TAMPA – Coby Mayo remembers the conversation he had last year with outfielder Kyle Stowers and the question posed to his friend.

“I asked him, ‘Would you rather be in the big leagues and not playing much or be down in Triple-A and playing every day,” Mayo recalled, “and he’s like, ‘I think being in the big leagues is very valuable, even if you’re not playing, just learning.’ Being able to watch the game and being around the coaches.”

The Orioles must agree because they’re carrying Mayo on the roster and sitting him much more than he plays.

Last night’s start against the Rays was only his third in the last 12 games. An 11-for-36 stretch over 11 games to finish June didn’t create a regular spot for him in the lineup.

Stowers made his first All-Star team with the Marlins and hit his 20^th and 21^st home runs last night, including a walk-off, to give him five blasts in his last two games.

The idea is to play a more fundamental brand of baseball the rest of the season, Miguel Cairo explained this afternoon. The Nationals’ interim manager then watched as the Padres showed them the proper way to do that while watching his own team come up woefully short on multiple occasions.

Despite getting a jolt from CJ Abrams’ game-tying homer in the bottom of the eighth, the Nats still lost 7-2 when San Diego scored five runs off Kyle Finnegan in the top of the ninth, an inning that featured a successful hit-and-run, the game’s second successful safety squeeze, good baserunning and then a grand slam for the final dagger.

The Nationals? They ran themselves into three more outs (Josh Bell accounting for two of them at critical moments in the game), stumbled in the field and watched another winnable game not only slip from their fingers but turn into a rout.

In short, the second half of a season gone awry opened in much the same manner the first half closed.

"I said it before: That's something we need to keep working on getting better," said Cairo, whose team is now 1-6 since he replaced Davey Martinez. "We're going to keep working on doing the little things better than the other team. There's still 2 1/2 months to go, and we've got to keep our heads up. I'm going to stay aggressive. If you're not aggressive, you're not trying."

TAMPA – Orioles interim manager Tony Mansolino gathered his players today for a post-break meeting, a “good talk” with details that he wanted to keep private.

“I’m not gonna tell you the message, but it was multiple things,” he said this afternoon during his media scrum inside the visiting dugout at steamy George M. Steinbrenner Field. “Just a lot of the things kind of surrounding us, the challenges that kind of lay ahead, and also the opportunities that lay ahead.”

Mansolino wants his team to block out the distractions, including trade deadline talk, and to keep pushing. Play up to the level of talent. Treat the second half like a fresh start.

The Rays took all of the air out of an uplifting speech, busting it like a balloon.

Junior Caminero hit a three-run homer off Charlie Morton in the bottom of the first inning, Danny Jansen followed with a solo shot in the second, and the Orioles saw the game go from bad to worse in an 11-1 loss before an announced sellout crowd of 10,046.

TAMPA – The chances of Grayson Rodriguez facing batters in 2025 just took another hit.

Rodriguez is shut down again for an indefinite period due to the same elbow soreness that kept him from pitching in spring training after a March 5 game against the Twins in Fort Myers.

The injury report lists Rodriguez with right elbow inflammation but he initially was sidelined with a strained lat that forced the cancellation of an April 17 bullpen session. Rodriguez spoke earlier of triceps tendinitis.

Rodriguez had advanced to throwing breaking balls in his bullpen sessions but clearly was behind other pitchers on the IL, including Kyle Bradish, who’s recovered from reconstructive elbow surgery last June and will log two innings Saturday against live hitters in Sarasota before beginning a rehab assignment.

“We had to pull back a little bit on Grayson,” said interim manager Tony Mansolino. “There’s a little bit of elbow discomfort from the issue he had in spring training, same spot, so we’re gonna kind of pull back, we’re gonna reevaluate and we’ll probably have more information on that in the next week or so.”

For four months, Derek Law tried to get his arm ready to pitch in the major leagues, hoping the setbacks he experienced along the way could finally be overcome. Until the veteran Nationals reliever was told last week he has a partial tear of the flexor tendon in his right elbow, at which point hope turned to acceptance.

