The Orioles’ streak of 91 regular-season series without being swept defined their 2023 campaign before the club’s unprecedented year ended in “ironic” fashion, as center fielder Cedric Mullins put it, with a sweep in the American League Division Series.

That streak is technically still intact, but the next time Baltimore is in the playoffs, a new one will be the focus.

With their three-and-out in the ALDS against the Rangers, the Orioles have lost eight consecutive postseason games — the worst stretch in franchise history and the longest active streak in the sport. Only nine teams in MLB history have suffered a longer such streak.

“You never want to be on a streak,” Orioles fan Nathan Skidmore said before Game 3 of the ALDS. “You never want people to be able to pull that up on a graphic and be like, ‘Eight in a row.’

“Anytime you’re on a streak like that, I think you start to worry like, ‘Are we ever going to win again?’”

Entering the playoffs, the Minnesota Twins owned one of MLB’s most ignominious records. From 2004 to 2020, they lost 18 straight postseason games, but with their win over the Toronto Blue Jays in the wild-card round (which Minnesota swept), the Twins finally exorcised their playoff demons.

The active leaders then became the Tampa Bay Rays, who were swept by the Rangers in the wild-card round, and Blue Jays at seven consecutive playoff losses. That is, until the Orioles, the AL’s top seed by tallying 101 wins in the regular season, failed to record any in the 2023 playoffs.

“I’m glad they got the experience,” manager Brandon Hyde said after Tuesday’s loss at Globe Life Field. “I hate the outcome because these guys deserve all the credit in the world for the season they just had. I hope people can recognize that.”

Baltimore fans need no reminder, but the streak dates to the gut-wrenching 2014 AL Championship Series. Those Orioles won 96 games and an AL East title, sweeping the Detroit Tigers in the ALDS to enter the ALCS versus the Kansas City Royals as World Series favorites. Then, the Royals swept the Orioles by a difference of only six runs — a pair of two-run losses at Camden Yards and two one-run defeats in Kansas City.

Two years later, lest fans forget, Baltimore lost to the Blue Jays in the wild-card game, as the most recent playoff season before 2023 ended with Ubaldo Jiménez giving up a walk-off home run to Edwin Encarnación after Buck Showalter chose not to bring in All-Star closer Zack Britton in extra innings.

Those who were a part of the successful 2014 and 2016 seasons and the subsequent postseason collapses had virtually nothing to do with the 2023 playoff failure. The front office has been overhauled. A new manager is on the dugout’s top step. And virtually no players on either of those teams played for Baltimore in 2023 after the franchise’s painful rebuild bore fruit this year.

The constant throughout the eight playoff losses has been Baltimore fans — those who experienced the Royals small-ball the Orioles to elimination and then two years later screamed at their televisions as Britton sat in the bullpen. They watched each one with high hopes, only to be let down time after time — a now-playoff tradition that continued into 2023. This year, they cheered from Camden Yards’ stands during the one-run loss Saturday and the walk-fest Sunday, only to see one of the best teams in the Orioles’ 70-season history get swept out of the postseason on the road in Game 3.

“I’m hopeful that the team will learn something,” said Dan Bollinger, a lifelong Orioles fan who attended Game 2 in Baltimore and Game 3 in Arlington, Texas. “Going from over 100 losses to this year’s record is great. It’s been tough being an Orioles fan for the last few years, but I’m still hopeful.”

What makes the ALDS sweep harder to swallow is the missed opportunity it represents. A 101-win team should, in theory, be a World Series contender, but the Rangers, who won 11 fewer games than Baltimore, were more apt for the rigors of October baseball. A bevy of smart decisions by the Orioles’ front office over the past five years is what allowed them to be the AL’s top team, but its reluctance to make significant investments similar to those made by their opponents proved costly.

Whether executive vice president and general manager Mike Elias, who has yet to hand out a multiyear contract to a free agent since he was hired to shepherd the rebuild in November 2018, or, more importantly, Chairman and CEO John Angelos are willing to spend to bolster this roster and keep the Orioles’ young core intact remains a question. Large-market teams, in theory, can have a wider championship window given their financial advantages, but the club’s reluctance thus far to spend anywhere near those teams — the Orioles ranked 29th out of 30 teams in payroll entering the season, according to Cot’s Baseball Contracts — could make the squandering of 2023′s opportunity sting even more.

“What I worry about more than bringing in big free agents is, ‘Are they going to extend our guys?’ I like the guys on this team. I like Adley Rutschman. I like Gunnar Henderson,” said Skidmore, a 25-year-old Northern Virginia native who now lives in Fort Worth, Texas. “When it comes to the owner spending money, I almost don’t want them to spend on free agents so we can extend our guys.

“But John Angelos doesn’t fill me with confidence as someone that’s going to do what it takes to make sure the team is on top.”

