The Orioles Are Failing Collectively And Individually At The Plate

Baseball czar Mike Elias poured assets into his lineup, but how many Orioles are meeting expectations?Jason La Canfora|

Jun 28, 2025; Baltimore, Maryland, USA; Baltimore Orioles shortstop Gunnar Henderson (2) reacts after striking out against the Tampa Bay Rays during the eighth inning at Oriole Park at Camden Yards. Mandatory Credit: Rafael Suanes-Imagn Images | IMAGN IMAGES via Reuters Connect

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One of the many failures of the Mike Elias era is the inability to construct a roster able to succeed as a collective, while at the same time having a player development strata that manages to also undermine every individual who comes their way.

No one gets better around here and the more the sample size expands, and the more time they spend around Elias’s major-league staff (including the current woefully inept version or any of the three he’s had the ridiculous privilege of staffing) the more flawed they become. It’s one of the many reasons why he should have been fired years ago.

It’s well established he can’t develop an impact pitcher going on a decade and how no clue how to identify, evaluate or cultivate arms. He overpays in free agency, madly, and misses on the best values the market has to offer every single year. He was supposed to be building a hitting factory to overcome all of that, just focusing on experienced college bats at the top of the draft, but he can’t it right there either.

They've scoring 64 times in their last 17 games (3.76 runs/game) while their season spirals away.

We can assess it simply (and please play along with me; it’s yet another Orioles off day, what else are you going to do?). Based on where the player was drafted or what he’s being paid or what he’s displayed in the past or what he role was supposed to be, how many of the Orioles hitters are exceeding expectations? How many are meeting them? How many are falling well short?

It’s yet another exercise that illuminates the overarching ineptitude of this baseball operations regime. We’re going to exclude Jackson Holliday and Dylan Beavers for lack of playing time, and we’re going to rank them within each subcategory.

Overachievers

1) Samuel Basallo – He and Pete Alonso are the best run producers since the start of May, he has one of the more mature two-out approaches on the roster and, in a clubhouse that is so, so soft, he powered through his puppet skipper’s silly attempts to shame him about his toughness to become a middle-of-the-lineup mainstay at just 21.

2) Blaze Alexander – Since April 28th he has been Ted Williams with slightly less power. I have some concern that playing everyday and moving around so much in the field will hasten the inevitable regression, but credit this staff for helping his timing mechanism to get right.

Achievers

1) Pete Alonso – After a slow start he’s who he was hired to be. Leads the team in pretty much every offensive category and been great at first base. But the lineup still stinks and O’s brass and half-wit lazy buffoons in the media sold you he was going to fix their frat boy clubhouse. Eh, notsomuch.

2) Coby Mayo – His overall numbers are bad and he’s never going to play third base, but with Tyler O’Neill being one of the worst players on a major league roster, and Mayo crushing lefties among the best in MLB, that’s enough given how bad this team is. The fact he isn’t in Norfolk is a win by Orioles player development standards.

3) Taylor Ward – This might be a stretch, but they badly needed a leadoff guy with Gunnar Henderson caught in a season-long vortex of frustration, and he proved that and was leading the league in walks for a while and is getting on base 38% of the time. Of course they got him for pop and there’s been none of that and he’s serviceable at best in left.

4) Leody Taveras – With the offense inept much of the season, he was getting on base and scoring runs on his own and playing CF all the time because they didn’t trust anyone else. The sample size got overexposed and he’s hit the wall, but he wasn’t supposed to crack Elias’s allegedly quality roster in the first place.

Underachievers

1) Gunnar Henderson – Totally lost season across the board. On the bright side his complete and utter collapse isn’t two-plus years like Adley Rutschman’s devolution to AAAA hitter since June 21, 2024.

2) Rutschman – You gotta suit and play bro. His stans in the media will pretend like a nice three weeks to start the season mean something. He’s not in the top 20 in innings caught and His OPS is below .700 since May 1. Trade him already. Basallo is so much better. and younger and signed

3) O’Neill – One of the worst hitters in MLB, but was brought in to mash lefties and has been one of the worst in the majors at that since being signed for a mind-numbing $19M/year. Cannot move in OF or on bases. Injury always lurking.

4) Colton Cowser – A top five pick who is supposed to an impact bat – whose only quality as a hitter is power – was stuck behind Taveras in CF much of the season. We are coming up on 90 games and he has 8 homers and 27 RBIs. Prone to long slumps, and playing better now in the field and striking out less.

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Published 4 minutes ago

JASON LA CANFORA

Jason La Canfora has covered the NFL and MLB for decades and currently covers the Ravens and Orioles for On SI.