Law will undergo surgery soon to repair the tear, a procedure that will prevent him from pitching this season and likely sideline him until early-to-mid 2026. It’s a tough pill to swallow for the 34-year-old, who wanted to believe all along he’d be able to contribute to the Nats in 2025 but has now resigned himself to the fact he can’t.

“It was already hard enough to miss Opening Day this year. And then you hear that,” he said. “I needed every bit of five days to figure out in my head what the heck’s going on, the downtime I’m going to miss.”

The workhorse of the Nationals' bullpen, Law made 75 appearances and pitched 90 innings last season, the highest total by any of the team’s relievers since Tyler Clippard in 2010. He did so while missing two weeks in late-August with a flexor strain, an injury he rebounded from to close out the season with no real issues.

Law never could get his arm right this season, though. After a delayed build-up in spring training, he began experiencing elbow soreness, so he opened the year on the injured list. That turned into a much longer process than initially envisioned, with Law eventually making four appearances in minor league rehab games over the last month but unable to emerge from those sessions without a return of the elbow pain.

And we’re back. After a much-needed, four-day break, the Nationals return for the second half of the season, surely hoping it will go much better than the first half did. The “second half,” of course, is a misnomer. They’ve already played 96 games, so there are only 66 still to be played.

It begins tonight with the opener of a three-game series against the Padres, who are sending someone to the mound the Nats may not be thrilled to see again: Dylan Cease. Almost exactly one year ago, the right-hander tossed a no-hitter here at Nationals Park. Cease hasn’t been nearly as good this season; he enters 3-9 with a 4.88 ERA, but he’s still striking out more than 11 batters per nine innings.

The All-Star break gave Miguel Cairo and Jim Hickey a chance to reorganize their rotation. So with MacKenzie Gore having thrown his scoreless inning Tuesday in Atlanta, he’ll now be pushed back to Sunday. And with Jake Irvin having thrown Sunday’s first half finale in Milwaukee, he’ll get extra rest. So it’s Michael Soroka out of the chute tonight, with Mitchell Parker set for Saturday night’s game.

SAN DIEGO PADRES 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: Mostly cloudy, 80 degrees, wind 66 mph out to left field

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

TAMPA – The Orioles filled the opening on their 26-man roster by signing reliever Corbin Martin to a one-year major league contract.

Martin was designated for assignment Sunday before the Orioles knew that reliever Scott Blewett would go on the injured list with right elbow discomfort. Martin declined an outright assignment, became a free agent and signed a new contract.

The 40-man roster is full.

Zach Eflin’s rehab assignment was transferred to the Florida Complex League and he could be reinstated from the injured list if he gets through it without any setbacks.

Catcher Chadwick Tromp begins his rehab assignment at Class A Delmarva.

TAMPA – Less than a week after drafting catcher/outfielder Ike Irish in the first round, the Orioles got his signature on a contract.

Irish, 21, signed earlier today in Baltimore after passing his physical. The Orioles made him the 19^th overall pick Sunday night out of Auburn University.

Irish, a left-handed hitter and Michigan-native climbed draft boards after slashing .364/.469/.710 with 13 doubles, two triples, 19 home runs, 58 RBIs, 33 walks, 37 strikeouts and 11 steals in 12 attempts over 55 games this season. In three college seasons, he slashed .350/.435/.625 with 48 doubles, five triples, 39 homers and 167 RBIs in 160 games.

Adding to the Irish intrigue is how he batted .325/.438/.433 last summer in the Cape Code League.

“First and foremost, we love his bat,” vice president of player development and domestic scouting Matt Blood said late Sunday night. “He’s a very polished bat, both on, really on all aspects of how you would want a hitter to be. Contact, power, swing decisions. Just really, really exciting hitter. He has the ability to catch, he has the ability to play corner outfield, he has the ability to play some first base, and we’re pretty big on defensive versatilities, so we’ll probably explore all those options.”

The Orioles today signed catcher IKE IRISH, the No. 19 overall pick in the 2025 First-Year Player Draft.

Irish, the Hudsonville, Mich. native and Auburn University (AL) product, is the first of 24 Orioles draft picks to sign. The deadline for MLB teams to sign their draft selections is Monday, July 28, at 5 p.m. ET.

