Interim manager Tony Mansolino is going to get more than a weekend to try to turn the Orioles around. He’s in that role, though, because the Orioles spent the first quarter of the season losing and putting any hopes of contending this year in serious jeopardy.

Should the team continue on that path, the rest of this year will be a lot like what preceded it: completely counter to expectations. A lot might happen that felt unfathomable, or at least wouldn’t have made sense, in the context of a good team playing winning baseball and trying to get to October.

From the trade deadline to playing time decisions and the balance between restoring fan confidence and keeping the stadium alive, here are the changes that could follow the big one that occurred Saturday.

The trade deadline gets interesting

When genral manager Mike Elias dealt Trey Mancini and Jorge López ahead of the 2022 trade deadline, he did so because it was “not a probability” that the Orioles would make the playoffs that year. At the time, their FanGraphs playoff odds were hovering in the 2-4% range for the week leading up to the deadline, despite the team playing well-above .500 baseball following Adley Rutschman’s May promotion.

Well, that’s where this team’s playoff odds are now. Nearly three-quarters of the season is left, but there’s not exactly an up arrow next to this team right now. Things are different, but the temptation to move some or all of the team’s pending free agents will be immense. The list is as follows: Zach Eflin, Cedric Mullins, Ryan O’Hearn, Tomoyuki Sugano, Seranthony Domínguez and Gregory Soto. Andrew Kittredge, Jorge Mateo and Ramón Laureano have club options for 2026.

The Orioles will need to field a team, so not all can go, not with the relative dearth of high-minors alternatives at the moment. But you have to imagine it’ll be a much different deadline than anyone envisioned a few months ago.

Playing time shifts to younger options

One of the biggest challenges since the Orioles started winning consistently has been integrating young players into the fold with any regularity. When you want to win every night, the leash is shorter and the patience required for an adjustment is harder to come by. Only Rutschman and Gunnar Henderson in 2022 and Jordan Westburg in 2023 held on to everyday opportunities from the jump. Others, including Colton Cowser, Jackson Holliday, Heston Kjerstad and the traded-but-thriving Kyle Stowers, played sporadically, struggled or both at the beginning.

That pressure wanes on a team that’s not in contention. At what point do the Orioles just stick Coby Mayo at third base for a month straight rather than giving those reps to Emmanuel Rivera? Is the leash longer for pitchers Cade Povich, Chayce McDermott, Brandon Young and even Trevor Rogers, considering the focus is on the future?

Are there bullpen roles available for some of the team’s high-minors arms to see if they can get major league hitters out and test themselves here? Could Jud Fabian reasonably replicate Laureano’s role? Why not give Samuel Basallo and Dylan Beavers a taste of the majors in September?

If I heard Brandon Hyde say the Orioles were giving a lot of guys chances in the majors one time, I heard him say it 100 times. It might be Mansolino’s refrain before long.

Reimagining pitching roles for the second half

Getting better on the mound is pretty much the Orioles’ only chance of turning their season around, whoever the manager is. The promise of injury returns for Kyle Bradish, Tyler Wells and Grayson Rodriguez make that a possibility.

But, if the Orioles are looking to 2026 and beyond, they might take the opportunity to reimagine how those returns look in practice. They are going to need all three in order to be good next season, and they will need them to be platformed for a full season’s worth of innings — or at least close to it — come 2026.

So they can’t put the group on ice, but maybe they can think strategically about how they do that. Might they work in a six-man rotation to give them more rest between starts but allow them to pitch progressively deeper into games? Could they pitch in tandems early on to ease them back into a full workload? And, at the other end of games, could Felix Bautista’s usage look different when the stakes are so low?

None of this would serve the purpose of improving the 2025 Orioles. If that’s no longer a consideration, it might be interesting to see how they handle these pitchers with an eye toward 2026.

A return of fans dressed as seats

It wasn’t long ago that out-of-contention Orioles teams meant paltry attendance. Who could blame the fans for voting with their feet?

Just as quickly as the life returned to Camden Yards alongside winning baseball, it has the potential to disappear again this summer. That’s going to be fascinating to see, given how new owners and executives will now have to witness it on a nightly basis. What kind of fan apathy are they going to have the stomach for? And how will it impact potential lack of patience with the direction of the team?

The ballpark modernization efforts will continue, regardless of whether fans come to the stadium. But this is going to serve as a warning of sorts to the new ownership group that, as much as fan experience needs to improve at Camden Yards, it will be winning that brings the fans in in droves.