2 Orioles have played themselves off the trade block, but for different reasons

The Baltimore Orioles have spent the last week alternating wins and losses and continuing to hang just on the outside of the playoff picture, looking in. As the trade deadline approaches, they appear trapped in a sort of standings purgatory. Close enough to the playoffs to make it hard to justify selling, stuck behind enough other teams that it makes it hard to consider buying. One night they look like contenders worthy of receiving reinforcements; the next night they look like the worst team in the league. That being the case, it has been hard to pin down exactly what the Orioles' trade-deadline plans are.

In all likelihood, even the people in the Orioles front office don't know what they are going to do. As the trade deadline approaches, they will be in a state of constant evaluation, and what the team does and how individual players perform could change the Orioles' plan drastically from game to game. Recently, two Orioles who would have been interested trade candidates appear to have played their way off the trade block: Jackson Holliday and Dean Kremer. Each of these players has done this in different ways: Holliday has made himself valuable to the Orioles by playing the best baseball of his career, and Kremer has made himself untradable with three straight stinkers coming out of the All-Star break.

Jackson Holliday is having the best month of his Orioles career

To many people, Jackson Holliday is the unfortunate poster boy for a failed Orioles rebuild. The hype that surrounded him and the team when he came up was enormous, and neither he nor the Orioles have lived up to the high expectations fans had when Holliday debuted in 2024. Holliday recently reached the milestone of 1,000 plate appearances in the big leagues, which gave people plenty of opportunity to examine just how disappointing his career had been after a pretty large sample size.  The sentiment around him from the fanbase was almost unanimously "this guy has been given a lot of opportunity, it's time to move on".

It's possible that the Orioles front office felt the same. Just yesterday, Jeff Passan reported that the Orioles have, in fact, discussed trading Holliday with other teams. However, Holliday is currently on a hot streak that could end up resulting in one of the fastest image rehabilitations ever seen.

Since the start of July, Holliday is slashing .353/.493/.382 with 15 walks and just 10 strikeouts in that span. A near .500 OBP for an entire month is crazy. He's only getting hotter as the month goes on; over his last seven games, he's slashing .500/.552/.583, and in the two most recent games against the Tigers, he's gone 6-for-8 at the plate.

Over the last month, he's looked like the Jackson Holliday that the Orioles were expecting when he debuted as the number one prospect in baseball. His plate discipline has been elite; he's showing off his impressive hit tool that had previously gone missing, and he's been a much more confident hitter in the box.

Obviously, Holliday is not going to have a .500 career OBP going forward, so there will be some regression coming, but this is more than just a lucky hot streak; there has clearly been an adjustment in his approach. His swing is much flatter; he has clearly decided to trade some extra base hits and homers in exchange for not swinging and missing and striking out so much, and it's really working for him.

Before this stretch, it's possible that Holliday might have been more valuable to other teams as a reclamation project than he was to the Orioles as a core piece. A trade where the Orioles find a team that still valued Holliday enough to give something up for him felt very possible. Now that Holliday has shown this, he suddenly seems much more valuable to the Orioles than to any other team in the league.

Any team offering to trade for Holliday is going to want to pay a price that reflects his first 1,000 plate appearances of sub .700 OPS production at the plate. The Orioles are going to want a price that reflects that he's a 22-year-old former top prospect who just had the best month of his career. That being the case, it feels impossible that any sort of deal could get done.

Dean Kremer is making it hard for the Orioles to keep putting him on the mound

As for Kremer, the situation is much simpler. For years, Kremer has been a metronome of production on the mound. From 2023-2025, his ERA was between 4.10 and 4.20 every single year. That kind of pitcher doesn't usually make a ton of headlines but has value. Still, the Orioles tried to upgrade from Kremer in the offseason, bringing in Baz, Bassitt, and Elfin, forcing him to start the season in Triple-A.

Injuries quickly brought Kremer back to the big leagues, but the emergence of Brandon Young quickly made Kremer the clear fifth starter in the rotation. With numerous contenders looking for starting pitching just to help them get through the season and the Orioles already appearing to be interested in moving on from Kremer, it seemed like he could have been an interesting trade target for teams that just need some arms and would prefer something more than a pure rental. The Cubs and Phillies, especially, felt like legitimate possible landing spots as playoff teams in need of an innings eater.

Unfortunately, over Kremer's last three starts, he's been dreadful, giving up 16 runs in just 14 total innings. His command has been poor, his K/BB ratio is bad, and he gives up bunches of homers. That's a bad combination.

Needless to say, any team that was thinking about trading for Kremer before the stretch has likely lightened their offer substantially, to the point where the Orioles would probably rather keep him around than sell low.

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