CLEVELAND – There are plenty of dates circled on the calendar for the Orioles. 

The most notable one, and the biggest topic of conversation, comes in nine days: Major League Baseball’s trade deadline. Baltimore’s roster will look different, and interim manager Tony Mansolino is looking forward to Aug. 2, when the dust settles. 

But the most important date?

“Tonight!” Mansolino exclaimed with a laugh.

There’s some others, too.

The Nationals actually won a series opener Monday night, outlasting the Reds 10-8, thanks to their best offensive performance in a while. Which means they’ve now got two chances to win one game and win the series. That’s easier said than done, of course.

To pull it off tonight, the Nats will need to piece together nine innings from a pitching staff that’s not in great shape. Miguel Cairo had to burn up everybody in his bullpen the last two days after MacKenzie Gore failed to get out of the third inning and Jake Irvin failed to get out of the fourth inning. This would normally be the time to ask for length out of tonight’s starter, but Brad Lord is making his first start May 6. He’s been an effective reliever, but he hasn’t thrown more than 38 pitches in any appearance since then, so don’t count on more than three or maybe four innings from him tonight.

With that in mind, the Nats made a roster move today. They called up left-hander Konnor Pilkington from Triple-A Rochester, giving them a reliever who can provide some length behind Lord if needed. Mason Thompson was optioned to Rochester and Dylan Crews was transferred to the 60-day injured list to clear a spot on the 40-man roster (but that doesn’t change Crews’ eligibility to return once he’s deemed ready).

The Nationals would love to bust out for 10 runs again, but they’ll have to do it against one of the most dynamic young starting pitchers in the game. Chase Burns, the No. 2 pick in last summer’s draft, makes his fifth career start for the Reds. The right-hander throws an upper-90s fastball and a low-90s slider, so that’s what the Nats have in store tonight at the plate.

CINCINNATI REDS at WASHINGTON NATIONALS
Where: Nationals Park
Gametime: 6:45 p.m. EDT
TV: MASN, MLB.tv
Radio: 106.7 FM, 87.7 FM (Spanish), MLB.com
Weather: Partly cloudy, 83 degrees, wind 7 mph in from right field

The Washington Nationals selected the contract of left-handed pitcher Konnor Pilkington from Triple-A Rochester and optioned right-handed pitcher Mason Thompson to Triple-A Rochester on Tuesday. To make room for Pilkington on the 40-man roster, outfielder Dylan Crews has been transferred to the 60-day Injured List. Nationals Interim General Manager Mike DeBartolo made the announcements.

Pilkington, 27, joins the Nationals after he went 4–3 with a 2.59 ERA with 50 strikeouts and two saves in 41.2 innings for Triple-A Rochester this season. Since April 1, he has allowed the fewest earned runs (8) and hits (21) of any Triple-A pitcher (min. 40.0 IP). His 1.74 ERA in that span ranks fifth in all of Triple-A and first among Triple-A lefties. (min. 40.0 IP).

In his most recent 12 outings for the Red Wings, Pilkington did not allow a run and held opponents to a .098 average (4-for-41) in 13.1 innings. Over his last 17 outings in Rochester, he allowed just one earned run in 17.1 innings of work. In all, 28 of Pilkington’s 36 appearances this season, including both of his 3.0-inning starts, were scoreless.

A native of Pascagoula, Miss., Pilkington signed with the Nationals as a Minor League free agent on Dec. 3, 2024. He pitched in 16 games in the Major Leagues with Cleveland between 2022–23 and went 1–2 with a 2.88 ERA in 15 games (11 starts) in 2022 and made one scoreless 2.0-inning appearance out of the bullpen in 2023.

Thompson, 27, had a 13.50 ERA in six appearances out of the bullpen with the Nationals this season.

Back in May, when his batting average was in the low .130s and his OPS dipped below .500, Josh Bell made a conscious decision to stop doing what he intended to do all season for the Nationals.

His plan all along was to seek more home runs, believing a high slugging percentage was more important than any other stat at this stage of his career and in this current baseball environment. The results were ugly, so the veteran designated hitter revamped his swing in-season with hitting coach Darnell Coles and decided to forget about home runs and just focus on hitting the ball hard on a line.

