Jon Meoli: What really matters a third of the way into this Orioles season

Craig Albernaz didn’t bite.

His Orioles have had plenty of moments like their dizzying Memorial Day win this season, the kind you can look at as a potential catalyst to get their season back on track. When asked whether that could be another, he pivoted to say it was more an occasion to assess each part of the team and see which could help them push forward toward winning baseball.

He segmented out their defense, baserunning, pitching and hitting. So which of those, I wondered, was on the best trajectory?

“All of them.” he said. “All of them.”

I gave him a look.

“I know you’re giving me that look, but all of them. We’ve shown — you can correct me if I’m wrong — but we’ve shown in every facet of the game, to be pretty good at. I think what’s been eluding us is the consistency of play, a complete baseball game, right? We’ve shown when we play a complete baseball game, we’re tough to beat. And when we don’t play a complete baseball game, that’s when the losses happen.”

He’s not wrong. That’s as simple an explanation of this Orioles season as you can get. The look wasn’t for that, but for him not picking one at all. He also doesn’t have a reason to single one out above the other — the Orioles need them all to get where they want to go. But I want to know what this team’s strength is going to be, and I doubt I’m alone. I’ll bet he does too.

As unsettling as the unknown on that front is, I think the Orioles’ embrace of it is probably a strength. President of baseball operations Mike Elias often cites Memorial Day as the first checkpoint in the season, an occasion to take stock of his team and its standing in the league.

These first two months would result in the kind of progress report you’d probably try to avoid showing your parents, but if you had to, you could easily convince them it was going to get better. And through the tumult of this month, when the Orioles have twice been swept by division leaders and felt miles from a team that can ever join them, it’s become clear — to me, at least — that checkpoints and calendar splits and the kaleidoscope of things you can see looking at this team on a given day don’t matter that much.

This team was always going to take time, and it’s going to get it. Better yet, they’re probably going to act like contenders even if they’re not. It’s left to be seen whether that actually gets them to October. But there’s no point in anything Elias has done — and ownership under David Rubenstein and Michael Arougheti has blessed — in the last year if they don’t let this run its course.

To look at the Orioles on Memorial Day — improbably 24-30 after another Colton Cowser walk-off homer — or after Tuesday’s win that brought them to 25-30, and see a team that should be adding at the trade deadline and behaving like a championship contender is a stretch in a lot of senses. To think that, you’d need to look at it from Albernaz’s perspective that everything is moving up-and-to-the-right when it comes to these Orioles.

He was hired for a specific reason, after all. The Orioles saw teams that were constantly helping players improve at the major league level and finding ways to win despite various roster shortcomings and picked a manager with experience in two of those organizations — Tampa Bay and Cleveland.

They spent the offseason using real capital — players and cash — to add real talent, which is a surer bet than anything to deliver results over the course of a long season. It’s nothing to brag about to say the Orioles are improving at the plate, on the mound, in the field and on the bases, considering how rough things have looked at times. But they’re talented enough to do all those things well, and not doing them consistently in the first two months doesn’t mean they won’t in the second two.

And those second two are going to be much more crucial in deciding how hard Elias pushes at the trade deadline. Not if — how. There’s no use embarking on meaningful change only to kneecap it by subtracting from the roster just because, to borrow Elias’ words from the infamous 2022 deadline, the playoffs aren’t a probability.

What’s more likely is that the Orioles will have enough going right in the next third of the season to feel like one major move can make a difference. If having Jackson Holliday back means the lineup grows into a strength, they can add to the rotation. If Kyle Bradish and Shane Baz look like they have of late and Brandon Young is for real, maybe they add a little to the lineup.

And considering the significant roster issues they could have this offseason with all the prospects they’ll need to add to the 40-man roster or risk losing for nothing — Nestor German, Enrique Bradfield Jr., Luis De León, Levi Wells, Juaron Watts-Brown, Braxton Bragg, Yeiber Cartaya and Kiefer Lord among them — they have all the impetus in the world to be proactive in packaging some of them to upgrade this team.

What’s challenging is that this hasn’t felt like the kind of season that warrants those types of moves. It’s been fun at times, but more often frustrating. And all the losing that led to that frustration matters, but as unsatisfying as it is, it just doesn’t feel material to what’s going to happen for this team the rest of the season. It’s a lot less likely to me that they fall apart than they figure it out.

It’s hard to imagine a less satisfying conclusion to draw a third of the way into the season, which has felt a lot longer than it has been. The actual conclusion is a long way out, and that’s what matters.