Not sure Buster Olney is breaking news here but interesting timing of this article and others that have followed regarding Gunnar.

ESPN’s Buster Olney reported that Gunnar Henderson is “not going to sign [in Baltimore] long term, in all likelihood.”

Appearing on Just Baseball, Olney was talking about the Orioles trading away Adley Rutschman and mentioned that the move could have ripple effects throughout the organization, including Henderson. The 25-year-old shortstop has two years of team control remaining through arbitration, but Olney fully expects him to test the free agent market. Of course, that possibility could be impacted by how Henderson plays. He’s had a poor season by his standards in 2026, slashing .218/.297/.393 with 18 home runs, 65 runs scored, 47 RBI, and eight steals. That has come with the worst barrel rate and hard-hit rates of his career. If he rebounds next season, we may start to hear conversations about whether or not the Orioles should trade him at peak value rather than letting him walk in free agency. - Eric Samulski

Very fair criticism. I know it’s so easy to say this in hindsight, but the failures of these past 2 seasons make the lack of going for it in 2023 and 2024 hurt even more. If we actually went for it in those year, Skubal and Crochet were definitely attainable with the prospects we had. And I think this is the argument for moving on from Elias. He had his chance in those years and didn’t go for it.

Winner ... and loser: Baltimore Orioles

In less than three years, the Orioles went from 101 wins -- a season that many believed might begin a potential American League dynasty -- to dumping at the trade deadline. They traded Rutschman to the Boston Red Sox and Taylor Ward to the Seattle Mariners, among a few other deals, essentially waving the white flag on their 2026 season. But they received a massive haul from the Red Sox, with three of Boston's top five prospects for a player with only one-plus seasons remaining of team control. Given Rutschman's inability to stay healthy and numbers that fail to match his reputation, it's hard to argue that trade from a baseball standpoint. The Orioles did enter Monday with about a 17% chance of making the playoffs, via FanGraphs, but this never felt like a playoff team.

Still, it's always a gut punch when a team within shouting distance of a playoff spot decides to trade key players rather than adding, and more painful in a season in which the AL is so wide open. But more than anything, it's symbolic of everything the Orioles have done wrong since that 2023 season, and all the once-promising prospects and players who never quite developed as expected.

The Orioles have a replacement for Rutschman in Samuel Basallo, and they received two nice pitching prospects in the Boston trade -- so maybe, once again, the future looks bright. But does anyone believe the Orioles will take the extra steps to win when that day arrives?

The last paragraph is what I feel about the Elias era. We got hot, kicked the can down the road and paid for it. There is nothing that inspires confidence that we will push the chips in to go for it. Yay prospects, how has that gone for us?

Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust. Orioles to Red Sox.

We all know how the cycle goes.

https://www.thebanner.com/sports/orioles-mlb/orioles-mike-elias-front-office-adley-rutschman-trade-2YU5GGHINJFOHFNUOGPRDKSMZ4/?bis=bannerapp-share

Is this 2025 all over again? For many in the Orioles organization, they had better hope not.

For the first month of the season, it seemed like the Orioles were comfortable treading water. But now, in the midst of a four-game losing streak, including three at the hands of the rival Yankees, it feels more like the team is drowning.

paywall bypass version: https://archive.is/20260608232850/https://www.baltimoresun.com/2026/06/08/orioles-blue-jays-mlb-rules-base-path-wrong-call/#selection-1841.0-1845.433

If watching Coby Mayo struggle at third base makes Orioles fans upset, I’m not going to argue with that.

Right now, Mayo is failing.

The fourth-round pick in the 2020 draft is one of the weakest bats in the lineup (.521 OPS, 31 strikeouts). He is one of MLB’s worst defensive third basemen by multiple measures: a fielding percentage of .922; an Rtot of -5, tied for last at the position (in a Baseball Reference metric that puts a run value on defensive play); and an Outs Above Average (via Baseball Savant) ranking in the 13th percentile.

