’s definite for the IL.

SARASOTA, Fla. – Seth Johnson has a locker inside the Orioles' spring training clubhouse, his seat at one end of a row that includes veteran Kyle Gibson and heralded rookies Grayson Rodriguez and DL Hall. Johnson is on the 40-man roster and various organizational top-prospect lists, placing 10^th in the most recent rankings from MLBPipeline.com, 12^th on Prospects150 – which describes his upside as “immense”- and 16^th by The Athletic.

Where you won’t find Johnson after the Orioles break camp is on an affiliate’s roster. He can’t pitch following his Tommy John surgery in August, two days after they acquired him from the Rays in a three-team trade that sent clubhouse leader and inspiration Trey Mancini to the Astros.

The Orioles obviously knew of the pending procedure, which likely made him available, along with the deep pitching in Tampa Bay’s system, and deemed him as worth the wait.

Many baseball insiders regarded him as a steal.

Johnson, a 24-year-old right-hander and 40^th overall pick in the 2019 draft out of Campbell University, the same North Carolina school that produced center fielder Cedric Mullins, had a hunch that he might be traded. But he also knew the unique circumstances, his elbow injury hardly an industry secret, could dissuade some teams from pursuing him.

The version of Seth Johnson that didn’t undergo ligament-reconstructive surgery in his right elbow was projected by some outlets to reach the majors next summer. He might have finished this season at Double-A, shortening his climb onto the Orioles’ active roster.

Johnson made seven starts at High-A Bowling Green before the injury, and prior to the deadline trade that sent him from the Rays to the Orioles. He didn’t pitch after May 20 and had his procedure on Aug. 3, which threatens to keep him away from an affiliate until 2024.

A throwing program is set to begin in the middle of January and the Orioles will get a clearer read on his progress. Johnson is hoping at a minimum to pitch in the Florida Complex League before the minors shut down.

The road to Sarasota already has been traveled. Johnson is cleared for weight training, which he’s done at the spring training complex except for a short period when it closed for some renovations.

Johnson has mostly kept his offseason on a normal trajectory other than the whole pitching thing.

The timing of the trade was so good that Seth Johnson didn’t dwell as much on the oddity of his circumstances.

Johnson had just arrived in Dallas on Aug. 1 for the surgical repair of his right elbow that would be done two days later. Waiting for his father to join him at the rental car counter, Johnson received a phone call from the Rays informing him of the three-team trade involving the Orioles.

“With the Rays, you get traded pretty quick and stuff happens kind of fast with them,” he said yesterday, “but it was still kind of a shock just because everything you’ve known goes out the window because you’ve got a new organization to learn.”

A coincidence weaved its way into the introduction.

“It actually worked out nice because later that night I was planning on going to the Orioles and Rangers game anyway, so I got traded like four hours before that game and got to go see the new organization play that night,” he said. “So, that was pretty neat.”

The shuffling of the 40-man roster, with some cards tossed out of the deck, grows louder with today’s deadline for setting it prior to the Dec. 7 Rule 5 draft in San Diego.

The Orioles have met multiple times this week to finalize their list. They’ve created six openings, with the freedom to fashion more as they seek to add players from outside the organization via free agency and trades.

Top pitching prospect Grayson Rodriguez and shortstop Joey Ortiz, the No. 8 prospect in the organization per Baseball America, are simple additions. Those internal talks must have lasted two seconds.

Rodriguez is expected to be in the rotation on opening day. Ortiz could compete for the shortstop job in spring training after batting .346/.400/.567 with seven doubles, two triples, four home runs, 14 RBIs and nine walks in 26 games with Triple-A Norfolk after his promotion from Double-A Bowie.

Left-hander Drew Rom, 22, is a strong candidate to be protected. The fourth-round draft pick in 2018 struck out 144 batters in 120 innings between Bowie and Norfolk, and he surrendered only 10 home runs.

Most of the six new pitchers the Orioles acquired in the recent trades of Trey Mancini to Houston and Jorge López to Minnesota have gotten off to good starts for their new organization.

The Orioles added three top 30 prospects.

For Mancini they got right-hander Seth Johnson from Tampa Bay. He underwent Tommy John surgery on Aug. 3, so the Orioles won’t see him for a while, but MLBPipeline.com ranks him as the club's No. 8 prospect. Baseball America has him at No. 10. After Grayson Rodriguez and DL Hall, Johnson is now the Orioles' third highest-rated pitcher.