“I just tried to lower my launch angle, tried to focus on squaring up the ball as best as I can, try to get my OPS over .600,” he said. “So I’ve done that. Now I’m fighting for seven. We’ll see where we go from there.”

As Bell spoke late Monday night following the Nationals’ 10-8 win over the Reds, his OPS for the season officially resided at .695. What he may not have realized was that he did actually get it over the .700 for a brief while a couple hours earlier after he launched a solo homer into the second deck in right field. It may have been his first homer since June 27, but it was just one of many well-struck base hits for the 32-year-old over a sustained stretch.

The infamous Josh Bell early season slump has long been replaced by the infamous Josh Bell midseason surge. After slashing just .151/.254/.289 through his first 45 games this season, he’s now slashing a very healthy .297/.371/.480 over his last 42 games.

The roster makeover that’s anticipated at the trade deadline could create a stiffer challenge in selecting a Most Valuable Oriole.

Players must be in the organization to remain eligible in voting by media that covers the team, or at least talks about it, with maybe the occasional stops at the ballpark.

(I want transparency in the voting because each season brings at least one ridiculous ballot. But I digress …)

Ryan O’Hearn, the lone All-Star on the team, profiles as the favorite. However, he could be gone by July 31. He’s generating the expected interest and he’s a pending free agent, which makes him a strong candidate.

Ramón Laureano deserves to be on the three-man ballot. He gave the Orioles a 5-3 lead last night with his 12^th homer, a two-run shot in the third inning. He certainly qualifies as one of the season’s biggest surprises, ranking second with a 2.2 bWAR, but will he get moved later this month?

OK, so maybe this victory wasn’t as smooth and convincing as it appeared it might be when the home team busted out with seven early runs against the Reds tonight.

The Nationals, though, haven’t won nearly enough games this summer to get picky about how they win. Any win is a good win right now, and tonight’s 10-8 slugfest on South Capitol Street should be considered as beautiful as any crisply played ballgame.

Thanks to an early seven-run explosion keyed by the resurgent James Wood and Josh Bell, then some much-needed tack-on offense in the middle innings and a surprisingly effective bullpen performance after Jake Irvin endured through his shortest start in two seasons, the Nationals won a series opener for the first time since June 26 in Anaheim, long before Miguel Cairo replaced Davey Martinez as manager.

"You see when it's coming," Cairo said. "Those were good at-bats today. We didn't score and just stop. We kept going, and we put good at-bats together. It was beautiful to get 10 runs today."

This game, of course, still included a harrowing top of the ninth from Kyle Finnegan, the slumping closer who allowed three of the first four batters he faced to reach, two of them scoring, before finishing it off with the tying run standing at the plate.

CLEVELAND – The Guardians were knocking on the door all night. 

The home team in red had every opportunity to break the door down in their eventual 10-5 victory over the Orioles. Inning after inning, Cleveland just couldn't deliver with runners in scoring position. That was, at least, until a breakout seventh inning. 

Things did start out well for the visitors, though. 

Jackson Holliday, Jordan Westburg and Gunnar Henderson thought that their 1-2-3 placement in the lineup referred to how many singles they should count to start the game. Holliday made one, Westburg made two, and Henderson made three. 

Henderson made both three and one, actually. Three singles, one run, 1-0 Baltimore. 

CLEVELAND – The clock continues to tick towards the trade deadline in Birdland. As the Orioles begin a new series in Cleveland, the writing isn’t etched in stone, but it’s certainly on the wall. 

“The conversations that I’m having right now are more oriented towards seeing what’s out there for some of our available major league players,” Mike Elias recently said on MLB Network Radio. 

Just shy of 100 games into the regular season and 10 games under .500, it’s not the place that anyone thought the Orioles would find themselves in. Through gritted teeth, they must operate accordingly. 

“Mike and the organization have a responsibility to create sustainable success for the Baltimore Orioles for years to come,” interim manager Tony Mansolino added today. 

