The Orioles continue their homestand tonight against the Rays, and this time, the teams get to play in a major league ballpark.

They split the four-game series at George M. Steinbrenner Field, losing an 8-0 lead on June 18 in one of the season’s low points. The Rays are in second place in the division, a half-game behind the Yankees. They hold the top Wild Card.

Some of the Orioles talked again about getting a reset yesterday. Maybe this one will stick. The others haven’t led to the kind of streak that thrusts a team into a thick of a pennant race. Seven teams remain ahead of the Orioles for the final spot. Five weeks remain until the trade deadline.

Think this is a big series? Every single one feels like baseball life or death.  Just wait until Texas and Atlanta on the next road trip, and a homestand that begins with three games against the Mets.

The offense needs to break out, which is one of the more obvious statements ever made about any team. The Orioles have been shut out in three of the last five games and one-hit in two. Opposing starters have carried a no-hitter through the seventh inning twice and the sixth once. The team ranked 24^th in runs scored yesterday with 315, 23^rd with a .236 average, .302 on-base percentage and .691 OPS. They’re hitting .224/.291/.391 with runners in scoring position and .218/.291/.302 against left-handers.

NEW YORK – The Orioles almost have become numb to the injuries ravaging their roster again in 2025.

Catcher Adley Rutschman won’t return until after the break due to a strained left oblique, marking his first career trip to the IL. Infielder Jordan Westburg is day-to-day with a sprained left index finger, but he's going to join Rutschman if he isn’t available later this week.

Backup catcher Maverick Handley came out of yesterday’s game in the bottom of the second inning after colliding with Jazz Chisholm Jr. Ten players are on the IL, and Westburg and Handley are trying to keep it under a dozen.

Twenty-one Orioles have spent time on the IL this season, including 10 of the position players on the Opening Day roster. And that doesn’t include shortstop Gunnar Henderson, who stayed back in Sarasota with an intercostal strain.

The Orioles keep testing the next-man-up philosophy that’s preached in the clubhouse.

NEW YORK – Orioles reliever Yennier Cano struck out the side yesterday in the seventh inning and was optioned after the game. Overall production and limited bullpen flexibility doomed the 2023 All-Star.

Reliever Yaramil Hiraldo was recalled from Triple-A Norfolk. He’s using Cano’s locker at Yankee Stadium.

Cano has a 4.73 ERA and 1.388 WHIP in 32 games. He was scored upon once in nine appearances this month, but the Rays tallied four runs against him in two-thirds of an inning. He had a streak of nine scoreless outings out of 10 prior to the implosion.

“It starts, ultimately, with the amount of innings we’ve had to cover here recently with the bullpen,” said interim manager Tony Mansolino. “We need a fresh arm. You have a limited amount of bullpen guys who have options, so there’s really just a couple to choose from. You start to look at the big picture, right? The whole season for players, too, and where maybe a guy can take a break and go down and maybe work on something and get back to what they were.

“I know yesterday looks great where Cano comes in, probably has one of his best outings of the year for us. I think you’ve got to be very careful with the recency bias and just understand that we have to look at the last three, four months, last year. And understand that Yenni Cano has been good at times. He’s been up and down. I think everyone can admit that. And I think this could be a really good opportunity for Yenni to go down right now and kind of make the small adjustment, whatever needs to be made in order to get back to being Yenni Cano.”

NEW YORK -  Less than 24 hours after plotting how to navigate the many bullpen restrictions in a regulation game, Orioles interim manager Tony Mansolino stood in the visiting dugout at Yankee Stadium and watched Zach Eflin throw 30 pitches in the first inning.

Only one run scored on Trent Grisham’s homer, but it’s become an exercise in this series that Mansolino would rather sit out.

Eflin threw 29 more in the second and surrendered two second-deck home runs. By the conclusion of the third, Eflin’s pitch count had risen to 90 and the Orioles were barreling toward a 9-0 loss to the Yankees before an announced sellout crowd of 46,142.

Clarke Schmidt no-hit them for seven innings, his removal coming after 103 pitches. He walked two batters in the first and nailed Ryan O’Hearn in the fourth. JT Brubaker entered in the eighth inning, his first major league appearance since 2022, and former Yankee Gary Sánchez led off with a full-count single at 103.2 mph for the Orioles' lone hit.