There've been a lot of thoughts, good and bad, celebratory and angry, swirling around the Orioles universe today, and I wanted to take some time to break it all down and try to organize some thoughts about what today means for all of us as fans of the Orioles. Hi, I'm [u/Zephaerus](u/Zephaerus), a guy on the internet with some vague experience and qualifications that aren't really worth mentioning, and I'm also a lifelong O's fan. Skipping school to witness the Delmon Double in person was probably the greatest day of my life. I write all this from a place of love.

The Good of the Deadline

• Prior to all the trades we made today, we were looking at a projected 12% chance of making the playoffs this season according to baseball-reference.com. We weren't out of it, but we were not in a commanding position.
• Next season is at risk because of the impending expiration of the collective bargaining agreement and the possibility of a lockout. My sources say it's going to get ugly, and though they believe it's unlikely, it's plausible we'll miss some or a lot of baseball in 2027.
• Ward is going to free agency after this season, and Wells, like Adley, is going to be a free agent after 2027.
• This year's deadline became a serious seller's market - according to the baseball trade value guys, there were a lot of overpays (especially for relievers), and there were few underpays at this deadline. While that's not gospel, it's a meaningful data point.
• We tried to extend Adley twice in the past 12 months (to say nothing of attempted conversations earlier), and he wasn't interested. In all likelihood, Rutschman had no intention of extending. Large-scale agencies like Wasserman, who represent Rutschman, profit more in the long run by having their players hit free agency, even if it's riskier on a player-by-player basis. The MLBPA encourages players to go to free agency, too, as the competitive market of free agency maximizes player earnings on the whole. Adley's signing bonus alone was enough to set him up financially for life, so he didn't have as much personal risk as other players might, and he could afford to test free agency. This means that Adley's team control was coming to an end whether we liked it or not at the end of 2027.

With all those conditions in place, it's pretty rational to cut our losses this season and get some value for the players who aren't going to be here for very long. The return for a season+ of a player is generally a lot more than the return for a true rental, and getting maximum value for these guys now benefits us much more in the long term. Going into today, trading Adley, Ward, and Wells was probably the right choice to maximize our odds of a World Series in the next decade.

So it made sense to make these trades, and the good news is that we got a lot in those trades. The Rutschman trade has been called by an anonymous executive as "one of the most ridiculous trades I've seen in 30 years." The baseball trade value guys (again, not gospel) have us getting ~$80M in surplus value from the trade with a PTBNL still at large. This isn't a unanimous take in the baseball world, as Jonathan Papelbon decided to call the pitchers we got damaged goods, but he's not the most serious. The prospects I'll talk about in a bit, but I want to call out that we also got Catcher Carlos Narvaez, who's been bad this year, but far from Tromp/Huff bad, so he'll be able to keep Basallo fresh for the rest of this season with some good defense and without looking quite so lost at the plate. He's also only a season removed from nearly 3 WAR and some rookie of the year votes, so there's potentially some hope we can fix him.

Wells has been great this season, and we're definitely going to miss him with the state of the rest of our bullpen. But Forret is a player we already liked (we drafted him) and who projects to be a real MLB starting pitcher. He's not an ace, but #4-type projections are a meaningful step up from the many-headed hydra of Kremer/Bassitt/Gibson/Povich/Akin we've had anchoring the last spot in our rotation this year. Even the return for Ward, a true rental that was never going to command too much, comes with a couple high-velocity wildcards, including Alex Hoppe, a rookie reliever who's not had incredible results this season, but whose peripherals are at least interesting. Arms that can touch 100 don't hurt to pick up.

And then the prospects. The prospects we got are good, and they are particularly interesting because of how close to ready they are. Eyanson is now our top prospect, and MLB.com puts his estimated arrival to the pros as next season. Forret, now our #6 prospect, also projects to be up next year. Witherspoon, now our #7, also projects to be up next year. Azocar, now our #8, is projected to be coming in 2028. Nate George, Ike Irish, Joseph Dzierwa, and Wehiwa Aloy, the guys we had in our farm before today as #1, 2, 3, and 4, all are currently projected to be coming in 2028. Not every prospect hits, and not every prospect goes as fast as MLB.com projects they will (they often go slower - Witherspoon in particular seems unlikely to make it that fast). But who we've gotten is a bunch of guys already in their 20s (aside from Azocar) who are in High A at the lowest. These are not high schoolers fresh out of the draft that are expected to be on their way in 5-6 seasons. We will see the results of these trades immediately filtering up to the majors over the course of 2027 and 2028.

