Orioles News: Adley Rutschman is an All-Star, Ryan Helsley to the IL, and another winning streak snapped at 3 games

It was a mostly good Fourth of July weekend for the Baltimore Orioles as they won their series against the Cincinnati Reds. On Saturday, during game two of the series, it was revealed that Adley Rutschman will be the Orioles' lone representative in this year's All-Star Game in Philadelphia.

This will be Rutschman's third All-Star selection. He's only been left out of the Mid-Summer Classic twice in his five-year career: his rookie season and last year. If he hadn't been injured at the start of the 2022/ if the Orioles had called him up sooner, he could very well have been an All-Star in his rookie year, which, by fWAR, is still his best season.

Rutschman had already quieted many of the concerns that had grown around him during the 2025 season with his play and didn't need the official All-Star designation to do so. However, returning to the All-Star Game a year after many people gave up on him puts a nice bookend on the "what's wrong with Adley Rutschman" discourse that had been floating around while he dealt with multiple oblique injuries. Players don't like to use injuries as an excuse, and fans don't love hearing injuries as an excuse, but injuries can make a player look completely different. Ask Cal Raleigh if trying to play through an oblique injury as a switch-hitting catcher is fun.

The Orioles began the season with people talking about them having one of the best lineups in baseball, so having just one All-Star disappointing. Add it to the list of disappointing parts of the Orioles' season.

The Orioles bullpen will miss Ryan Helsley

Ryan Helsley officially went on the IL before the start of the Orioles series against the Reds. This is Helsley's second trip to the IL this year; both have been due to elbow discomfort/inflammation. The Orioles, as usual, aren't especially forthcoming about injuries, but the quotes that Craig Albernaz offered about Helsley "looking at his options" and "getting opinions" make it easy to jump to the conclusion that some sort of season-ending surgery is likely.

If Helsley is out for the rest of the season, that's a big deal for the Orioles. For one, their bullpen is not built to survive without him. The first time Helsley hit the IL, the Orioles' bullpen went from a top-5 unit to one of the worst in the league almost overnight. Secondly, with Helsley out, that's one fewer trade chip the Orioles have to deal if they ended up selling at the upcoming deadline. Finally, if Helsley has serious surgery, he'll very likely pick up his player option for next year, and the Orioles will be on the hook for $14 million for a pitcher that might not pitch for them all season. That's the deal they negotiated; they knew the risks when they offered it, and it's Helsley's right to pick up that option, but that doesn't make it easy to stomach.

The Orioles are an inconsistent team

This season, there are only two teams that have not won four games in a row: the Baltimore Orioles and the San Francisco Giants. That is not the company the Orioles want to be keeping.

Baseball has a long season, and every team loses over a third of their games. If a team won two out of every three games in every series they played, they'd be one of the greatest teams of all time. So it is technically possible for a team to have a really good season and never win four games in a row.

The problem with the fact that the Orioles haven't won four games in a row this season isn't becuase winning four games in a row is some magical accomplishment that would vault them back into contention. The problem is that what is stopping them from winning four games in a row is the same thing that is stopping them from making up ground in the Wild Card race. The Orioles are not a consistent baseball team.

If the Orioles want to have any shot at getting back into the Wild Card race, they are going to have to have a couple of 10-game spans where they go 7-3 or 8-2. Whether or not there is a winning streak in there doesn't really matter, but they need a prolonged stretch of winning a lot more than they lose to turn this season around. As constructed, that just feels impossible.

Every turn through the rotation, 1-2 of the Orioles starters are going to blow up; the offense will show up big one day and then no-show the next, and the bullpen makes it nearly impossible to win close games late. Not to mention the fact that the Orioles manager loves to leave tired and struggling pitchers on the mound and bad defenders in the field in high-leverage spots.

This Orioles team was built with the goal of winning just a few more games than they lost and sneaking into the playoffs. Now that they've gotten to the point where, in order to make the playoffs, they'd have to win a lot more than they lose, it just seems like they don't have the facilities for that.

Add us as a preferred source on Google

Follow