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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The Orioles unveiled a new slogan for 2026: Fly different. (Never mind that it should be fly differentLY.) Mark recaps the first few days of the season - games and Baz extension - while trying to believe that this year will be different. Too early to say.

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On Opening Day, even Mark can summon up some optimism about the Orioles. How long it lasts depends on them. In this episode, he tries with varying degrees of success to find something to be excited about with every player who's on a roster that looks quite different from last year's Opening Day roster.

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When the Orioles signed Chris Bassitt, the idea that Dean Kremer might be sent to the minors was both obvious and unbelievable. Now that it's done, Mark still can't believe they did it. Also in this episode, dipping into the mailbag for a Blaze vs. Jackson question and thoughts on the defense generally.

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Opening Day is now just nine days away and the Orioles haven't answered many of their lingering questions other than who's starting on Opening Day. Mark thinks about the state of the infield before dipping into the mailbag to try to assess potential O's free agents who could be worth getting the qualifying offer from the team.

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With about two and a half weeks to go until Opening Day, the Orioles could still go a number of different ways with their roster. Mark looks at the open questions to be settled before March 26, all of which is assuming no trade or injury comes along to change the picture before then.

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We've made it to March, where there will be real Orioles baseball later this month. Yay! In the meantime, Mark is continuing to ponder the case of Heston Kjerstad and lately even wondering about this "three homers" business from Vance Honeycutt. Plus, in the mailbag, a question about some front office movement and what it might mean for future Orioles drafts.

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If there's spring training news, it's usually not good, as we learned last week with the surprise (to us) injury to Jordan Westburg's elbow. Mark talks through the possibilities for Westburg's recovery timeline and his likely replacement. Also in this episode, thoughts on big early spring narratives, particularly Pete Alonso's leadership.

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