There are 43 games left on the Orioles’ schedule, but in many ways, the team’s season is over. Wednesday night’s loss to the Tampa Bay Rays was not only the Orioles’ 14th in a row, making them the first team since 1935 with two such losing streaks in the same season, but also their 81st of the year, meaning one more will guarantee their fifth straight losing season. They almost certainly will enter September mathematically incapable of making the playoffs.
But even if the Orioles as a collective have a few dozen meaningless games left, those contests will mean quite a bit to the Orioles as individuals.