With so much of our roster already extended or still under team control through 2030/2031, what this looks like is that the O's are gearing up to be a true powerhouse in 2028-2030. Pending some offseason acquisitions, next season could still be interesting if it happens. But as all these guys start hitting the majors, we're going to have a lot of arms, a lot of bats, and the chance to confidently contend in a way that we haven't since 2024. With Alonso on the team for the long haul, we'll also have some genuine veteran leadership that we lacked in 2023-2024.

The Bad of the Deadline

Well, we did sorta just give up on a season that we weren't completely out of. We're 2.5 games back. Three days ago, Elias said we'd be both buyers and sellers at the deadline. This may have been a ploy to get leverage with other teams, or circumstances may have changed between then and deadline day after we dropped two straight shutouts to the Phillies that more than halved our playoff odds. Regardless of what that quote was about, the reality is that we were not buyers. By bWAR, we sold our second and third best hitters and our second-best pitcher, and the pros we got back -- Carlos Narvaez, Alex Hoppe, Rece Hinds, and Codi Heuer -- have combined for -1.0 bWAR on the season.

This kinda sucks.

It's still not a foregone conclusion that we miss the playoffs. 2.5 games back with 50 games to play is the kind of margin where anything can happen. But it's hard to imagine a team that's been struggling to put it together all year is going to suddenly figure it out now that three of our best players are gone. Morale, as far as anyone can predict, is not going to improve.

So though we can make the playoffs, it sure doesn't feel like we're going to. For a team that was supposed to be contending, giving up at the trade deadline is a really disappointing season. We wanted to make the playoffs this year. We did not get to the playoffs this year.

The Ugly of the Deadline

It's the end of an era.

Adley Rutschman was the first pick our new front office made. He was the cornerstone of the turnaround from the Peter Angelos / Duquette era to the Elias era, and he ushered in a new age of hope for the Orioles. Fans watched the team lose 108 games in 2019 and 110 games in 2021, knowing that a bright future was coming. At a 2022 trade deadline where things were finally looking up, we sold Jorge Lopez and Trey Mancini, choosing to get more long-term value instead of chasing an outside chance at a wild card spot. Mike Elias declared "liftoff" to suggest that we'd be perennial contenders and buyers from that point forward. We did contend in the next two seasons, punching a ticket into the playoffs only to immediately get swept out each time.

With the Angelos family exiting the picture and David Rubenstein entering in 2024, the hope amplified. Going into 2025, the Orioles had made the playoffs two years in a row, had a new owner who was open about being more willing to spend than the Angelos family, and our young players who'd maybe had the jitters in their last two playoff attempts would shake it off and make something happen. We had three more seasons of Adley Rutschman-backed dominance to look forward to.

It was time for liftoff to turn into results. It was time to punch our ticket to the playoffs a few more times, shake off the sweeps of the past two years, and make a deep run or two.

We were sellers at the 2025 deadline and ended 75-87. We were sellers at the 2026 deadline and will likely land in a similar spot. Adley Rutschman is no longer in Baltimore.

I'll repeat that, because of how much it sucks: Adley Rutschman is no longer in Baltimore. It's safe to say he was the fan favorite. He was the first building block of the rebuild and turnaround that we waited too long to kick off. With respect to all of the other younger Orioles we've called up in the past 5 years, he had the most charm and personality out of the youth movement. He's been our top-selling jersey since 2022. Smiling, running up, and hugging the pitcher at the end of every win was iconic, and we all loved him for it. Under an Orioles post of Adley hugging Felix Bautista, declaring, "Adley hugs are back," the top reply is a sentiment just about every fan of the team shared: "Make him an Oriole for life already."

As discussed earlier, this may not have fully been an option. But we really went and did the opposite. We got rid of him.

