Another week of confusing 2026 Orioles baseball is in the books. After looking like they were heading back to the cellar by losing the first two games of the Seattle series, they ripped off three straight wins and, facing a Padres team with a struggling offense, had a chance to finally get in a longer winning streak that would really improve their standing. For a variety of reasons, they could not do this, instead limping to a disappointing series loss at home to San Diego.
In this week’s episode
of the podcast, I’m thinking broadly about the reasons for why the team can’t manage to do this, but before getting too deep into that I go into a further rant about Craig Albernaz, because writing about it twice on this site just wasn’t enough to get things off my chest. I’ve been neutral on his tactical choices for a couple of months, but his recent handling of things with Samuel Basallo’s wrist injury and Gunnar Henderson being thrown at by the Padres has me wondering if he’s even all that good at what was supposed to be his strength.
There was also a nice listener question about batting average that prompted me to think about a gap between Orioles and recent teams who have won the World Series. Going back a decade, champions have all had at least one thing in common that the O’s lack right now and have lacked a lot of the time.
Listen to this week’s episode here:
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How are you feeling about the way things are going with the Orioles right now? Answers could make it into the mailbag section of a future episode of the podcast.
