CHICAGO – The message from interim manager Tony Mansolino and the players remaining in the Orioles clubhouse is clear: Yes, the trade deadline may have shaken things up, but the goal of winning a baseball game each day remains the same. 

The Orioles, with their young core still in place, believe they still have the talent to do just that. The names on the lineup card, particularly in the middle, have changed a bit, and Mansolino will need to get creative with a bullpen missing many of its established arms. 

But as Mansolino said pregame, there’s no time for licking wounds. There’s baseball to be played out in Chicago. 

Trevor Rogers was more than up to the challenge. The O's offense, though, couldn't find a rhythm in a 1-0 loss to the Cubs.

The lefty tossed the first complete-game loss for the Orioles since Chris Tillman did it back in 2013. 

Nobody seemed to be capable of settling things down more than Rogers. The lefty has been nearly untouchable in the month of July with a 1.03 ERA in four starts. The Cubs presented perhaps his biggest challenge to date.

"That’s a playoff-caliber lineup right there," Mansolino said after the game. "There’s a lot of right-handed hitters in it. He was incredible." 

Chicago opened up the scoring in the second. A Carson Kelly single led off the inning, and a Pete Crow-Armstrong double put two runners in scoring position with nobody away. But Rogers did well to avoid much more damage, retiring the next three batters with just one run scoring on a sacrifice fly. At the end of two frames, the Cubs led 1-0. 

The third inning saw the debut of Jeremiah Jackson, one of the players called up by Baltimore after yesterday’s deadline deals. He’s one of the many players that will get an opportunity to show what they can do in the second half. He later had his first-career major league hit in the fifth inning. 

"It was awesome," Jackson said. "A dream come true. Something that everybody here has worked really hard to get here, and to be up here with these guys, it’s awesome. Truly a blessing.

"I got the ball. It’s definitely probably going to go to my granddad. He’s been through it all with me, he was my coach growing up, and this is a big moment for both of us, for sure."

That base knock was just the second of the game for the O’s at that point, though. The first was a Jackson Holliday single in the top of the third. Through six scoreless innings, it was a dramatic 180 from what we’ve seen out of the offense in the last week. In their last seven games, Baltimore had produced a whopping 66 runs, good for over nine per game. 

The windy conditions in the windy city didn't help. 

"We swung the bats better than what the scoreboard said," Mansolino noted. "I don’t think we swung the bats good enough to put up 10 runs, but, you know, there’s a few balls hit that, on a normal day, are probably going over the fence."

Despite the outing from the offense, Rogers kept the Birds right in it. At the end of six innings, he had secured his fifth-consecutive quality start. This time, he cruised through six frames with only 66 pitches thrown, allowing just three hits and striking out seven with no walks in the process. 

In the top of the seventh, with the O’s offense struggling to find a rhythm, Andrew Kittredge took the mound for Chicago. Life comes at you fast sometimes. The right-hander proceeded to force an Adley Rutschman flyout, and Tyler O’Neill and Colton Cowser were both punchout victims.

Rogers, though, continued to give Baltimore every opportunity to win this game. Perhaps the O's should've taken his 18 runs of support in his last time out and dispersed things a bit more evenly. 

In the eighth, the offense continued to pepper Crow-Armstrong with flyouts to center, but it didn't amount in any runs. Baltimore still trailed 1-0 with just one frame of offense to go. 

Rogers still wasn't done. The lefty completed eight dazzling innings, allowing just one run on four hits while punching out eight. 

"Just a good mix overall," Rogers said. "Just my execution was really good today. Tip my cap to Adley. We had a solid game plan going into it. He was constantly mixing and, whatever I was thinking, he was calling. So we were pretty much on the same page all day.”

His catcher, behind the dish for Rogers for the first time this season, concurred. 

“I thought he threw all of his pitches today in different counts, ahead and behind," Rutschman said. "He gave batters a lot of different looks. I thought he did a great job today. I was really impressed."

One year ago today, Rogers made his first start in a Baltimore uniform. Today, after his fifth-consecutive quality start, things feel just a bit different. 

"Complete 360," Rogers said.

"Went from trying to do too much and trying to produce results for this team and coming all the way around to just focusing on execution and doing my job, and we're getting good results. So, complete 360. Very thankful for the Orioles and I've had a blast here, but still got a job to do for the next two months and I'll continue to do that.”

Unfortunately, the Orioles offense couldn't back him up. 

"Tough day offensively, but we will bounce back tomorrow," Mansolino said. 

This afternoon's ballgame was never going to feel like any other ballgame. Facing a right-handed starting pitcher, Ryan O'Hearn almost certainly would've been in the middle of the lineup. Ramón Laureano mashed everything this year and would've been in there, too. But that's not where the Orioles find themselves. 

O'Hearn and Laureano are in San Diego, and the rest of the Orioles are in Chicago trying to figure out a way to win a series. Today, Rogers gave them every opportunity to take Game 1, but the Birds' offense didn't come through.

That's been the case before, as it was when Rogers hit the hill against his former team a few weeks ago. But things aren't really like they were before. 

If Baltimore had found a way to put some runs on the board, things could've felt much different. But the dugout, Mansolino says, was still engaged. 

"Offense always supplies energy in a dugout," the interim skipper said. "It’s never anything but offense. It always is. So, you know, to get two or three hits or whatever it was and see the guys into it and see the reaction on Adley’s double and feel the reaction on the ball that T.O. hit right there in the ninth that didn’t quite get to where we wanted it to go, but they were in it."

Rogers has become a great example of a trade deadline success, even with some extra time to get there. The Orioles are hoping that this deadline, though it took a different approach, will have a similar positive outcome. 

Baltimore has two more chances to come away victorious in Wrigley.

Perhaps tomorrow will feel a bit more normal.