There's obviously a reason why Rico Garcia has bounced around and we've picked him up for nothing, but maybe we can fix him.

Rico Garcia with the most important contribution of the game. Enters with bases loaded, nobody out and gets 3 strikeouts.

he will 100% run!

In the last week, the Orioles are 6-2 against the Mariners, Astros and Red Sox, all likely playoff teams.
No marbles on the line, but would rather win them than lose them.

What these moves mean is we are almost certainly trading Laureano, Eflin, Sugano today, as well as Mullins and O'Hearn.
Ok - you still want to get a decent return for them all and Eflin may still be worth keeping to make a qualifying offer to.

Didn't expect Urias. I thought Kittridge was a possibility, but def hurts the 2026 Os.
Urias is great injury cover but as we've seen, production drops when he's not playing every day. Hopefully that doesn't come back to hurt us next year.

ha... Cedric Mullins. That's crazy.

For 2026, I think we will have to spend real money on a starting pitcher, back end reliever and maybe a veteran outfielder and DH / 1st base type guy.

The truth is teams rarely trade away their top prospects, and especially not for 2 month rentals. But given the numbers we will be adding, we can be aggressive and take risky players with high upside, players currently injured & teams not highly ranked for whatever reason, that we can work on.

Given the number of draft picks, as well as the players already added via trade & in the minor league system, July 2025 could have been crucial for the 2028 Orioles.
Ok, not that exciting now, but could be in great shape in a couple of years.

I think back to what we got back for Mancini and Lopez in 2022 and we did reasonably well. So could get back a lot of useful players this week. Perhaps optimistic to think any would really help in 2026, but not beyond the realms of possibility.

I didn't expect Baker to be moved, but we got a crazy offer that would have been silly to turn down.
I'm sure they would do a similarly silly offer.

O's have club options on Laureano & Kittridge for 2026. There's def a 'sell high' logic on Laureano, who is having a career year. Kittridge has been solid, if unspectacular.
I think both are O's in 2026.

Dominguez, O'Hearn & Morton are certs to be moved.
Mullins is a probable.
Eflin & Sugano are possible, but would surely be reserved for teams who are desperate.

There’s a sell high scenario with Laureano (doubt we do it tho) but given how crucial SP is, we’re not trading away Rogers for anything

The main reason is people are stupid.

lot of volatility in baseball. Teams who should be good struggling, other teams having a never ending rebuild and even good teams will have a down year.
I've seen enough this season to know we should have a good chance to go again next year. Unfortunately too much damage done in the 1st 6 weeks.

My guess is we are going to add a number of High A and AA starting pitchers at the deadline (as sellers) and hopefully this develops into a lot of options. But it's still unlikely to be pitchers who teams would identify as their best guys. Dean Kremer / Cade Povich level.

in short we can't accumulate all this talent as there is not going to be room for them all to graduate at the same time so some of it becomes wasted potential. Teams also don't trade away their top guys who are major league ready. So we need to try other avenues.

So can we use our young hitters, who might 18 to 24 months away from the majors to acquire pitching that is 18 to 24 months away from the majors?
It seems minor league trades for highly rated players rarely happen, but surely it's something worth exploring.

Should we be looking to trade minor league hitting for minor league pitching?
Very few teams are ever going to trade away a top major league pitcher - other than for a 1 year deal.
One argument against drafting a pitcher is that they are 3+ years away from the majors.

This brings us to the next issue with the Elias strategy. We have just drafted 4 young hitters in the 1st round. These guys will all be graduating the minors in a couple of years. If we can barely make room for Kyle Stowers, Coby Mayo etc. is there any point in keeping all of these guys?

Rogers started off poorly, then got injured, and has now really come onto a game.
Lot of people claiming because Stowers has had a good start with the Marlins that it was a bad trade by us. I'm not sure that's the case, albeit I'm sure we could have worked harder to get more out of Stowers with us.

This being the case, we draft almost no pitchers, pitching has to be acquired via other means. Trade or free agency.
The O's traded Stowers & Norby for 2.4 seasons of Trevor Rogers.

Ironic that this was on the day of the draft, when the O's acquired yet more left handed hitters. It's a fair strategy that you take the best talent on offer when it's your turn to draft. We have seen the O's almost exclusively draft hitters with their 1st and 2nd round draft picks under Elias.

We are certainly well into the Mike Elias era, which has been something like the Orioles have never seen. I've generally been a fan of the process and that it gives a smaller market club like the Orioles the best chance of success.
the Kyle Stowers game should provide lessons though.

Would need a 40 man roster move to add him, however.

Feels very unlikely there's any good scenarios where Contreras is in our rotation (especially in 2026) so it's surely worth the risk to see if he can give us 3 innings on Wednesday vs a poor offence. And then stick as a long reliever in the pen.

Perhaps there was a scenario where Contreras would be used or developed as a starter for us next year. So would be a risk to add him & have to expose him to waivers if he was removed from the roster.
But given that he's available & in form, would seem silly not to see if he can help us.

Other option would be adding Roansy Contreras. He looks to have figured things out in Norfolk. But he has no options, so ideally would plan to keep him on the roster as a reliever. Last pitched 19th June & has a 0.71 ERA in 4 multi inning appearances in June.