Peter Schmuck: If Orioles can’t win now, they need to show they can win later

I know, Yogi. It ain’t over until it’s over, but it sure looks like it’s over and that means the Orioles have an even more important task ahead of them than trying to pull off a miraculous run for the final wild-card spot.

They need to prove over the final two-plus months of the season that they really are a better team than the one that showed up at George Steinbrenner Field on Friday night and took a double-digit beating from the Tampa Bay Rays.

It’s one thing to get beat by a pretty good team. It’s quite another to lose three straight games by a combined score of 28-2. I wish it weren’t so, but it’s now fair to wonder if the core of the team really is as promising as we all have assumed since the start of the Adley Rutschman/Gunnar Henderson era.

Gunnar’s doing OK, I guess, and young Jackson Holliday is proving to be the real thing – though still in development, of course – but the jury is still out on Coby Mayo and even Colton Cowser, who was the only Oriole to show up at the plate on Friday night.

It’s hard to even speculate on the future of the pitching staff. The pending return of potential ace Kyle Bradish is reason for hope, but the latest reports on the other potential ace, Grayson Rodriguez, don’t sound promising. I thought he was headed for Tommy John surgery at the end of spring training and now I can’t imagine how he’s going to avoid it.

The Orioles might be able to re-sign Zach Eflin, but they figure to bank heavily on Bradish and the rejuvenated arm of Trevor Rogers at the top of the rotation. Dean Kremer seems to have established himself as a solid No. 3 and is under club  control for two more years, but the club may again be scrambling to fill the final spots even if it avoids another rash of pitching injuries like the ones that have ravaged the staff over the past year and a half.

Executive VP/general manager Mike Elias doesn’t really have the luxury of simply offloading the uncontrolled veterans at the trade deadline and resetting the time clock for 2027, but he likely will make sure to get what he can for anyone who doesn’t figure to come back. Unfortunately, even his ability to do that is open to question.

Eflin is still on the injured list and does not have time to prove he’s sound to any contender that might be willing to give up real prospects for him. Cedric Mullins is in another one of his cold periods that isn’t exactly maximizing his trade value.

If Elias wants to acquire a pitcher who is under reserve for several seasons as he did to acquire Rogers last year at this time, he’s probably going to have to give up some youth, and the club’s stable of good young prospects isn’t as stocked as it used to be.

The Rogers deal, by the way, looks better now than it did at the end of last season, but it still stings to watch from afar as Kyle Stowers seems to be morphing into a superstar in Miami.

The coming offseason will be crucial to turning the club back into a contender in 2026, but it still isn’t clear how much ownership is willing to spend to accomplish that, especially after getting so little from Tyler O’Neill after giving him a three-year $49.5 million deal last winter.

Someone once said that tomorrow is promised to no one, which is what Howard Cosell used to call “a piercing look into the obvious.” It is certainly not promised to the Orioles, who need to prove that the young nucleus of the team is as good as advertised and can stay on the field enough for the team to finish the season on an upswing.