With just two Gold Glove winners since the 2015 season, the Orioles will not add to that total this year. The Orioles had two finalists with Ryan Mountcastle at first base and Colton Cowser in left field, but neither won the Rawlings Gold Glove when the winners were announced tonight during a live ESPN broadcast.

Minnesota’s Carlos Santana won at first base and Nathaniel Lowe of Texas was the third finalist at that spot for the American League. Cleveland’s Steven Kwan won in left field for the third year in a row in the AL and the Yankees' Alex Verdugo was the third left field finalist.

The last time the Orioles had more than one Gold Glove winner was in 2014 when J.J. Hardy, Nick Markakis and Adam Jones were winners. Manny Machado was a solo O's winner in 2015 and Ramón Urías won at third base in 2022. Urías was the last Oriole to win the Gold Glove.

Baltimore’s 72 Gold Gloves since the award’s inception in 1957 are second-most all-time behind St. Louis with 98.

Had Cowser won the award and then later this month added the Baseball Writers' Association of America AL Rookie of the Year award, he would have been the first to win both since Ichiro Suzuki in 2001.

Blame the injuries, inexperience and faulty execution. Blame the weather, traffic, sound system, advertising signs or astrological signs. Whatever suits the narrative. Whatever the imagination allows.

Just be sure to include how the Orioles raised the bar too high and too quickly.

They went from 83 wins in 2022 to 101 and a division title. They set themselves up for regression and criticism. Fans are demanding that heads roll because their favorite team can’t get on one.

No one in their right mind projected 102 or more wins this season, but playing sub-.500 ball since the All-Star break wasn’t in the brochure. Rock bottom keeps moving, too. An 8-1 loss to the historically putrid White Sox was supposed to be it, until the Tigers no-hit them for 8 2/3 innings after using an opener. Until the Orioles responded to Mike Elias’ words of encouragement and optimistic tone Tuesday afternoon by managing only one hit in six innings against the Giants’ Blake Snell, allowing six runs in the top of the ninth and losing 10-0.

The Yankees, meanwhile, were beating the Mariners in Seattle to open a four-game lead in the division race. Now it's five. The Orioles are choking on the fumes, but they can get healthier this month and still make some noise in the postseason.

Jordan Westburg rounded first base tonight, looked back at the dugout, pumped his fist and yelled.

This is what a walk-off home run feels like.

This is what a good, young hitter looks like.

Cedric Mullins singled with one out in the bottom of the ninth inning against Royals right-hander Nick Anderson, Westburg fell behind 0-2 on a pair of curveballs and launched a fastball over the right field fence, and the Orioles won the series opener in dramatic fashion, 6-4, before an announced and chilled crowd of 12,666.

"I was a little antsy that first pitch and chased a curveball down," Westburg said, "and I figured he was going to try to go back to the heater up, so I took that nice curveball right down the middle."

The Orioles’ lineup tonight was influenced by Ryan Mountcaste’s health rather than his slump.

Mountcastle is under the weather, according to manager Brandon Hyde. Anthony Santander is playing first base and James McCann is serving as designated hitter.

“Just not feeling real good,” Hyde said. “Tried to play through it yesterday. I could tell he wasn’t feeling well. He tried to battle through it and still feeling sick today, so we decided to give him a day today.”

Mountcastle went 0-for-4 with three strikeouts yesterday and is batting .227/.264/.421 in 60 games. He’s drawn 12 walks and struck out 64 times in 261 plate appearances.

A change in months hasn’t shortened the skid. Mountcastle is 2-for-15 with seven strikeouts after batting .222/.275/.435 in May. He has four hits in his last 30 at-bats.

ARLINGTON, Texas – With a large rooting section from his hometown of Nacogdoches, Texas, in the stands today, Orioles right-hander Grayson Rodriguez made a strong big league debut in his home state. But it didn’t start out great for him. 

After allowing two runs and giving up some loud contact in the Rangers' first inning, he settled in nicely and at times looked very much like what he is: one of baseball’s best pitching prospects. And the pitcher who has gone 25-9 with a 2.49 ERA in 70 games on the Baltimore farm. The pitcher ranked No. 6 in the Baseball America top 100 and No. 7 by MLBPipeline.com.

He struggled as games got deeper in spring training, but not today.

Texas went 2-for-5 against him in its two-run first inning, then just 2-for-14 from the second through the fifth inning.

