The hardest part of admitting the cold truth of the Baltimore Orioles’ season is watching the fleeting moments of glory like the sixth inning on Tuesday night.

On back-to-back at-bats, Ryan O’Hearn and Ramón Laureano cracked two-run hits, completing a demolition of Mets starter Clay Holmes and bringing a Camden Yards crowd — which has had precious little to celebrate — to a full-throated roar.

It was a flicker of hope, the kind Baltimore fans have not enjoyed much of in 2025. But by the end of another gutting 7-6 loss in 10 innings, the fact is as clear as ever: This season is as good as over.

There are undoubtedly some starry-eyed holdouts who might be talking themselves into suspending belief in what the results have so plainly spelled out. They’re thinking, “If the Orioles can just get healthy,” or “If they can just sweep a division opponent.” After going 16-11 in June, the team keeps giving enough crumbs to nourish a bit of belief.

But you might as well save for retirement by hoarding lottery tickets. It’s not happening.

Let go of what you think this team can be or could be if everything came together. Baltimore crossed the threshold of being defined by its potential. It is now defined by its record.

There have only been two teams that have ever reached the playoffs after starting the season 40-50 or worse, and it hasn’t happened in more than 40 years (they are the ‘73 Mets and the ‘84 Royals). It’s not so much the 7.5-game margin that is keeping the O’s out of the last wild-card spot that concerns me — it’s the six teams ahead of them in the pecking order. The Orioles are the only team in baseball not to have a walk-off win, a stat underscored by Tuesday night’s collapse after the epic emotional highs of the sixth-inning rally.

It’s not the logic that’s the hard part. It’s the acceptance.

Rebuilding was painful, and though the rebuild hasn’t failed, it has definitely faltered this season, requiring a temporary reset starting at this trade deadline. Instead of loading up, the Orioles will be saying goodbye to several players who have actually made the games a little bit enjoyable.

That starts with Ryan O’Hearn, a player development success story after he was claimed from the Kansas City scrap heap. He has been remarkably steady at the plate even as the season burned down around him. He is a beloved player in the clubhouse, and has become a fan favorite in Baltimore while developing into an All-Star.

When interim manager Tony Mansolino claimed Tuesday that several players mentioned in trade rumors are motivated to play well because they want to stay here, I immediately thought of O’Hearn, who owes his unlikely career resurgence to the Orioles. There is a reasonable case that not only should the O’s hold onto O’Hearn — they should extend him.

But O’Hearn, on the verge of 32, is one of the best available left-handed bats in the trade market. If the Orioles can snag a player or two who can help them in 2026, that’s a deal the front office has to make in a heartbeat.

Same for Laureano, whose cannon arm and powerful bat have surpassed modest expectations. Same for Gregory Soto and Seranthony Domínguez, who have been valuable pieces for the bullpen, especially in light of Yennier Cano’s regression. I’m not sure fans are pining to keep Charlie Morton given his disastrous start to the year, but it’s probably going to feel like a swindle that another team might take him now that he has corrected his course.

Let go. It’s the only way to move forward.

Cedric Mullins is a somewhat odd case, given that he’s loved here but generally underperforming. He may not fetch a trade return that feels worth what Baltimore fans have invested in him over the years. But as a 30-year-old centerfielder who is on an expiring contract, it really takes an active imagination to envision how Mullins contributes to a run at the 2026 playoffs, which is now what the Orioles have to be shooting for.

For as much blame as general manager Mike Elias deserves for this season’s extremely premature crash-and-burn, he and his staff have been remarkably good at picking the moments to say goodbye to veterans with a sentimental tug. Trey Mancini, Jorge Lopez, Austin Hays and Anthony Santander haven’t replicated the value they had as Orioles in other spots.

As disconcerting as it may be to fans to watch Baltimore have to sell off pieces again in a season when they expected to be buyers, this is the position Elias has actually thrived in, which should offer a bit of a silver lining to this overall bleak campaign.

The end of 2025 needs to be dedicated to the start of 2026. The rest of this season, for all intents and purposes, is the precursor to spring training — getting the Orioles healthy and back to competing. The results don’t matter as much as recapturing the spirit of the 2023 and early 2024 teams: contesting, fighting and showing grit.

That has happened somewhat in the last two months (the Orioles have improved to 12-10 in one-run games, for what it’s worth), and the difficult part of the deadline will be grappling with trading away some of the players who have made that happen. But you have to give up useful players to get some promising pieces back — a truth that was easier to accept when the Orioles knew they were weathering a rebuild, but harder now in a year when they were supposed to be rebuilt.

As difficult as it may be to swallow, the hope for this season is already extinguished.

Maybe next year. From here on out, it’s the only year that matters.