The Orioles have been no-hit seven times, the most recent by the Mariners’ Hisashi Iwakuma on Aug. 12, 2015 in Seattle. Today would have marked the first combined effort for both teams. Instead, the Orioles settled for being shut out for the seventh time this season.

The mailbag is on a train to New York, demanding a seat on the Acela and refusing to ride the subway later to the Bronx. I’m with you, mailbag. I’d rather hop aboard a mange-diseased coyote.

I had some leftovers from the last mailbag dump, so let’s get to those questions first before the Orioles begin a three-game series against the first-place Yankees, who lost six in a row and didn’t score in three straight prior to defeating the Angels yesterday, 7-3.

These teams met at Camden Yards in late April and the Orioles won two of three games to leave their record at 12-18. Remember when that was reason to panic?

I kept saying, “It’s only April.” And I wasn’t wrong. But it only got worse.

Anyway, you asked, I answered, and you finally got confirmation that I didn’t skip you. The only editing happened when I called it a “mailbug.”

Two more Orioles went on the injured list in the past two days. Interim manager Tony Mansolino and his staff are basing lineup decisions on availability as much as data and hunches.

Positions and batting orders are shuffled like a deck of cards. Left-right matchups aren’t given the usual consideration.

Jackson Holliday seems immune to much of it. He’s the leadoff hitter most of the time, with Gunnar Henderson moving down to third. That’s one of the easier calls to make.

Holliday hit his first career leadoff home run this afternoon, lining a fastball from White Sox starter Davis Martin deep onto the flag court. Coby Mayo collected his first major league RBI and caused benches and bullpens to empty, Jorge Mateo smacked his first home run of the season, and the Orioles won 4-2 before an announced crowd of 23,470 at sunny Camden Yards.

The Orioles (21-36) have won back-to-back games for the fourth time this season and claimed their fourth series. They’ll go for their first sweep since the final three games of the 2024 season in Minnesota.

BOSTON – The Orioles led 2-0 yesterday and lost 19-5. They took a 2-0 lead today in the first inning in Game 1 of a doubleheader, it began to pour again, Jarren Duran homered on Zach Eflin’s second pitch, and play was paused so the grounds crew could spread a drying compound on the field, mound and around home plate.

Players walked to the dugout and waited about six minutes. Eflin returned, retired Rafael Devers on a ground ball and surrendered a game-tying home run to Wilyer Abreu.

Teams talk about the value in getting a reset. Can an entire series be eligible for one?

Eflin tried to demolish the built-in excuse for a poor outing by carrying a lead into the sixth inning. The Orioles lost it, and eventually the game when Devers singled up the middle off Gregory Soto in the 10th to give the Red Sox a 6-5 walk-off victory at Fenway Park.

A three-run fifth inning appeared to fuel the Orioles’ second win in 11 games and fourth in 19, but the Red Sox scored twice in the sixth to tie the game, with Gunnar Henderson’s throwing error a big contributor. Greg Weissert tossed a scoreless 10th, with Jorge Mateo striking out to strand two after entering the game earlier as a pinch-runner.

The Orioles lost Game 2 of last Wednesday’s doubleheader against the Twins after former manager Brandon Hyde handed Yennier Cano the ball in the eighth inning and watched him allow three runs. This was an automatic and understandable move, using the primary and rested set-up man to protect a 6-5 lead before passing it on to closer Félix Bautista.

The critics came after Hyde again for no good reason. It was the right decision, it blew up like so many others in 2025, and Cano’s ERA was inflated from 2.70 to 4.40.

Interim manager Tony Mansolino summoned Cano in the eighth inning Monday night with the score tied in Milwaukee. Cano got the first two outs, but a full-count walk and stolen base preceded William Contreras’ ground ball single to give the Brewers a 5-4 win.

First base was open, but the Orioles pitched to Contreras, who finished with four hits.

“We have a ton of faith in Yenni,” Mansolino said. “Yenni’s one of our guys. We really like Yenni, really in any situation. So we bet on our guy, it didn’t work out. We’ll do it again next time.”

MILWAUKEE – The first two innings haven’t been kind to the Orioles in the Tony Mansolino era. Late deficits haven’t been kind to Baltimore all season. 

In the first game of their new series against the Brewers, the Orioles beat both trends. But they couldn’t beat the Brewers, falling 5-4 in Game 1. 

Yesterday, the ever-reliable Zach Eflin allowed seven earned runs in his first two frames against the Nationals. On Saturday, Kyle Gibson and Charlie Morton combined to do the same. 