But on a day-to-day basis, deadline moves don’t change much for Mansolino. Of course, the players penciled into the lineup cards may be varied, new relievers will fill new roles, and different starters could be toeing the slab. But the goal is always the same. 

Reliever Vinny Nittoli is coming back to the Orioles organization.

Nittoli, 34, signed a minor league deal and is reporting to Triple-A Norfolk after opting out of his contract with the Brewers last week.

Nittoli posted a 3.86 ERA in 27 games with Triple-A Nashville, striking out 37 batters in 28 innings. He tossed four scoreless innings with the Orioles over two games in 2024.

Left-handed reliever Keegan Akin began his injury rehab assignment today in the Florida Complex League and tossed a scoreless first inning against the FCL Rays with one hit and two strikeouts.

Akin is on the injured list retractive to July 1 with left shoulder inflammation. He’s appeared in 39 games with the Orioles and posted a 3.32 ERA and 1.421 WHIP in 38 innings. He’s started three times as an opener.

The Nationals have lost 11 of their last 13 series, including each of their last four. That’s how you wind up falling from two games under .500 to 21 games under .500 in a relatively brief amount of time. Suffice it to say, there’s a lot of work to be done just to reverse course and get this ship floating again. The road continues tonight with the opener of a three-game series against a Reds team that is smack dab in the middle of the National League Wild Card race and just took a series from the Mets at Citi Field.

Jake Irvin makes his first start of the second half, having been given seven days off since his last outing in the first-half finale. The right-hander has been OK so far this month, posting a 3.71 ERA, but he’s still looking to recapture the more consistently effective form he displayed earlier this year and for a large chunk of last year. He faced the Reds twice last season, and though he took no-decision in each case, he did pitch well (five runs in 12 innings).

Brady Singer has not faced the Nationals since 2023, when he was still pitching for the Royals. The 28-year-old right-hander has allowed three runs or fewer in 10 of his last 11 starts.

CINCINNATI REDS at WASHINGTON NATIONALS
Where: Nationals Park
Gametime: 6:45 p.m. EDT
TV: MASN, MLB.tv
Radio: 106.7 FM, 87.7 FM (Spanish), MLB.com
Weather: Partly cloudy, 84 degrees, wind 7 mph in from center field

REDS
CF TJ Friedl
2B Matt McLain
SS Elly De La Cruz
LF Austin Hays
DH Gavin Lux
1B Spencer Steer
3B Noelvi Marte
RF Jake Fraley
C Jose Trevino

The Orioles have made the following roster moves:

• Signed CF RJ Austin (3^rd round), SS Colin Yeaman (4^th round), SS Jaiden Lo Re (5^th round), LHP Caiden Hunter (6^th round), RHP Hunter Allen (7^th round), LHP Kailen Hamson (8^th round), CF Cam Lee (9^th round), and RHP Dalton Neuschwander (10^th round) from the 2025 First-Year Player Draft.

The Orioles have signed 13 of their 24 draft picks. The deadline for MLB teams to sign their draft selections is Monday, July 28, at 5 p.m. ET.

If it happened to anybody else, it would’ve been notable. Because it happened to James Wood, it was downright shocking.

A prolonged slump? By one of the most consistent offensive players in Nationals history, one of the most consistent 22-year-olds the sport has ever seen?

“It’s just baseball,” Wood insisted. “It can’t all be rainbows and sunshine all the time. It happens. You’ve just got to work your way out of it.”

Since the day the Nationals called him up from the minors 1 year and 3 weeks ago, Wood has never been through any slump that lasted more than a handful of days. His longest 0-fer made it to only 15 at-bats during a four-game stretch in late-July 2024.

This one, though, made it to 20, stretching over more than five games sandwiched around the All-Star break. When it began, Wood was batting .287 with a .939 OPS. By the middle of Sunday’s game, those numbers were down to .271 and .895.

TAMPA – Tony Mansolino is willing to talk about the weather and how miserably hot it gets in Florida. He loves to share stories about his two young sons, learning the sport through his father, Doug, and pretty much any topic that isn’t a guarded club secret. But just like his predecessor, Mansolino knows that most of the media sessions begin with injury and rehab updates.

