A 3-3 road trip by the Orioles would have felt pretty good this time last week. It doesn't feel quite as good after they won two of the first three, and the two losses in Toronto were bad ones in different ways. In the mailbag this time, some extended thoughts on Adley Rutschman.

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The Orioles gave us a few great wins in May and also an unfortunate number of horrible losses, finishing below .500 for the month overall. Mark isn't excited but he talks in this episode about how that's better than last year, and that's not nothing. In the mailbag, some interest in Creed Willems and other high minors prospects for the O's.

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The Orioles getting swept by the Rays has triggered a lot of angst and soul-searching in Birdland, except some reporting indicates there's very little of that in the front office right now. Ben McDonald's unloading on "analytics" after the Rays series landed loudly in this environment. Mark tries to figure out what to make of all this.

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Just when the Orioles do something like beating the Yankees twice to make you think they're turning the corner, they get worked over by a bad Nationals pitching staff twice to make you think they're sinking again. Mark tries to talk through the latest "barely treading water" O's week, and also he's sad about Jordan Westburg.

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The Orioles continue to exist in an uncomfortable middle ground between where we want them to be and complete disaster, and it keeps feeling as if they're more likely to head towards disaster than turn it around. Mark tries again to figure out what to do about this. Plus, in the mailbag, someone wants to know who makes Orioles lineups, prompting Mark's hottest take yet.

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The Orioles continue to inspire uncomfortably familiar feelings like we experienced about them last year. Mark isn't ready to throw in the towel on them just yet, but he is getting awfully nervous that this is heading the same direction, so this episode is a long rant about bad Mike Elias bets.

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The Orioles somehow managed to be more embarrassing this weekend than the Red Sox, and the Red Sox freaking fired their manager mid-series. Mark tries to talk himself into believing why treading water for now could be okay, as long as they actually tread water and avoid further problems in May like last year's team had.

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No great baseball acumen was required for the Orioles to consider that maybe putting Weston Wilson in left field or Blaze Alexander in center or Johnathan Rodríguez as the cleanup hitter were all bad ideas to employ. They did it anyway. In this episode, Mark is mostly mad that they're trying to be so smart that they're ending up being stupid.

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The Orioles are in first place! How the heck did that even happen amidst all of the injury chaos? Somehow, it did. Mark runs through the latest of the pile of injuries before turning to the mailbag for some thoughts on City Connect jerseys. The episode winds up with notes about how things are actually going better than expected for the offense and the pitching too.

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Nine games into the 2026 season, the Orioles have an even worse record than last year's team did and it feels like a whole lot of familiar things are going wrong. How many of them can we hope will fix it, and if they don't, how much blame does Mike Elias deserve for all of this?

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