You’re forgiven for thinking that sometimes it seems like the expected outcomes matter more in modern baseball than the actual ones. We have numbers for everything, and for good reason — the better you can quantify something, the better you can understand it.

This is only important when there’s a disconnect between what’s happening on the field and what should be happening. That doesn’t lie in the realm of data right now with these Orioles. They’re a .500 team that expects to win and carries itself that way, but they haven’t played a level of baseball to back it up just yet.

That only becomes a problem if they don’t eventually hit their stride. You could feel at every turn this homestand that the fans at Camden Yards have as much faith as the players and staff do about this team’s ability to win games out of nowhere.

The absence of that from the middle of 2024 until a few weeks ago was palpable, and the more people outside the Orioles’ clubhouse buy in, the higher the expectation is going to be for the team to deliver — and do so consistently. That’s what’s missing so far, sometimes glaringly so.

Manager Craig Albernaz said through his broken jaw that Monday’s comeback from six runs down was “just a matter of time,” considering how the Orioles had battled in similar circumstances.

Two losses later, the buzz of that comeback has faded some. It’s not reality settling in, but it’s simply where the Orioles find themselves heading on this Midwest road trip. They’re .500 and incrementally building back some goodwill with a fan base that’s going to need to see they’re better to believe it, and they’re only sometimes showing that to be the case.

The five seconds of consideration Albernaz gave before answering a question about his perspective on this homestand probably says it all.

“Started off good,” he said. “I think, obviously, the injuries were tough, seeing Adley [Rutschman] and [Ryan Mountcastle] go down. The boys responded. Obviously, this one stings big time, especially with that [Kyle] Bradish outing and how we’ve been playing. I think that our offense, we’re starting to come alive. Great at-bats, and we’re starting to get rewarded with some results. We’ve just got to clean up the defense. That’s it. We can’t — even though our starting pitchers are talented and our relievers are talented — it’s really tough to give the other team more than 27 outs. That’s the biggest thing we have to tackle, just cleaning up our defense.”

That felt apparent Wednesday, when fill-in left fielder Weston Wilson tracked a two-out drive into the cutout corner in left field only to have the ball clank off his glove as he braced for hitting the wall, allowing two runs to score on Bradish in the third.

Without Rutschman (ankle), Mountcastle (fractured foot) and Tyler O’Neill (concussion), the Orioles emptied their bench and played their right-handed hitters against Eduardo Rodriguez, the first lefty they faced this season, and looked like a team handing three players their first starts of the season, with a fourth, Blaze Alexander, starting in center field for the first time.

The homestand would have been materially different without another player initially ticketed for a reserve role — Jeremiah Jackson — carrying the offense, and they ultimately can’t gripe with any of the six starting pitching performances they received, with the same to be said of the relief efforts.

In so many ways, .500 on the homestand and the season feels fair for this team right now. The one way it doesn’t isn’t really quantifiable: the belief.

I think back to Gunnar Henderson’s assessment of the 2025 team and how it lost that ability, or belief, that if it could simply stay in games it could eventually win them. That was lost because the Orioles rarely stayed in the fight and quickly had nothing to play for.

Performances will ebb and flow when it comes to individuals and the team. They’ll need the starters who rested Wednesday — Samuel Basallo, Colton Cowser and Dylan Beavers — to more consistently produce, and for more regular nights when the top of the lineup of Henderson, Taylor Ward and Pete Alonso wins games for them on their own. There’s less to be concerned about on the mound to me than what happens behind the pitchers.

But what felt special about Monday, other than their response to the deep deficit and the loss of Albernaz after he was hit in the face with a foul ball, was how it served as a proof of concept for how the manager and the leaders emerging on this team want to operate for these six months. They believe there’s a game to be won every night, and on Monday that faith — to say nothing of those who didn’t flip the channel or leave the ballpark — was rewarded.

The ensuing losses certainly test that, though. They meant this homestand ended flatly rather than with the team surging and building some cushioning into its record for when the injuries and all the other specters floating around this team rattle things.

But the main reward for being able to tread water is simply not to drown. With daily referendums on whether the Orioles’ belief will help them become the team they want to be this season, about the nicest thing to be said about these six games is I believe a little more in how much they believe.

I don’t think I’m alone in being ready to see more on the field to believe in.