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Messika’s New One-of-a-Kind Necklace Is Set With a 20.46-Carat Blue Diamond From Botswana

By Paige Reddinger

Paige Reddinger

Deputy Editor, Watch & Jewelry Editor

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Messika

Today, Messika unveils a spectacular new high jewelry creation with a massive blue diamond as its centerpiece. The jaw-dropping stone is the largest and rarest blue diamond ever to be uncovered in Botswana. It was discovered as a 41.11-carat rough in 2019 when it emerged from the Orapa mine. After cutting and polishing it revealed a Fancy Deep Blue VVS2 Type IIb 20.46-carat stone.

The government of Botswana, which still owns the gem, tapped Valérie Messika, founder of her namesake company, to design a jewelry piece to highlight the stone. The result? A pendant necklace set with more that 500 diamonds on the collar and surrouning the oval-cut Okavango Blue Diamond. “I tried to let the diamond speak by itself,” Messika told Robb Report. “I had so much respect of the beauty of the stones that I wanted it to be the central part…it reminds me something vintage with this medallion surrounded by white diamonds. I want the blue to pop, the more it’s surrounded by white, the blue is stronger.”

It’s no wonder the jeweler was Botwana’s top choice. Messika founded her eponymous company in 2005, drawing on the expertise of her father, André Messika—a renowned diamond dealer whose family has been in the diamond trade for generations and who has been known to supply some of the world’s best stones to the top houses. Following in her family’s footsteps, Valérie Messika has since made a name for herself on the Place Vendôme, Paris’ premiere destination for the best jewelry in the world. Her designs have catapulted her family’s name into the spotlight with popular designs like the Move collection, known for floating mobile diamonds in oval diamond-accented shapes. Collaborations with Kate Moss and Gigi Hadid further solidified the house the new must-have jewelry amongst younger, hipper clientele.

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The jewelry piece and the stone, however, are not for sale. “This project is, for me, a tribute to natural diamonds,” she says. “It’s one of a kind and it’s a time in my career that I can work with such an amazing rare stone, so for me it’s, of course, a big honor to be the first, and for the moment, the only one to create a jewelry piece with the stone.” When asked why she would devote so much of her resources and time—it took a year to produce—to design a necklace never to be sold she says the thought never occurred to her. “Everybody focused on this stone for such a long time—all the craftsmanship, all the design people—but for me, I saw it also like a kind of tribute also to my expertise as a diamond jeweler.”

It’s not the first time she’s created a masterpiece around a rare African stone. Four years ago, she designed a jewelry piece around a cushion-shaped D-flawless 33-carat diamond from the Lucara mine in north-central Botswana. “I started the relationship with Botswana to promote the beauty of their land, creating natural diamonds, so for me it’s to be continued our relationship, and it’s important to put in light the magic of natural diamonds.” She adds that the piece is meant to celebrate the extraordinary creations from the earth, because as she puts it, “lab-born diamond are kind of like a photocopy from a laboratory.”

What is unprecedented is the diamond itself. “It’s the first time in my whole life [to see a diamond like this], and I’m not sure I will see a second…it’s very, very, very rare,” Messika emphasizes. “I think only 0.01% of the world’s diamonds can be blue.”

For now, the necklace remains a singular creation rather than an acquisition. In a luxury world obsessed with the next big thing, the Okavango Blue is a reminder that some treasures simply cannot be replicated—or bought.

Authors

Paige Reddinger

Deputy Editor, Watch & Jewelry Editor

As Robb Report's deputy editor and watch editor, Reddinger is immersed in all things horological. She has visited the top manufacturers in Switzerland and Germany, attended high-profile auctions and…
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Trump gets ‘fantastic’ advice from AI-powered Teddy Roosevelt at former president’s North Dakota library

Trump gets 'fantastic' advice from AI-powered Teddy Roosevelt at former president’s North Dakota library

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Trump gets ‘fantastic’ advice from AI-powered Teddy Roosevelt at former president’s North Dakota library

By Victor Nava Published July 1, 2026, 5:33 p.m. ET

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President Trump on Wednesday talked with an AI-powered hologram of former President Theodore Roosevelt.

“Do you consider the Panama Canal your greatest achievement?” Trump asked the ghostly image at the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library in North Dakota.

“The canal stands as one of my proudest battles, no question. But greatness is a strange thing,” the AI Teddy.

President Trump asks AI President Roosevelt…“Do you consider the Panama Canal your greatest achievement?” pic.twitter.com/zvfDCL2sKS
— Margo Martin (@MargoMartin47) July 1, 2026

“I measure my greatest work by the lives improved, parks set aside, food and drugs made safe, the square deal given to all, not just to a few …Still, when I stood in the mud, watching those steam shovels, knowing ships would pass through, changing the world’s map forever, I felt I’d left a mark that would last,” the long-dead former president added.

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“Everyday a president faces storms people never see. Keep your nerve and remember the nation comes first and you get through it. I know you know that feeling yourself,” the hologram said.