There’s no escaping it – just like the heat.

The interim manager was happy to pass along the latest positive report on Kyle Bradish, who is following his two innings of live batting practice over the weekend with his first rehab start Thursday at High-A Aberdeen.

Bradish made his last Orioles appearance on June 14, 2024 against the Phillies, allowing two runs in five innings and coming out after only 74 pitches. The red flag was raised and flapped in the breeze. A pitcher who received a platelet-rich plasma injection in January after his diagnosis of an ulnar collateral ligament sprain was on borrowed time, and the clock struck 12 on a Baltimore evening.

We’ll assume that it was muggy.

TAMPA – The Orioles took a quick lead again this afternoon with Jackson Holliday’s leadoff home run. They built on it in the third inning with Alex Jackson’s first homer since last July. They keep playing to win, as reflected by the lineups, but there’s no escaping the reality of their situation.

Today’s 5-3 victory over the Rays at George M. Steinbrenner Field featured a 2-hour, 36-minute rain delay – longest of the season - prevented a sweep and left the Orioles 10 games below .500 at 44-54. They’re playing four this week in Cleveland before returning home. And each day that passes makes them wonder how much the clubhouse will change.

If it’s a distraction, the Orioles pushed it aside today. They led 4-0 by the third on Henderson’s 109.2 mph, two-run double off Ryan Pepiot. The only losses came later in the inning when plate umpire James Hoye ejected Ramón Laureano and interim manager Tony Mansolino.

Laureano thought he checked his swing on a strikeout, flung his helmet and protective padding at home plate and was tossed. Mansolino picked up the argument after Laureano walked away and received his first career major league ejection.

Ramón Urias entered the game at first base and Ryan O’Hearn moved to right field.

Having already seen MacKenzie Gore and Nick Pivetta engage in a 1-0 pitchers’ duel last month in San Diego, Miguel Cairo sounded confident about what would be in store in this afternoon’s rematch at Nationals Park.

"It’s going to be another good game today," the interim manager said. "Pivetta’s an ace. We’ve got an ace on our side, too. And whoever does the little things better, I think, is going to come out on top. Hopefully that’s us. But it will be a good game to watch. You’ve got two aces pitching today, and it will be awesome."

It took all of four batters for any notion of a pitchers’ duel to remain viable. And it took fewer than three innings for the Padres to blast Gore from the game and make the rest of this sticky Sunday a cakewalk for Pivetta, who coasted through six innings of one-run ball to an 8-1 victory.

This was no repeat of the June 26 series finale at Petco Park, another afternoon game that saw Pivetta outduel Gore to a 1-0 win. The Padres right-hander remained in peak form, carrying a shutout into the sixth. But Gore wilted in a manner not previously seen during the first All-Star season of his career.

"I think I was just bad today," he said. "I think it was more that I just wasn't very good. They put the ball in play and got a lot of hits, and they were able to hit two homers. But I just wasn't very good."

The Nationals have found themselves in this position plenty of times over the last month-plus, having lost the first game of a series before bouncing back to win the next night, leaving the finale as the decisive rubber game. And in five of the last seven such instances, they’ve lost the finale and thus lost the series.

One of those series came last month in San Diego, where the rubber game featured a pitching matchup of MacKenzie Gore vs. Nick Pivetta. Gore was outstanding that afternoon, allowing one run over six innings. And Pivetta was better, tossing seven scoreless innings with only three batters reaching base. Thus did the Padres win the game, 1-0.

Here we are again with the same pitching matchup in the series finale between the same two teams, this time at Nationals Park. Can Gore duplicate his efforts from that outing? More importantly, can the Nats mount more of an offensive threat against Pivetta and provide their ace with some desperately needed run support? That’s what’s at stake this afternoon.