The All-Star break is over. The Nationals – along with 29 other major league teams – return to action tonight, and the second half of the 2025 season gets underway.

It’s a second half that doesn’t hold anything close to the same promise it did a few months ago, when it looked like the Nats might at least threaten the .500 mark, maybe even make a surprise cameo appearance in the National League wild card race. Alas, that’s not going to happen now. To finish 81-81, they need to go a ridiculous 43-23 the rest of the way. (That would be the equivalent of a 105-win pace over an entire season. So, yeah, it’s not happening.)

But that doesn’t mean the rest of the season is going to be meaningless. There are storylines worth following over the next 2 1/2 months. Such as these …

THE TRADE DEADLINE
For the fifth straight season, the Nationals figure to be sellers on July 31. That’s not a position anyone wanted to be in this year, but it’s reality now. Interim general manager Mike DeBartolo has no choice but to see what he can get for players who don’t look like part of the long-term plan around here. Anybody on an expiring contract (Kyle Finnegan, Michael Soroka, Josh Bell, Paul DeJong, Amed Rosario, Andrew Chafin) is going to be shopped and likely moved if any kind of substantive offer is made. The bigger question is whether DeBartolo looks to move anybody still under club control in 2026 (or beyond). Nathaniel Lowe would be a potential candidate. And what about (gulp) MacKenzie Gore, who is the same distance away from free agency right as Juan Soto was in July 2022. It would take a gargantuan offer from someone, but would DeBartolo consider doing it?

WOOD’S PERSONAL PURSUITS
He’s not going to be able to do anything on his own to help the Nationals become a winning team this year, but James Wood has plenty to shoot for on a personal level. He’s shooting for 40-plus homers, a number previously reached only by Bryce Harper (42) and Alfonso Soriano (46) in club history. If he gets within shouting distance of Soriano, September could actually be a lot of fun. He could also join Anthony Rendon as the only players in club history to drive in more than 110 runs, though it would take a mammoth surge to threaten Rendon’s team record of 126 RBIs.

Release the pause button. The Orioles are set to resume their season following the All-Star break, beginning a three-game series tonight against the Rays in Tampa.

The Orioles are 22-16 since the start of June after going 21-36 beforehand, which sounds like momentum. But they closed the first half with back-to-back home losses to the Marlins and have split their last 20 games, leaving them nine below .500 at 43-52 and 7 ½ behind for the last Wild Card.

This isn’t the way to convince the front office that buying makes more sense than selling.

Get ready for more reports that the Orioles are “listening” to offers, which signals that the trade deadline is fast approaching. As I always ask, what exactly is the alternative? Executives call other executives, who listen and can exercise their right to say “no.” It doesn’t indicate progress in trade talks or a willingness to part with a particular player. It’s just the usual conversations intended to gauge whether there might be room to negotiate.

It would be bigger news if contenders weren’t checking whether the Orioles might part with Félix Bautista. They’ve got nothing to lose by asking. And I wouldn’t expect more than a couple of seconds to pass while considering the idea dealing a dominant closer who's getting back into All-Star form and remains under team control through 2027.

At the macro level, it’s impossible to look at the Nationals’ 2025 season to date and deem it a success. The team has been in a tailspin since early June, losing 28 of its last 38 games and plummeting to 20 games under .500. That tailspin cost both Mike Rizzo and Davey Martinez their jobs, firings few could have accurately predicted when they closed out May with a respectable 28-30 record.

Now, the strange part. At the micro level, there actually have been a few positive developments through the season’s first half. Several key young players have performed exceptionally well. Several prospects called up to debut amid the turmoil have done a nice job to date.

Those individual positives don’t add up nearly enough to salvage the big picture. But they have created a weird dichotomy to the first 96 games of the season. All is not well around here, but all is not lost, either.