Right-hander Austin Voth replaced him to start the sixth in a 2-2 tie. But Texas third baseman Josh Jung took him to the opposite field for a two-run shot to right. That blast was enough for the Rangers to go on to win this one 5-2 as the Orioles failed to sweep the series.

The cold and hard math from the 2022 season tells us this: The Orioles had a below-average offense this year. But not by a large amount. Still, it was enough to have Birdland’s concern meter on the rise as the year ended. The O’s offense stumbled badly at the end, and for some, that is the lasting memory of how they did with the bats this year.

Wins is the stat that matters above them all, but for offense, the number of runs tells the most complete story. The Orioles averaged 4.16 runs per game this year to rank 10^th in the American League, behind the league average of 4.22 per game.

For much of the year the club was at right about league average. They were at 4.20 runs per game at the All-Star break and scoring 4.24 through August. Had they maintained that, they would have finished just above league average. But the Orioles scored just 3.97 runs per game in the final month, and their season-long average decreased.

The highest-scoring teams in the league were the Yankees (4.98 rpg), the Blue Jays (4.78 rpg) and the Astros (4.55 rpg).

In 2021, when American League teams produced more offense, the O’s scored 4.07 runs per game to rank 14^th in the league, well behind last year's average of 4.60 per game. So they went from 14^th in 2021 to 10^th in runs per game in 2022.

There really isn’t any momentum in baseball.

Rallying to win Sunday in Toronto didn’t thrust the Orioles past a difficult stretch this month. It didn’t ignite the offense. The euphoria never made it through customs.

The last-place Tigers won again tonight, 3-2, at Camden Yards, and the Orioles are left with trying to avoid being swept again by a team that sits at the bottom of its division.

The Orioles are 76-71 overall and 8-10 this month. They’ve lost 10 of their last 15 games.

Gunnar Henderson, batting leadoff for the first time, hit a two-run homer off Joe Jiménez with two outs in the seventh to break up the Tigers’ shutout bid. The 409-foot shot onto the flag court in right field was Henderson’s third homer in the majors and first in Baltimore.

Ryan Mountcastle will tonight wear a protective guard on his left elbow for the first time after being hit by a José Berríos pitch during Saturday’s game in Toronto. He isn’t back to full health, and he’d have been doubtful for the series opener against the Tigers if the season hadn’t moved past May.

“We’re not in May,” said Orioles manager Brandon Hyde.

All hands are on deck. All elbows, too.

Mountcastle is serving as the designated hitter instead of starting at first base, which is a concession to the injury.

“The elbow’s still sore, but he wants to play,” Hyde said. “Left-hander (Tyler Alexander) on the mound, he feels like he can hit, feels good enough to be out there.”

Hunter Harvey had taken the mound 55 times in a big league game, and aside from perhaps the first time three years ago, he did so feeling like he was completely in control of the situation. Until the Nationals right-hander found himself jogging in from the bullpen during the fourth inning Tuesday night, tasked with pitching out of a jam created by starter Cory Abbott, against the Orioles team that drafted him in 2013 and gave him his first big league appearance in 2019.

“That was like debut adrenaline,” he said afterward. “It don’t come around very often.”

And he didn’t mean it in a positive way.

By the time he departed one inning later, Harvey had suffered through perhaps the worst of his 30 appearances with the Nats this season, giving up both the tying and go-ahead runs in what would end up a 4-3 loss. Making matters worse, the tying run came via the first home run he’s surrendered this year, and it just so happened to come off the bat of one of his best friends: Ryan Mountcastle.

After escaping the fourth-inning jam with one inherited runner scoring but his team’s lead intact, Harvey prepared to return for the fifth. He knew Mountcastle would be leading off, and both guys knew they were about to square off for the first time in an actual game after years of imagining just such a scenario.

CLEVELAND - Orioles manager Brandon Hyde spoke with Ryan Mountcastle yesterday afternoon, trying to get his first baseman to relax at the plate. To be the hitter he was a few months ago.

“It’s a young guy pressing. That’s what it is,” Hyde said before the series opener in Cleveland.

“A young guy who’s just trying to do way too much.”

Mountcastle flied to deep right field in the second inning, keeping his hitless streak at 14 at-bats in a row but scoring Ramón Urías with a sacrifice fly.

Lowered to seventh in the order for the first time since 2021, Mountcastle also grounded out and walked.