The Orioles, on the other hand, found their earliest runs of those two games in the fifth inning. 

Tonight’s deficit of 3-1 after two innings wasn’t quite 7-0, but it still wasn’t the start the Orioles were looking for.

Ryan Mountcastle slowed for an instant yesterday as he prepared to pull into second base with a double, saw that Twins right fielder Kody Clemens bobbled the ball, and sped up to try for the triple. Clemens, playing his third position in four innings, fired to third baseman Royce Lewis for the out.

Mountcastle rose from the dirt, his uniform covered in it and headed back to the dugout. The Orioles were down three runs, and Mountcastle’s elevated production at the plate and spot in the lineup couldn’t give them a lift. But he tried.

Manager Brandon Hyde had Mountcastle second in the order in both games of Wednesday’s doubleheader and again yesterday, moving up one of the few hot bats on the team. Mountcastle has hit second 77 times in his career.

“I can’t remember the last time I did it (before Wednesday),” Mountcastle said. “I’ve done it before. I like it. I like batting second with a guy like Gunnar (Henderson) behind me and Jackson (Holliday) in front of me. It’s a good little spot to hit.”

Any spot is bound to work for Mountcastle when he’s cooking.

MINNEAPOLIS – Dean Kremer deserved much better and wasn’t asking for it. Baseball can be a fickle and frustrating game. He knows it. Just keep going after hitters and accept the outcome.

Kremer completed seven innings again today and held the Twins to two runs, exiting with the score tied and the Orioles having left runners on base in each of the first six frames. He retired 10 of the last 12 and 18 of 21, and hoped that the worst part of the day would be a no-decision.

He couldn’t enjoy a team victory. He had to dress and eat inside another quiet clubhouse.

Brooks Lee drove in two runs with a two-out double off Gregory Soto in the bottom of the eighth inning and he scored on Ty France’s single to give the Twins a 5-2 win and complete the sweep at Target Field.

The Orioles had 10 hits for the second day in a row and stranded nine runners, their failings with men in scoring position littering the scoresheet. Trevor Larnach finally made them pay with a game-tying home run off Kremer in the sixth inning. The slightest of margins was erased with one swing, and Kremer spun around to wait for a new ball without watching the old on land.

Orioles reliever Yennier Cano stood with his hands on his hips. He did it once, twice, as if in a state of disbelief.

He had no other reaction. The season hadn’t prepared him for it.

Cano surrendered his first earned runs in 13 appearances and his first homers, with the Royals’ Bobby Witt Jr. and Vinnie Pasquantino going back-to-back to break a tie in the seventh in an 11-6 victory over the Orioles before an announced crowd of 31,956 at Camden Yards.

Kansas City began the series ranked last in the majors with 15 homers, but they set the club record with seven today and have 10 over the past two games. The Orioles hit four, including a pair from Jackson Holliday, and fell way short, lowering their record to 13-20 as they ready for their next road trip following an off-day.

Every homer today was a solo on Star Wars Weekend until Michael Massey’s two-run shot off Matt Bowman in the ninth. The jokes write themselves.

TORONTO – Orioles manager Brandon Hyde isn’t asking for the world. He isn’t being unreasonable and pushing his ‘pen to perform beyond its limits.

Sitting in the visiting dugout yesterday, Hyde said, “I’m looking for guys to come in and throw strikes.”

That’s pretty much the extent of it just three games into the season.

“We need a little better strike throwing ability.”

Hyde will start there and figure out the rest.

BRADENTON, Fla. – Riley Cooper had no idea.

A combined no-hitter was brewing today and it rested in Cooper’s left hand as the Orioles reliever selected for the bottom of the ninth inning.

A 13^th-round draft pick out of LSU in 2023. A low A-ball pitcher with 24 games of professional experience.

The pressure he felt also was surprisingly low.

“Pitching’s pitching,” he said, “so I just went in there and did my thing.”

SARASOTA, Fla. – Orioles outfielder Heston Kjerstad knows that he’s getting a legitimate chance to make the club and to play on a much more regular basis. The rest is up to him.

End the shuttling between the majors and Triple-A Norfolk. Be used as the front office envisioned when it made him the second overall draft pick in 2020. Lots of right field and designated hitter. Anything to keep his bat in the lineup.

His statistics in the Grapefruit League aren’t supposed to really matter, but it doesn’t hurt to pad them anyway.