There’s much that still needs to take place in the second half to determine the fate of the 2025 Nationals, and we’ll explore that Friday morning before the guys return from the All-Star break. Today, we’ll look at what already transpired, what went right and what went wrong through a first half that won’t soon be forgotten by anyone who had to experience it. …

RIGHT: JAMES WOOD
This can’t be said enough: Wood is having the best individual season by a National since Juan Soto. The team hasn’t had a qualified hitter finish with a .900 OPS since Soto’s .999 mark in 2021. Wood currently sits at .915, and that’s down 43 points over his last eight games. If he gets that number back to .950, he’d joint an awfully select list of players in club history (Soto, Anthony Rendon, Daniel Murphy, Bryce Harper). That’s it. Oh, he’s also on pace for 41 homers and 116 RBIs. Only Harper (42) and Alfonso Soriano (46) have hit 40-plus homes in club history. Only Rendon (126) has driven in more than 110 runs. If the Nats were a more competitive team, Wood would be in the MVP discussion over the rest of the season.

What started as an innocent car ride home became a deep dive into the Orioles’ roster.

Interim manager Tony Mansolino needed a lift last Thursday with family in town, and new special advisor John Mabry provided taxi service. Mansolino used the one-on-one time with a respected former major league player and coach to discuss the team and everything happening around it.

“What do you think about all this?” Mansolino asked.

And then came his answer –without pause and aimed at the one player who usually gets lost in the crowd.

“Right away, it’s Jordan Westburg,” Mansolino recalled. “He’s like, ‘That’s the guy that nobody talks about. That’s the piece.’”

The Orioles filled one of the two openings on their 40-man roster this afternoon by claiming right-hander Elvin Rodríguez on waivers from the Brewers and optioning him to Triple-A Norfolk.

Rodríguez, 27, registered an 8.68 ERA and 1.607 WHIP in six games (two starts). He allowed 18 runs and 23 hits with seven walks, 17 strikeouts and seven home runs surrendered over 18 2/3 innings.

He also made seven appearances (five starts) with the Tigers in 2022, posting a 10.62 ERA and 1.921 WHIP in 29 2/3 innings, and registered one scoreless and hitless relief appearance covering 3 1/3 innings with the Rays in 2023. He retired all 10 batters.

Rodríguez never faced the Orioles in parts of his three major league seasons.

The Brewers designated Rodríguez for assignment last Wednesday after he signed a split contract with them in January. He had a 4.25 ERA and 1.247 WHIP in 16 games (two starts) with Triple-A Nashville.

The All-Star break doesn’t provide much rest for those of us covering the draft, tracking Ryan O’Hearn and emptying a mailbag.

The last pick in the draft was announced Monday evening. Major League Baseball did something right, getting rid of Day 3. O’Hearn was the designated hitter for the American League, and as I told him would happen, I tuned out the second after he came out.

That’s the luxury of “covering” it from home. I was in Texas last year for five Orioles representatives, plus Gunnar Henderson in the Home Run Derby.

Baseball has the best All-Star Game of the major sports, but nothing compares to the Midsummer Classics of my youth, with future Hall of Famers all over the field wearing their teams’ uniforms. (Nice to see that second part come back last night.) And prior to interleague play, which removed the novelty of the American League facing the National League outside of the World Series.

Also, get off my lawn.

Ryan O’Hearn came close to facing future Hall of Famer Clayton Kershaw tonight in his first career All-Star Game at-bat.

Kershaw was a “Legend Pick” by commissioner Rob Manfred, marking his 11^th All-Star selection. The three-time Cy Young Award winner retired Mariners catcher Cal Raleigh, the Home Run Derby champion, on a liner to left and struck out Blue Jays first baseman Vladimir Guerrero Jr.

On the verge of a tough left-on-left matchup, O’Hearn instead got Padres right-hander Jason Adam and struck out looking at a 2-2 slider that nicked the outer half of the plate.

O’Hearn pulled a changeup foul on the previous pitch – an almost double.

The American League put runners on the corners against Mets left-hander David Peterson with two outs in the fourth, and O’Hearn grounded a first-pitch slider back to the mound. Peterson jogged to first base and flipped the ball for the out.

Tony Mansolino is carving his own path since the Orioles named him interim manager on May 17. It usually happens twice a day in the auxiliary clubhouse, where he meets with the media before and after games.

Former manager Brandon Hyde would veer to the right, around the rows of metal folding chairs, to reach his seat at the table, and he’d go back out the same way. Reporters knew the routine and how to avoid slowing or bumping into him.