SAN DIEGO PADRES at WASHINGTON NATIONALS
Where: Nationals Park
Gametime: 1:35 p.m. EDT
TV: MASN, MLB.tv
Radio: 106.7 FM, 87.7 FM (Spanish), MLB.com
Weather: Mostly cloudy, 87 degrees, wind 11 mph out to right field

PADRES
RF Fernando Tatis Jr.
1B Luis Arraez
3B Manny Machado
DH Xander Bogaerts
CF Jackson Merrill
LF Gavin Sheets
SS Jose Iglesias
2B Jake Cronenworth
CF Bryce Johnson
C Elias Díaz

Mike DeBartolo’s first week on the job as the Nationals’ interim general manager was consumed with the Major League Baseball Draft. His second and third weeks on the job are now focused on MLB’s upcoming trade deadline, and a critical question he must confront: How committed is the organization to its current group of young players?

The Nats will be sellers at the deadline for the fifth straight year, that much DeBartolo concedes. Veterans on expiring contracts like Kyle Finnegan, Michael Soroka, Josh Bell, Amed Rosario and Paul DeJong will be shopped.

But the asking price for those two-month rentals isn’t likely to be steep. If DeBartolo is interested in making more significant changes and acquiring more prominent prospects before July 31, he would need to consider dealing players still under club control beyond 2025.

First baseman Nathaniel Lowe, who has one year of arbitration eligibility remaining, is one possibility. But what about MacKenzie Gore, one of the key prospects acquired in the 2022 Juan Soto blockbuster and a first-time All-Star, yet one who only has 2 1/2 years left of club control (same as Soto at the time of that trade)?

DeBartolo didn’t straight up shoot down the possibility when asked Saturday in a session with reporters following No. 1 draft pick Eli Willits’ introductory press conference. But he did make it fairly clear he’s not interested in breaking up what he believes is a solid foundation of young players already at the major league level.

TAMPA – Kyle Bradish will begin his injury rehab assignment Thursday with High-A Aberdeen, staying on track for a second-half return to the Orioles’ rotation.

Bradish had two ups yesterday during live batting practice in Sarasota.

Adley Rutschman (oblique) will start his rehab assignment Tuesday with Triple-A Norfolk. He’s getting at-bats today against Tyler Wells, who’s nearing his own assignment.

First baseman Ryan Mountcastle (hamstring) will join Rutschman later in the week.

Left-hander Cade Povich (hip) starts Thursday or Friday at Norfolk.

Kyle Finnegan said he couldn’t wait to get back on the mound tonight and erase the sting of Friday night’s disastrous ninth inning. The Nationals closer got his wish. And made the most of the opportunity.

Handed a two-run lead in the top of the ninth, Finnegan shut down the Padres and finished off a 4-2 victory before a boisterous Saturday night crowd of 31,136 that waited out a 1-hour, 5-minute rain delay and was rewarded for its patience with a much-needed victory by the home team.

Finnegan needed it as much as anyone. The slumping closer entered with a 4.37 ERA and zero saves (with three blown saves) since June 6. He avoided any drama this time, retiring the side and giving his teammates a chance to celebrate at the center of the diamond.

"Any pitcher will tell you: After a bad one, you don't want to stew on it for too long. You want to get back out there and put it behind you," Finnegan said. "So I was excited for the opportunity to do that tonight. Happy that they had the faith in me to go back out there and get the last three outs."

"I told him right now: It doesn't matter who's coming up to hit, you're my closer," interim manager Miguel Cairo said. "Go out there and just do your job. And he did it today."

TAMPA – Tony Mansolino is new to this whole managing thing, carrying his interim tag into every major league ballpark and a few of the minor league fill-ins, but he’s a quick study and knows that he can’t control the narrative.

The media’s gonna media.

The pressure of the approaching trade deadline could be impacting the Orioles, who are predicted by some outlets to be the most active team with a bundle of pending free agents on the table and hopes of contending fading like old jeans.

Or it isn’t. The blame might fall instead to deficiencies in the rotation, a slumping offense and an injury bug that could devour an entire city. The Orioles had 25 different players on the injured list in the first half to tie the White Sox for most in the majors. The Red Sox, Dodgers and Mets were next with 22, which is an important note because they seemed to cope better than the others.

“I’m an optimist in every which way, so I’ve never gravitated toward the feel sorry for me or everything’s terrible or everything’s negative,” Mansolino said. “I tend to look at the opportunity that somebody else gets and look at the possibility of doing great.