The latest save for rookie right-hander Félix Bautista was among his greatest saves of this year. He got save No. 9 last night as the Orioles beat the Chicago White Sox 5-3 in the series opener.

This one required heavy lifting and more blazing fastballs.

Bautista needed to get five big outs and pitched out of a bases-loaded jam in the eighth. He threw one fastball 103.1 mph, making him one of eight pitchers in the Statcast era (since 2015) to throw a pitch at least 103.0 mph.

Since the O's traded closer Jorge Lopez to Minnesota, Bautista is 6-for-6 in save chances with an ERA of 1.74 and 15 strikeouts in 10 1/3.

Before Tuesday's game, O’s manager Brandon Hyde said that since that trade, he’s been quite impressed with how the inexperienced Bautista has both done in the closer’s role and how he has handled the ninth inning challenge.

Coming off an uplifting win Sunday that provided the Orioles a series victory, for their next test tonight they open a series against the Chicago White Sox and face one of the best pitchers in the sport.

Sox righty Dylan Cease (12-5, 2.09 ERA), 26, ranks second in the American League and the major leagues in ERA to Houston’s Justin Verlander at 1.95. Cease ranks first in the AL in strikeouts per nine innings at 12.0, third in opponent average at .200 and 12^th in WHIP at 1.167.

He faced the Orioles June 26 and was the winning pitcher, going seven innings while allowing one run and four hits and notching a season-high 13 strikeouts.

“It’s always exciting to face the best,” O’s center fielder Cedric Mullins said. “If you are able to come out on top it puts a chip on your shoulder for the next guy you face.”

As he's leading off, Mullins will get the first chance to see Cease tonight. And first chance to start a rally.

The Orioles lost their lead tonight in the top of the sixth inning, then watched the tarp pulled onto the field before the rain arrived. Hurt by their own mistakes and what they couldn’t control.

They handled it with the same confidence and composure that’s guided them through the season. Always finding rays of light after a heavy downpour of disappointment.

This one almost got away from them. But it’s a different team in 2022.

Rougned Odor hit a two-run homer off Yimi García in the bottom of the eighth inning to rally the Orioles past the Blue Jays 6-5 at Camden Yards following a 1 hour, 18 minute rain delay.

Bo Bichette slugged his second home run of the night in the sixth inning, a go-ahead three-run shot on a two-strike pitch from reliever Bryan Baker. Ryan Mountcastle drew the Orioles within a run in the seventh on a double that scored Adley Rutschman, and Odor followed Austin Hays’ leadoff single in the eighth by driving a changeup 415 feet to right-center field.

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. – Dean Kremer headed to the visiting bullpen at Tropicana Field today, the exact spot where he suffered a strained oblique while warming in the season’s third game. He was supposed to pitch in relief and work in a piggyback role early in the year, but the injury destroyed plans formulated back in camp.

“That was a tough day,” said manager Brandon Hyde. “We changed course there with that injury.”

Kremer was healed, stretched out and put into the rotation. His first career appearance in St. Petersburg finally arrived this afternoon. Beginning with his warmup tosses in the ‘pen, his role adjusted since back in April.

Second baseman Rougned Odor brought the lineup card to home plate, the task removed from bullpen catcher Ben Carhart after a 10-game losing streak ended last night. The Orioles vowed to begin a new one. If they could just get some cooperation from an opponent that always torments them beneath the dome.

It finally happened today in the late innings. Just as the Orioles appeared to be tumbling below .500 again. Look for Odor at home plate before Sunday’s game, card in hand again. Look for Adley Rutschman in the lineup after a partial rest day that turned into much more.

MINNEAPOLIS – Tyler Wells has turned from experimental starter to staff ace.

There’s no disputing it. He’s reached that status. The proof is in the output.

Wells didn’t allow a baserunner in Seattle until Cal Raleigh homered with two outs in the fifth inning. He didn’t surrender a hit today until Nick Gordon doubled with one out in the fifth.

Given more room to operate in Minnesota, Wells held the Twins to one run in six innings and 90 pitches. The Orioles supported him with three home runs in the first six innings and avoided the sweep with a 3-1 victory.

The Orioles ended their four-game losing streak and a 12-game streak at Target Field, and they finished 5-5 on the road trip.