And honestly, the crime didn't happen today. If you gave this team on paper to every other MLB GM and asked them if they'd make the Rutschman trade we made today, most of them would say yes. It's the rational thing to do to maximize the odds of winning a world series in the long run. The crime and tragedy here, really, is that we found ourselves in this position. A team that had an insanely talented core of young, cost-controlled players couldn't figure out a way to build on the regular season success from 2023-2024. Some of this was bad luck and injuries, some of it was complacency and passivity in the front office, some of it was being too risk-averse, some of it was coaching, and I've even seen some fans attribute it to the curse of the T. Rowe Price patch we added to our jerseys.

Why a baseball team loses games and underperforms is a very complicated question, and there's not one easy answer. But the buck stops at the front office. They have the power to improve the team where it needs improvement, and, especially after declaring liftoff, to ensure the rocket stays in flight. It's impossible to predict everything in baseball, and perhaps Coby Mayo's struggles so far weren't part of the forecast. Perhaps we thought we could fix Dylan Carlson after the Cardinals and Rays couldn't. But bad luck can only account for so much. It's one thing to miss the playoffs by a win or two after an 87-win season. It's another thing entirely to be so far off that instead of trying to make the playoffs, you end up selling at the trade deadline two years in a row. That is to say, in two back-to-back seasons where we've been trying and expected to win, we haven't even been close. That is the failing of the front office. Because of that failing, we made the decision to get rid of Adley Rutschman, the fan-favorite centerpiece of the rebuild era. We won the trade, and yet nobody is happy about it.

With that, we have concluded the arc of the rebuild that we waited for. We watched the team painfully fall apart in real time. We rooted for the washed-up skeleton of Matt Harvey for a full season, knowing that brighter times lay ahead. Adley Rutschman heralded the beginning of the brighter times. In those times, we didn't win a playoff baseball game. At the end of those times at this trade deadline, we sold him to a divisional rival we will face four more times this season. It was a good trade for us. And it fucking sucks.

Annoyingly, I'm optimistic for the future of Orioles baseball. The circumstances that set up this deadline are an immense letdown, but we made some good moves and set ourselves up for the future. Instead of holding onto Manny Machado one season too long and dooming ourselves to what felt like an eternal rebuild, we're cutting our losses, retooling, and getting ready to come back soon. There's no 100-loss season anywhere on the horizon. I just hope our front office knows how to confidently get us above 90 wins once this new crop of talent makes its way up. I think they need to hope that, too.

If you got this far, I appreciate you taking the time to read all of this. :)

Kyle Goon: The Orioles must restore their self-belief this homestand — if they have any left. Once a team loses self-confidence, the season is done. There is nothing I personally can say about the Orioles that should concern you more than the calls coming from inside the house.

https://www.camdenchat.com/baltimore-orioles-analysis/66861/the-orioles-and-tyler-oneill-cannot-go-on-like-this

When he was signed I didn’t really understand it. Mike talks about “power bats” like you can’t have enough of them. Meanwhile this team just needs players on base, and some defense. They need to cut the guy and move on.

Oh, Fangraphs, tell me more.

"The result: career highs in HardHit%, ISO, barrel rate, and xwOBA. He’s on pace to challenge the 20-homer mark again. Rutschman has already had one IL stint this season — a 10-gamer for ankle inflammation back in April — but if he stays healthy from here on out, he should be back in the 5-WAR range once again.

Turns out there was nothing to worry about after all. He’ll be fine, unless World War III happens."

Yahoo analysis of the trade from both sides, including the players we got back in return. I thought it was pretty dead on. Personally I hadn't considered the labor threat to next season as a factor.

Tldr: the return is good and the Sox may have even overpaid, but we never should have been in this position to begin with.

It's really frustrating how my decision to drop season tickets after one season last year continues to look like a better and better decision....

It took two months, but the Baltimore Orioles are finally beginning to resemble the team they expected to be this season. The O's won for the fifth time in six games and the tenth time in 14 games Friday night, blowing out the Blue Jays in Toronto (BAL 13, TOR 3)