Mansolino paused on his first day to wait for a public relations official and crossed up everyone by walking down the middle of the room. More fullback than halfback, though his build doesn’t offer the same comparison.

In one sense, Mansolino is following in Hyde’s footsteps because of the role unexpectedly thrust upon him. He’s got the office now and usually stands in the same spot at the dugout railing, to the far left. But he’s also figuring out on the fly how to make it job his own, for however long it belongs to him.

“I didn’t ask for this, so that morning when that happened, that was as big of a shock to me as it was you guys,” he said earlier this week. “So I think when you just kind of get thrown into the fire, you’re trying to get your feet settled and adapt.”

The Orioles made 17 selections on the final day of the 2025 First-Year Player Draft, completing rounds 4-20. This year, Baltimore selected 24 players overall: 13 pitchers and 11 position players, with 21 of the selections being college athletes and three from the high school ranks. The Orioles selected eight right-handed pitchers, five left-handed pitchers, four outfielders, five infielders, and two catchers.

The Washington Nationals selected 17 players on the second and final day of Major League Baseball’s 2025 First-Year Player Draft on Monday. Interim General Manager Mike DeBartolo; Vice President, Amateur Scouting Danny Haas; Senior Director, Amateur Scouting Brad Ciolek; and Assistant Director and National Crosschecker, Amateur Scouting Reed Dunn made the joint announcements.

The Nationals opened Day 2 with the selection of right-handed pitcher Miguel Sime Jr. from Poly Prep Country Day School (NY). The 6-foot-4, 235-pounder recorded a 1.47 ERA (8 ER/49.1 IP) with 89 strikeouts and zero home runs allowed in eight outings as a senior on his way to being named the Gatorade High School Player of the Year in the state of New York, a Perfect Game All-American and a second-team ABCA/Rawlings High School All-American.

Sime is rated by MLBPipeline.com as the No. 86 prospect and by Baseball America as the No. 88 prospect in the 2025 First-Year Player Draft. He is the top high school prospect in the state of New York and the No. 6 high school right-handed pitching prospect in the country, according to Perfect Game. Prior to the 2025 Draft, Sime participated in the MLB Draft League, striking out 11 batters and posting a .161 opponents’ average (5-for-31) in 8.2 innings.

In the fifth round, the Nationals selected shortstop Coy James out of Davie High School (N.C.). James, 18, hit .605 with 15 doubles, four triples, nine home runs, 25 RBI, 21 stolen bases, 22 walks, 50 runs scored and just six strikeouts on his way to being named Gatorade North Carolina Player of the Year and 4A Player of the Year by the North Carolina Baseball Coaches Association.

The 6-foot, 185-pound right-handed hitter was named a First Team All-American by ABCA/Rawlings this season. He was ranked the No. 15 overall player and No. 9 shortstop, according to Perfect Game, while being named to their All-American Game in 2024. He was also ranked the No. 49 overall draft prospect by Baseball America and the No. 94 prospect by MLBPipe.com.

The No. 1 pick was always going to dominate the conversation about the Nationals’ 2025 draft class, no matter who they selected. And a front office that experienced major change just one week ago desperately wants and needs Eli Willits to become everything they believe he can be, putting to rest any doubts about their somewhat-surprising decision to draft him.

But the Nats also know this draft can’t be considered a success if only their first round pick pans out. Among the reasons ownership decided to make a change of general managers was the organization’s lack of development of later round picks over the last decade.

There have been some strides made in that area more recently, with the likes of Cole Henry (second round, 2020), Daylen Lile (second round, 2021), Jake Irvin (fourth round, 2018), Mitchell Parker (fifth round, 2020), Jacob Young (seventh round, 2021) and Brad Lord (18th round, 2022) all reaching the big leagues and becoming contributors of varying degrees. But it’s still not enough. The Nationals know they need to develop more quality players out of picks beyond the first round.

It will be some time before we know if they were successful in that regard this year, but it’s clear they took a different approach with several of their down-ballot draft picks over the last two days: They went for more high-upside high schoolers than has typically been the case.

“They’re such talented guys,” vice president of amateur scouting Danny Haas said. “Big arms. Big power. Athletes. Just the value of where you get them with every round, we were very excited about that.”