The usual nametags weren’t anywhere to be found in the visitor’s clubhouse this afternoon.
There’s no Cedric Mullins, who patrolled center field in Baltimore for parts of eight seasons. Ryan O’Hearn and Ramón Urías won’t be digging into the infield dirt in Wrigley Field this weekend. The bullpen has about half of its normal arms.
Things feel different.
The Orioles’ farm got significantly better over the last month with an influx of talent from both the MLB Draft and trade deadline. That impact won’t be felt in the big leagues until those prospects either develop into major league talent themselves or are traded for established veterans.
For now, the Orioles will be playing the rest of the 2025 season with a different cast of characters. It’s a good thing that Baltimore finds itself in “The Friendly Confines” with so many new faces.
There is still, though, plenty of optimism for what the future can hold.
“We have the core, we have the pieces,” Jordan Westburg said. “We’re still a good ballclub, and I think we were playing some really, really good baseball over the last couple of months.”
Interim skipper Tony Mansolino echoed that sentiment.
“You look at those first six in the lineup, and you’ll have another one here in Mounty in a few days. That top seven in the lineup is still a very competitive, playoff-style top of the lineup,” Mansolino said. “This group of players going back to May 20 has the seventh-best record in Major League Baseball.”
The lineup, while missing O’Hearn, Urías and Ramón Laureano, still includes the young core. No foundational pieces changed jerseys.
For years, that group has been seen as the future of the franchise, destined to pave the way to playoff success for years to come. Now they’ve spent years in the big leagues, establishing themselves as the best players on the roster.
But their talent isn’t the only thing that has needed to progress. As they’ve spent more times in the majors, their roles in the clubhouses have had to evolve, too. This is their time.
“Yeah, the leadership roles fall to us now, right,” Westburg said. “So guys like Gunnar (Henderson) and guys like myself, Adley (Rutschman), as young as Jackson (Holliday), (Colton) Cowser. We gotta kind of pick it up. We understand that this is … the clubhouse is now in a place where we’ve been kind of groomed and kind of preparing to take over, and now it’s that time. So I think we’ve got to put on our big-boy shoes, big-boy pants and lead this clubhouse for the last two months of the season.”
It’s not just a step that the Orioles would like them to take. It’s a necessary one.
“That’s their responsibility,” Mansolino said. “They’ve been delivered that message, too, a couple of times in a lot of different ways. Gunnar, Westburg, Jackson, Adley, (Kyle) Bradish, Cowser. This is their team. There’s other veteran players here, but these are the guys. They need to run this thing and they need to figure this thing out, and they need to make sure in their way that we don’t put ourselves in this position in years to come.”
Part of building that culture will be keeping the positive momentum going for the final two months of the season. Of course, that’s easier said than done with so many new faces. But the belief hasn’t wavered.
“The goal here is still to play competitive baseball every single day, and I still believe that we have a chance to do that with the core that we have,” Westburg said.
The energy can’t slip, either.
“That’s my responsibility not to let that happen,” Mansolino said. “And it’s the coach’s responsibility as a staff, we have to go in and we have to create some energy. … What I told them (coaches) is, ‘We have 24 hours to, as coaches, to be angry and upset and be sad that we lost these players that we love and we just had 2 1/2 great months with, but once we get past these 24 hours, we’ve gotta figure this thing out.’”
Figuring things out could come in many different forms. Perhaps it’s stacking together wins or seeing the young core continue to play good baseball. Maybe it’s just staying healthy.
But the foundation of the O’s remains solid, and the time to step into a new role is now.