The thing that hung over the Orioles organization more than anything else in the first half of last season was uncertainty. Once the team started out as awfully as they did, a series of trades before the deadlines were inevitable. Still unknown were all of the specifics: Who would be traded? When would the trades go down? What would the Orioles be able to get in return? And looming even bigger over all of these, who was going to be in charge of the team in the future?
That Manny Machado was going to be traded was always obvious even in the middle of that uncertainty.