Between the Orioles trading Bryan Baker and sweeping the Mets on Thursday, Mark had a whole lot to talk about in this episode. Which way will the Orioles go? In a big mailbag episode, Mark goes over the wild card case, MVO, and looks ahead to possible draft picks.

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The Orioles pulled off a nice weekend sweep in Atlanta, yet got no closer in the wild card chase because the Mariners also got a sweep this weekend. In this episode, Mark reacts to the latest injury to an Orioles catcher and starts to question the Mike Elias logic that's keeping it from being Samuel Basallo time. Plus, in the mailbag, thoughts on Elias's worst trades to date.

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The Orioles have now played as many games under Tony Mansolino as they did under Brandon Hyde and they're actually above .500 in that stretch. Really: 22-21. Mark is thinking about how they've done this even with injury headwinds remaining against them over that time. Plus, looking ahead to this weekend's matchup with another 2025 disappointment, the Atlanta Braves.

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The Orioles are 15-11 in June, which is pretty good. Mark just can't lose sight of the fact that April and May dug such a huge hole, so the next month is going to be about the O's probably trading away players to try to reinforce the next wave coming from the system. Six-plus years into his tenure, Mike Elias still hasn't really done much to turn late-draft depth into prospects.

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People have been gradually reaching the breaking point where they finally give up on the 2025 Orioles for most of the last month and a half. Did you hit yours yet? Mark figures everyone must have and goes into some comparing of this year to 2018. Also, he goes on a lengthy rant about how you hardly ever see the Oriole Bird any more, and that's a shame.

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Fresh off of watching a performance of the Les Miserables musical, Mark is thinking about all the ways that the 2025 Orioles are even more depressing and full of tragedy than the Victor Hugo book, without even the benefit of a redemptive arc of salvation. Don't worry, this bit only lasts for about 25% of the episode.

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If anyone had started to feel better about the Orioles lately, they shredded that pretty well with Wednesday's awful loss to the Rays. Mark is still steaming about it, and concerned about how it reflects on something bad in the big picture: There's nobody good to pitch this year maybe next year either.

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The Orioles are fresh off a three-game sweep of the Angels where they won each game in a different way, giving them a 14-6 record over the last 20 games. Not bad at all! It's enough that Mark is feeling better about their trajectory, though he wants everyone to keep in mind the one guy who REALLY has to be convinced is Mike Elias.

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The Orioles looked better for a couple of weeks but now they've dropped two straight series and the schedule doesn't get any easier. There are still some positive signs, so if you want to hope that they can stabilize with a respectable pace from here on, go for it. In the mailbag of this episode, Mark goes into his thoughts on the catching situation and specifically whether Adley is back.

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If the Orioles had managed to play a good series against the Athletics, Mark might have been able to feel good about them for a while longer. They didn't. In this episode, looking again at the wild card math with a mailbag question about where exactly the "sell" tipping point should be, and turning to some talk about how the schedule gets tougher over the next two weeks.

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