Jon Meoli: How the Orioles players reacted to the team’s trades speaks volumes

Pete Alonso strolled into the Orioles’ clubhouse, barefoot but without much of a spring in his step, and declared it was time to rip off the Band-Aid. Gunnar Henderson wasn’t ready to.

After taking batting practice on the field and signing autographs for everyone who asked, he met a small group of reporters at the top step of the dugout.

He had been at the movie theater Monday afternoon with Adley Rutschman, Ryan Mountcastle and Colton Cowser for the new “Spider-Man” film when Rutschman learned he’d been dealt to Boston, and they processed the shock together. That hasn’t stopped.

“I mean, not easy for me,” Henderson said. “Somebody who has been with me for seven years — I’m not going to be able to talk about it. Sorry, guys.”

And he walked down the steps toward a clubhouse that had unmistakably changed these last two days. Those who were able to talk about the team’s deadline trades — with Rutschman, Taylor Ward and Tyler Wells following Dean Kremer out the door — focused on what was in front of them.

There are 50 games left. There are 2.5 games between the Orioles and a playoff spot. There are a lot of talented players left in that clubhouse, and there were a lot of complicated feelings about what it meant that so many important people and players were gone.

“It’s a little weird,” Jackson Holliday said.

When the Orioles arrived to work Tuesday, president of baseball operations Mike Elias and manager Craig Albernaz spoke to the club. Alonso said Elias told the team his responsibility is to do what’s best for the organization, and that he still believed in the team as it was constructed. Alonso spoke plenty about the need for the players to be accountable for the position they’d put Elias in.

“We have to accept the consequences because yes, we are out of a wild-card spot,” Alonso said. “Yes, our record is what it is. Coaches and front office, they’re not out there playing the game. We are as players. So, for us, we needed to do a better job, that kind of justified some things, to go out and be big buyers. We didn’t necessarily earn that fully. Yes, we’re 2 1/2 games out, but there’s a lot of things that we could have done a lot better, and if we go win a bunch of games and put ourselves in a great spot, that’s still expected of us because we still have talent.”

Cowser said his first thought was to look inward and think about what the players could have done to stop it.

“You can only think back to some of the games that we should have won that we didn’t that would have shifted us and put us in a different spot at the deadline,” he said.

Kyle Bradish chimed in. “That’s just the unfortunate place that we put ourselves in by not playing the baseball that we should be and not winning games.”

While true, that’s also creating a complicated dynamic in the clubhouse. Players alternated between flogging themselves for not doing enough in this underwhelming American League to prevent the trade of their close friends and parroting Elias and Albernaz’s message that they’re good enough to push for the playoffs anyway.

Albernaz told them to lean into the emotion, and many did. Cowser, noting that Rutschman will be in his wedding, acknowledged that “the initial shock of it was something that was tough to see” on their movie outing. Mountcastle acknowledged that “it was a lot of emotions.”

“It was tough to see, because you knew he loved it here, and all of us loved him,” he said. “I’m sure it’s hard to process it at the time.”

Holliday said Rutschman would be “very missed” around here, while Alonso said there was a “harshness” to the trades.

The challenge now is to take all those emotions, plus the pervasive disappointment in the season that led up to these trades, and channel them.

“They understand where we’re at in the standings and understand the guys in the room with them and the talent that we have, and also the way we can play baseball, especially what we’ve been showing lately, playing a complete game of baseball,” Albernaz said. “There’s a lot of optimism in there, but also it’s tough too, because they lost a few of their close friends and guys they came up with, which is real.”

He touted the players who are joining the Orioles. Reliever Alex Hoppe, acquired from Seattle as part of the Taylor Ward trade, hasn’t yet reported but is “a real high-octane arm,” Albernaz said. Carlos Narváez, who came back from Boston in the Rutschman trade, “has shown that he’s a real big-league catcher.” And Christian Franklin, acquired off the Nationals’ Triple-A roster and replacing Ward Tuesday in left field, reminds him the situation of former Orioles prospect Mike Yastrzemski, who was stuck in the minors before the Giants gave him a shot in the big leagues and watched him flourish.

“We feel like we have a legitimate shot because of our starting pitching,” he said when discussing that pending free agent Trevor Rogers remains on the team.

That’s the reality these Orioles have been living in for months. They’re certainly not playing like a playoff team, but know they have the potential to. Life without Rutschman, a player who Mountcastle said “turned the whole organization around” when he arrived in 2022 and “brought a lot to the clubhouse and to the team not only as a baseball player but as a friend,” is fresh.

“I don’t really know exactly what to think about it,” Holliday said. “It’s just, I guess, the business of baseball, and I think I’m probably not the best person to answer that question, but it’s a little weird to look and think about. But we have to go out there and play and compete tonight.”