O's now have Ward, O'Neill, Beavers, Jackson & potentially Kjerstad as corner outfielders with no or virtually no CF experience.
Cowser as every day CF, with Taveras as AAA depth.

Don't want to be negative, but I doubt it helps the player to have higher expectations on him when he's still got a way to go in his development.

he will 100% run!

For 2026, I think we will have to spend real money on a starting pitcher, back end reliever and maybe a veteran outfielder and DH / 1st base type guy.

The truth is teams rarely trade away their top prospects, and especially not for 2 month rentals. But given the numbers we will be adding, we can be aggressive and take risky players with high upside, players currently injured & teams not highly ranked for whatever reason, that we can work on.

Given the number of draft picks, as well as the players already added via trade & in the minor league system, July 2025 could have been crucial for the 2028 Orioles.
Ok, not that exciting now, but could be in great shape in a couple of years.

I think back to what we got back for Mancini and Lopez in 2022 and we did reasonably well. So could get back a lot of useful players this week. Perhaps optimistic to think any would really help in 2026, but not beyond the realms of possibility.

I didn't expect Baker to be moved, but we got a crazy offer that would have been silly to turn down.
I'm sure they would do a similarly silly offer.

O's have club options on Laureano & Kittridge for 2026. There's def a 'sell high' logic on Laureano, who is having a career year. Kittridge has been solid, if unspectacular.
I think both are O's in 2026.

There’s a sell high scenario with Laureano (doubt we do it tho) but given how crucial SP is, we’re not trading away Rogers for anything

The main reason is people are stupid.

lot of volatility in baseball. Teams who should be good struggling, other teams having a never ending rebuild and even good teams will have a down year.
I've seen enough this season to know we should have a good chance to go again next year. Unfortunately too much damage done in the 1st 6 weeks.

My guess is we are going to add a number of High A and AA starting pitchers at the deadline (as sellers) and hopefully this develops into a lot of options. But it's still unlikely to be pitchers who teams would identify as their best guys. Dean Kremer / Cade Povich level.

in short we can't accumulate all this talent as there is not going to be room for them all to graduate at the same time so some of it becomes wasted potential. Teams also don't trade away their top guys who are major league ready. So we need to try other avenues.

So can we use our young hitters, who might 18 to 24 months away from the majors to acquire pitching that is 18 to 24 months away from the majors?
It seems minor league trades for highly rated players rarely happen, but surely it's something worth exploring.

Should we be looking to trade minor league hitting for minor league pitching?
Very few teams are ever going to trade away a top major league pitcher - other than for a 1 year deal.
One argument against drafting a pitcher is that they are 3+ years away from the majors.