The O’s also added 23-year-old right-hander Chayce McDermott from Houston in that deal. He now ranks as Baltimore’s No. 12 prospect, according to MLBPipeline.com, and No. 17 in Baseball America's estimation. In two games with the Orioles' high Single-A Aberdeen team, he has allowed two runs and three hits in five innings, going 0-1 with a 3.60 ERA with one walk to 10 strikeouts.

In the deal with Minnesota, the O’s added lefty Cade Povich, also pitching at Aberdeen. In his first start for his new organization, he threw six scoreless innings on one hit last Saturday. MLBPipeline.com ranks Povich as the O’s No. 26 prospect, while Baseball America puts him at No. 29.

If you could take sentiment out of it – almost impossible to do when it comes to Trey Mancini - the Orioles return in Monday's trade doesn’t look too bad.

A strong farm system got stronger, and now some at-bats opened up for other players like Terrin Vavra, Yusniel Diaz or maybe at some point later Kyle Stowers, as Mancini joins the Houston Astros.

Calling him a rental player after all he has been through and all that he means to the team and town almost seems disrespectful, but from a most technical standpoint, he is a pending free agent that Houston will have for the rest of this season. And possibly no more. It is not impossible to say he and the Orioles could have contract conversations over the winter.

And for Mancini, a beloved figure today and probably forever in Birdland, the Orioles did get two pitchers who show promise for the future. Both have touched 98 mph and were ranked highly for two clubs that have solid pitching development in Houston and Tampa Bay. And they are ranked highly in the now well-regarded O’s farm system.

The Orioles acquired right-hander Seth Johnson, 23, from Tampa Bay, and MLBPipeline.com last night, in an updated O’s top 30 list, rated him No. 8, right behind Stowers and just ahead of Heston Kjerstad. They added right-hander Chayce McDermott, 23, from Houston and ranked him No. 12. He is just behind César Prieto and ahead of Mike Baumann. So the two new guys are already keeping good company there.

ARLINGTON, Texas - Orioles executive vice president/general manager Mike Elias knew that trading Trey Mancini would be an unpopular move. A beloved player and leader inside the clubhouse. Someone fans adore. The face of the franchise. A class act and an ideal role model.

Part of a team that’s been a surprise contender, just three games out of the last wild card spot heading into tonight’s series opener against the Rangers.

But Elias stuck to business, and he couldn’t pass up the two pitching prospects who came to the Orioles in a three-team transaction.

Elias acquired right-hander Seth Johnson from the Rays and Chayce McDermott from the Astros. Houston also gets right-hander Jayden Murray from the Rays, who obtained outfielder José Siri from Houston.

Johnson will undergo Tommy John surgery, making him a longer-term investment for the Orioles. Both pitchers are coming from the high Single-A level.

He played in 701 games in his time in Birdland. That is a significant number, but Trey Mancini’s impact on the Orioles will go way beyond anything on a stat sheet.

The kid from Florida who was once overlooked by the big colleges in his home state, went to Notre Dame to play college ball. Then he was an eighth-round draft pick by the Orioles in 2013. Picks in round eight don’t often become middle-of-the-order hitters and team leaders, but Mancini did that.

He was loved by Birdland even before he kicked cancer’s butt. Even before he became close friends with Mo Gaba and Baltimore got to see from a distance that beautiful relationship. Even before the Orioles team he played on took on a completely new look and went from a club that made the 2016 playoffs to one that lost 115 games and had to rebuild from the ground up.

He carried himself so well and represented the Orioles so well, on and off the field.

Fans here can now hope this season will end with Mancini maybe playing in the World Series and getting a ring with his new team in Houston.

ARLINGTON, Texas - The trade that sent Trey Mancini to the Astros this afternoon involved three teams.

The Orioles received right-hander Chayce McDermott from the Astros and right-hander Seth Johnson from the Rays. MLBPipeline.com ranked McDermott, 23, as Houston’s No. 12 prospect and Johnson, 23, as the No. 6 prospect for the Rays.

The Orioles also recalled outfielder Yusniel Diaz from Triple-A Norfolk. He's waiting to make his major league debut.

Johnson was the 40^th overall pick in the 2019 draft out of Campbell University, which also claims Orioles outfielder Cedric Mullins. He’s set to undergo Tommy John surgery.

Johnson made seven starts at high Single-A Bowling Green, allowing nine earned runs in 27 innings with 11 walks and 41 strikeouts.