Good morning, Camden Chatters.<\/p>\n
The MLB playoffs continue on, with nothing for Orioles fans to do except watch forlornly as former O\u2019s castoffs play critical roles for successful teams. Such was the case last night as the Rays took a 3-2 series lead over the Guardians with a win in Cleveland, putting Tampa Bay one win away from the franchise\u2019s third World Series appearance.<\/p>\n
In yesterday\u2019s 3-1 victory, the Rays entrusted their last four outs to two recent Orioles relievers, Tyler Wells and Bryan Baker. In the eighth, Wells, summoned with two outs and a man aboard, got arguably the biggest out of the game, striking out future Hall of Famer Jos\u00e9 Ram\u00edrez, who represented the potential tying run. And the ninth inning belonged to Baker, who has become a lockdown closer in less than two seasons with the Rays after the O\u2019s dumped him in July 2025. He worked past a leadoff walk to retire the Guardians with ease, earning his 34th consecutive save dating back to mid-May. (It\u2019s still wild to me that Baker had only two losses the entire season, and both came against the Orioles.) Cedric Mullins and Jorge Mateo also briefly appeared in the game.<\/p>\n
You can\u2019t blame O\u2019s fans if they\u2019re feeling conflicted about the former Orioles\u2019 success. On the one hand, it\u2019s nice to see some familiar faces finding success, especially fan favorites like Mullins. On the other hand, in Baker\u2019s case especially, it makes you wonder why the Orioles couldn\u2019t unlock the same kind of success from these players that the Rays have. Baker was an erratic middle reliever for the Orioles, and the Rays almost instantly turned him into one of the best closers in the game. And all the O\u2019s got in return for him was a draft pick, which turned into Slater de Brun, whom they ended up trading back Tampa Bay anyway. It\u2019s almost as if \u2014 and try to stay with me here \u2014 the Rays are a much better-run organization than the Orioles. Who knew?<\/p>\n
If the Rays seal the deal tonight or tomorrow and punch their ticket to the World Series, we\u2019ll be seeing a bevy of former Birds in the Fall Classic, including Tampa Bay\u2019s quartet and the Brewers\u2019 DL Hall and Joey Ortiz (and Gary S\u00e1nchez, not that he counts as one who got away.) All of these guys were on the Orioles within the past few years, and now they\u2019ve achieved something that the current Orioles are nowhere close to doing. Good for them. Bad for us.<\/p>\n
Holliday looking to build off positives from 2026 during \u201827 season – MLB.com<\/a><\/p>\n It\u2019s hard to get excited about Holliday when one of the \u201cpositives\u201d from this season is that he didn\u2019t have a platoon split, OPSing .643 against righties and .632 against lefties. Neither of those is good!<\/p>\n