Once it became clear that the 2025 Orioles lacked the pitching and any consistency in other aspects of the game, it became inevitable that 31-year-old center fielder
Cedric Mullins would be traded by the July 31 deadline. After all, he is a free agent after the season and his salaries have gone up through salary arbitration for the past
four seasons and he was likely to want a bigger (but not extravagant) longer free agent contract. I guess it didn't help when it became known that Mullins recently was voted to the Players Association executive board. The storm clouds for another owners' lockout before the 2027 season are definitely forming.
It is still a sad day for Oriole fandom because the 13th-round draft pick from Campbell University had emerged as a versatile player, quiet team leader, and fan favorite.. In 2021, he hit 30 homers and stole 30 bases on a bad Oriole team. He had the courage earlier to abandon switch-hitting and even accepted demotion to the minors to get his act together as solely a left-handed hitter. In a personal note, he did make a public admission that he was dealing with Crohn's disease but he kept it low key at a time when teammate Trey Mancini was dealing with a life-threatening cancer. (Mancini played Triple-A ball this year but has no clear route back to majors.)
Mullins used his great speed to become a stolen base threat and an often-spectacular fielder. The analytics geniuses - who have an algorithm for everything and a limited feel for baseball itself - downgraded Mullins' arm and maybe criticized some of his routes to fly balls, but he sure went out with a bang this past weekend with timely hitting and two spectacular catches as the Orioles narrowly missed a 4-game sweep of the first-place Blue Jays.
Word came just after my ode to Cedric that two more Oriole mainstays, first baseman/outfielder/DH Ryan O'Hearn and first-year-Oriole outfielder Ramon Laureano. had been traded to San Diego. O'Hearn is a free agent after the season who revived his career in Oriole orange and black and was the team's only representative in the 2025 All-Star Game. Laureano had a two-year contract and had so many big hits and outfield assists this year that his trade even surprised many analysts.
Last night (Wed July 30), we also said goodbye to infielder Ramon Urias, one of GM's Mike Elias' earliest and best pickups as a Cardinal farmhand. He was a Gold Glove winner at third base and could acquit himself well at any infield position. He had surprising power, too. And at the Thursday deadline, the Tigers picked up RHP Charlie Morton, the 41-year-old curve ball master who rebounded from a terrible start to 2025 to become a reliable starter again.
I haven't even mentioned most of the bullpen has been traded and perhaps the saddest news of all came in late July when closer Felix "The Mountain" Bautista suffered a serious shoulder injury, still not fully diagnosed, that could well keep him out for the rest of the season. The only somewhat good news is that starter Kyle Bradish is pitching in minor league games after missing over a year. (I'm happy to report, too, that Isaac Mattson who came from the Angels in the same trade for the now-retired Dylan Bundy has been working well in the Pittsburgh bullpen and with their closer Dave Bednar now traded to Yankees Mattson might get a shot of that role.)
What shocks the system of this Oriole loyalist for over a half-century is that the Orioles have received no major league ready players but only "prospects," most of whom will likely become "suspects" before too long. Many of the pitchers seem to be 6' 5" up to 6 8" which likely means they'll take extra time to develop if they ever develop. Attendance was way down in Baltimore for the Toronto series which featured some of the best baseball played by the Orioles all season with O'Hearn and Laureano as well as Mullins contributing mightily. But the decisions to break up the team and save money were obviously made earlier.
The only two people that mattered in the decision were "President of Baseball Operations" Mike Elias and new owner David Rubenstein who is finding out in his second full year at the helm that it is not easy being held accountable in an industry that operates in the fishbowl of public passion. Maybe Elias and Rubenstein felt lucky that Arizona outbid them for Corbin Burnes last winter and Burnes now is out through next year with Tommy John surgery. Maybe they felt glad that Toronto outbid them for former Oriole Anthony Santander who has been unproductive and now injured for his new team. I'd like to see him contribute in Toronto before too long. Team is doing fine without him
but another big bat never hurts.
The trick in baseball management is to keep on trying and be willing to spend if you know the makeup of the player and not just what the new-fangled algorithms tell you.
The 2025 Orioles were obviously a flawed team inundated with injuries - even announcer Ben McDonald fell 35 feet out of a tree while deer hunting! - and hampered by underperforming younger players. I have always understood that evaluating players is the hardest job in baseball but you always need some veteran stability in a successful organization.
I have no idea where such leadership will be coming from on the Baltimore current roster. For the rest of the season, as someone who needs to root for someone not simply against a certain historically arrogant team in pinstripes, I'll have a lot of players to root for in different unis: Cedric in Queens, Urias in Houston, venerable Charlie Morton now in the Motor City, and O'Hearn and Laureano in SD where the Padres start August only 3 games behind the EEW (Evil Empire West) Dodgers who were relatively quiet at the trade deadline.
And here's a shout-out to a couple of new baseball names that have entered the MLB universe: WARMING BERNABEL corner infielder for the Rockies who arrived in Colorado when Ryan McMahon was traded to the Yankees and already has two homers, and RYAN GUSTO, pitcher for the Houston Astros.
Happy August to all and stay positive, test negative & take it easy but take it.