Kjerstad came to the plate this afternoon in the bottom of the second inning after Tyler O’Neill walked against Tigers starter and top prospect Jackson Jobe. The Orioles trailed 2-0, but Kjerstad knotted the score with an opposite-field home run.

Maybe he’s practicing for when he’s at Camden Yards, with the left field fence moved closer to home plate.

Reliever Burch Smith doesn’t rate as one of the bigger decisions awaiting the Orioles. However, he’s on their agenda.

Smith is eligible for arbitration despite his name being missing from some lists. He made $1 million this year, with the Orioles paying the prorated minimum salary after selecting his contract on July 11.

The Rays signed Smith as a free agent on Jan. 2. The Marlins acquired him on March 27 in a cash transaction and released him on June 20. The Orioles signed him a week later.

The Orioles optioned Dillon Tate on the day that they brought Smith to the majors. As if you’d forget.

Smith appeared in 25 games and posted a 5.74 ERA and 1.050 WHIP in 26 2/3 innings. He started out with four scoreless appearances, allowing one hit, walking none and striking out six, but he endured some rough patches, including five home runs over seven outings.  

The music didn't play. The reflections from the disco lights didn't bounce off the walls and ceiling. The Orioles sat in silence at their lockers or circled the room and hugged, failing to repeat as division champions and now mimicking last year’s morose elimination setting.

The losing streak in the playoffs has reached 10 games. Any chance to snap it must wait until 2025.

The Royals broke a tie in the sixth inning on Bobby Witt Jr.’s infield single with two outs that scored Kyle Isbel, and the Orioles lost 2-1 in a do-or-die Game 2 of the Wild Card series before an announced crowd of 38,698 at Camden Yards.

That’s it. Being all-in with the winter trade for Corbin Burnes and talking about avenging last year’s ouster in the Division Series in Texas led to another sweep. Too many injuries and too little offense.

And now, a lot of time to think about it.

The baseball math can’t be manipulated tonight to give the Orioles a playoff-clinching scenario. It only worked if they won.

Cade Povich held the Tigers to two runs for the second time in less than a week and the Orioles rallied for two in the ninth to send the game into extras, but the Tigers scored twice against Yennier Cano in the 10th and won 6-4 before an announced crowd of 39,647 at Camden Yards.

An Orioles win coupled with a Mariners loss tonight would have delivered back-to-back postseason berths for the first time since 1996-97. Now, we wait a little longer.

A possible alternative is clinching in their final home game of the regular season. Otherwise, they must do it on a trip that takes them to New York and Minnesota.

The Orioles are 86-69 and in danger of losing their fifth series in a row.

Craig Kimbel’s old locker is empty except for a row of hangers. His belongings are gone.

The former closer has left the building.

The Orioles designated Kimbrel for assignment earlier today and recalled reliever Bryan Baker. They made the move after he was charged last night with a career-high six runs in two-thirds of an inning, the last straw with his chances for inclusion on the playoff roster dissolved a while ago.

“Tough day,” said manager Brandon Hyde. “We have so much respect for Craig and his career and what he’s done for the game, how long he’s pitched, how long he’s pitched well. So it’s never easy to say goodbye to somebody who’s done a lot.”

Kimbrel, 36, was an All-Star snub after posting a 2.80 ERA and 0.962 WHIP in 39 appearances, but he had a 10.59 ERA and 2.177 WHIP in 18 games since the break and never responded to a second reset.

Executive vice president/general manager Mike Elias took his turn today providing injury updates to the media, asking in a joking manner for questions to be broken up individually rather than in one lump inquiry. Just trying to simplify the process.

Ryan Mountcastle (wrist) is in a hitting progression down in Sarasota, the most positive news about the first baseman since he was shut down.

“I was there during instructional league yesterday and had a chance to see him work out,” Elias said. “He has a sore wrist and he’s making his way back from that, and that takes a few steps, but I do think we have a really good chance of seeing him playing for Norfolk here pretty soon, and I do think we’re going to get him back, and he’s making a push. And we definitely will take what we can get from him, and we’re hopeful to get him back before the season’s over.”

Jordan Westburg took batting practice for the first time since fracturing his right hand. “Like a normal citizen,” Elias said.

“Jordan’s doing great, too,” Elias added. “We can’t wait to have him back, and we are expecting him back before the end of the regular season. We’re not totally there yet, but it’s going really well.”