TORONTO – After the Orioles had secured a 6-5 win over Toronto last night, manager Brandon Hyde had several players and their contributions he could cite.

There was Jorge López and a five-out save against that lineup. There was Jordan Lyles providing some zeroes and making progress after a tough stretch. There were big homers by Ryan Mountcastle and Austin Hays. There was an entire team that played without Trey Mancini and had lost by 10 a night earlier, but still beat a good Toronto team that has been playing very well.

And there was shortstop Jorge Mateo making an outstanding, charging barehanded defensive gem of a play to get a key out to start the last of the ninth.

“The play that Mateo made, which potentially was game-changing, was just an unbelievable barehand play with a fast runner," Hyde said. "We played really good defense tonight.

“Just shows you his athleticism. I mean the closing speed to get to the ball and then to be able to bare hand that and get rid of it the way he did with something on it from that angle and get (Bo) Bichette there is really tough. That was an enormous play in the game.”

The idea of platooning Orioles second baseman Rougned Odor doesn’t seem to carry the same logic as it did earlier in the season.

Manager Brandon Hyde kept Odor in the lineup tonight against Mariners left-hander Robbie Ray. One pitch validated his decision.

Odor jumped on a slider from Ray in the second inning and drove it to the back of the flag court for a three-run homer. And the Orioles were just getting started.

Didn’t matter who was on the mound. Didn’t matter where the ball was hit.

Ryan Mountcastle, Ramón Urías and Trey Mancini homered in the sixth inning after Sergio Romo entered the game, and the Orioles cruised to a 9-2 win at steamy Camden Yards.

The Orioles won’t rush a prospect to the majors, in terms of how they dictate the pace, just to fulfill an unexpected and ill-timed need on the major league roster. They’re adamant about it. There’s no gray area in black and orange besides the uniform.

They might need to do something about their rotation after Spenser Watkins threw 13 pitches today and was drilled on the right arm by a 106-mph line drive from Tampa Bay’s Ji-Man Choi.

Watkins spun off the mound as third baseman Ramón Urías retrieved the ball, glanced home and threw late to first base. All three batters reached against Watkins, whose ouster forced Joey Krehbiel into a game that the Orioles rallied to tie with two outs in the ninth, just as a storm hit and halted play after three hours, 52 minutes.

It resumed following a 51-minute delay, Cionel Pérez tossed two scoreless innings, leaving the bases loaded in the top of the 11th, and Choi whiffed on Rougned Odor’s chopper to first base that scored automatic runner Adley Rutschman and gave the Orioles a 7-6 victory before an announced crowd of 23,778 to close out the homestand.

Chris Owings laid down a sacrifice bunt before Odor batted, and the Orioles had their third walk-off win in four days. Rutschman had his first major league run, with the play scored a fielder's choice and no error.

Ryan Mountcastle took batting practice on the field again today and is expected to be activated from the injured list prior to Saturday night’s game against the Rays.

Mountcastle hasn’t played since the Orioles scratched him from the May 11 lineup in St. Louis with discomfort in his left wrist and forearm. He went on the injured list a few days later.

“If everything goes well (today) and he doesn’t feel anything,” said manager Brandon Hyde, “he should be back in there tomorrow.”

A corresponding roster move must be made to accommodate Mountcastle.

The Orioles didn’t select catcher Adley Rutschman’s contract from Triple-A Norfolk. He apparently remains with the team in Charlotte as the Orioles begin another home series.

When the Orioles scored a season-high nine runs last Sunday at home versus Boston, they followed up that game by scoring one and two in the next two games against Minnesota. But when they tied that season high by scoring nine runs on Wednesday night, they came back the next night and hit five solo homers in Thursday’s 5-3 win.

The Orioles scored 14 runs the last two games against Minnesota's good pitching staff, one that was having a heckuva year until the last two nights. The Twins, as a result of those games, dropped to fourth in team ERA in the American League at 3.36.

But Kansas City, which faces the Orioles for three games over the next two days in Baltimore, ranks last in the AL in team ERA at 4.57 and last in WHIP at 1.36. The Royals' rotation ERA ranks 13th at 4.32.

Kansas City, since going 5-5 to begin the season, has lost 10 of 13 games and is 1-5 over its last six games. Can the O’s now take advantage of another team considered more on their level that is now struggling? We begin to find out tonight.

There are signs the O’s offense is continuing to trend up, as we’ve written about over the last week or so.