“It’s not an easy thing to control, baseball games. That’s why it’s such a long season, because one or two games, it’s not easy to control what happens. But we’re going to pretend — at least pretend — that we can control all this.”

That was general manager Mike Elias in the aftermath of last year‘s Orioles playoff exit, an abrupt end to a season that deteriorated for a variety of reasons through July and August and September.

Nearly a quarter of the way into the ensuing season, one in which pretty much everything that went wrong last year is recurring in some form or fashion, the things that are historically hardest to control are the aspects of the Orioles’ miserable start that have hurt the most.

The injuries are chief among them. Unfortunately for the Orioles, the pending returns on the horizon are a meek balm for what are increasingly feeling like mortals wounds to this season.

At least pretend that all those things the Orioles couldn’t control — the injuries, namely — didn’t cascade in March and April and early May the way they did.

Would the efforts to shore up the bench and bullpen and starting rotation feel different? Would the pressure to come through with runners on be less crippling for the handful of projected regulars in the lineup every day if the group of hitters were as deep and flexible as it was meant to be?

Would Charlie Morton and Cade Povich still be in the rotation if the Orioles had other cards to play?

Remember that the Orioles’ season started to teeter last July as the weight of their pitching injuries — season-ending elbow surgery for Kyle Bradish, Tyler Wells and John Means — meant Elias needed to reinforce the staff at the trade deadline. They continued to founder in August and September as injuries made their lineup top-heavy and put pressure on those who remained to produce, which meant they often didn’t with runners in scoring position.

It felt, somewhat wistfully in retrospect, that the Orioles’ offseason was an exercise in pretending all the bad things that happened to the 2024 team wouldn’t again. My perspective was that they were attempting to reinforce the floor, but there are only so many support beams you can go without for so long before things start to sag and eventually collapse.

Elias used a similar phrase of “behaving as though it is under our control” when talking about the club’s imbalanced offence, referencing the idea that situational hitting and success with runners in scoring position is often something that has wide variance from year to year.

That notion is most useful when coming off a bad season, because it suggests things can flip quickly. It turns out they can also not, especially when the circumstances don’t.

Manager Brandon Hyde has frequently said that last year’s struggles offensively came down to, in his mind, a handful of players putting too much pressure on themselves. With the team missing key producers in the second half, the burden fell on fewer shoulders and many of those players didn’t react well.

That’s not just a recent Orioles thing; when the club was rebuilding, it felt like it had only three or four good hitters at a time. Those players felt similarly and knew, if they came up in run-scoring situations, it was basically on them to come through, or it would be another inning or two before the team maybe had another chance to score.

It feels like that’s what’s happening now, and the team’s overall inability to produce in these situations seems to be snowballing. Let’s say, on any given night, three to five regulars are missing: Jordan Westburg, Colton Cowser and Tyler O’Neill most nights and Ramón Urías and Gary Sánchez versus lefties. Their replacements are broadly miscast as everyday players, and the pressure to compensate for that seems to be wearing on everyone not named Ryan O’Hearn (who it should be noted did deal with that pressure poorly last year and has improved).

Now, could all of this have been controlled? In hindsight, sure. The Orioles have to be smarting from not having the hitting depth they did this time last year with Kyle Stowers and Connor Norby in Miami, but it’s otherwise nearly impossible to accumulate much better depth than they did because, realistically, anyone good enough to play every day somewhere was not going to sign to be the small part of a platoon in Baltimore.

I suppose they could have packaged a bunch of hitters for better starting pitching, though if the current circumstances repeated themselves the offense would be in even worse shape, albeit with a better starter taking the ball every fifth game. They also could have picked a different pitcher to sign than Morton.

They also could have had any of Zach Eflin, Grayson Rodriguez, Albert Suárez, Trevor Rogers, Chayce McDermott and now Brandon Young not get hurt this calendar year so they had a Plan B if Morton pitched like this.

Elias is taking a lot of responsibility for the team’s issues in recent weeks, but this mess has plenty of masters and some are just the invisible hands of the baseball gods. The result of all the injuries is a team that is going to start welcoming back reinforcements at a time when it somehow feels too late.

One by one, the activations from the injured list will begin this weekend. First, Eflin and O’Neill, then soon Westburg and Urías and Andrew Kittredge. That will lead to Cowser and eventually Rodriguez rejoining the cause.

That team might not propel the Orioles back into the playoff mix. This is a massive deficit they are in. But it will be more like what it was supposed to be, and all that will be in front of them each night is a baseball game — one they will have a far better chance of winning than it seems they have had recently.

That, at least, will be something they can control.