With playoff expansion over the years, streaks such as the Orioles’ are becoming more common. Six of the nine teams in MLB history with longer streaks had them end after the wild-card era began in 1994. Currently, all five clubs in the AL East — considered the sport’s most daunting division — have playoff losing streaks of at least three games. The Orioles, Rays, Blue Jays, New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox have combined to lose 29 consecutive postseason games, seven of which occurred this postseason as all three AL East clubs to qualify were swept.

Yet, amid the sadness in the Orioles’ clubhouse Tuesday night was optimism for the future. Baltimore believes this is just the beginning, and it’s not hard to envision why. Henderson, Rutschman, Jordan Westburg, Colton Cowser and Heston Kjerstad are all 25 or younger. Kyle Bradish and Grayson Rodriguez blossomed into legitimate top-of-the-rotation starters in the second half. And the organization boasts the sport’s top-ranked farm system, according to Baseball America, with prospects Jackson Holliday, Coby Mayo and Chayce McDermott on the cusp of the big leagues.

“I think a lot of us are disappointed, are sad,” pitcher Tyler Wells said. “But I think, too, this is something that we’re gonna hold onto and carry that chip on our shoulder.”

Still, though, the next time the Orioles are in the postseason, the streak will follow the club — and the fan base — like a dark cloud. Austin Hays, one of the players who survived the 100-loss seasons of the rebuild, stated after Tuesday’s loss what his goal is in 2024 and beyond: to deliver a playoff win — and much more — to Baltimore fans.

“The most rewarding thing was just seeing our fans come back into that stadium and get to see that playoff atmosphere at home,” Hays said. “That’s what I want. That’s what I want to play for. I want to be in that environment.

“I want to play all 162 knowing we’re gonna get back to that next year and get back to that moving forward cause that was a hell of an experience.”

Baltimore Sun reporter Nathan Ruiz contributed to this article.

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It was only about a month into his big league tenure when Orioles rookie Jordan Westburg got a memorable piece of advice from 10-year veteran Aaron Hicks.

Westburg had just rocketed a pitch down the third base line in the ninth inning, with the Orioles trailing the Los Angeles Dodgers 10-3 on July 18. For a moment, after his feet crossed the bag at first, he contemplated sprinting for second. But he thought better of it, and stayed put.

With the Orioles so far behind, the play would prove virtually meaningless. The O’s lost by that same score just a few batters later. But the play meant something to Hicks.

“After the game, Aaron Hicks came up to me and he was like, ‘Hey, man, our style of baseball is aggressive here. I think you should have gone for it,’” Westburg said.

For an Orioles team packed with young big leaguers, those tidbits of guidance will perhaps become even more important — particularly when they come from the few current Orioles with postseason experience, like Hicks.

With the team set for its first postseason appearance since 2016 on Saturday against the Texas Rangers at Camden Yards, only six Orioles have any playoff experience. Hicks, who was released by the New York Yankees and picked up by the Orioles in May, has the most playoff appearances, with 30 games under his belt and a combined .216 batting average and .325 on-base percentage.

Backup catcher James McCann and second baseman Adam Frazier, both of whom were signed this past offseason, are the only other Orioles position players to have seen playoff action, with a combined eight games.

“I’m very grateful for guys like him and McCann and Frazier to show us the ropes as position players who have been there, done that,” said Westburg, who made his major league debut June 26.

In sports psychology, there are two schools of thought when it comes to the best way to get ready for a big game, said Dr. Mark Aoyagi, a psychology consultant to MLB and NFL teams.

The first school? Treat a playoff game like any other. Avoid stressing yourself out by thinking of how important it is.

“The bases are still 90 feet, the mound is still 60 feet, 6 inches,” Aoyagi said. “It’s all the same, and so you just approach it the same.”

But Aoyagi finds himself more persuaded by the second school.

”The other approach says: Basically, there’s no way to prepare for the big game. And so rather than trying to have everything be the same, you just train for any eventuality,” Aoyagi said. “You could feel fine, but you could also feel chaotic. Or you could feel tired or you could be sick.

“The idea is to train in such a way that regardless of how you end up feeling, thinking, how your body is on that particular day, you’re still going to be able to perform to the best of your capabilities,” said Aoyagi, who is also a professor and co-director of sport and performance psychology at the University of Denver.

Stephany Coakley, a certified mental performance consultant who has worked with professional and Olympic-level athletes, recommends athletes prepare a kind of ritual to ground themselves in the present, rather than worrying about the outcome of a game.

“It’s imperative that they use whatever techniques that they have to come back to the present moment, whether it’s like tapping into their breath, taking a deep breath or doing their reset: taking their hat off or flipping their glove,” said Coakley, who also serves as senior associate athletic director for mental health performance and wellness at Temple University.

There is also another noteworthy remedy to stress in sports, said Dr. Brad Hatfield, a professor of kinesiology at the University of Maryland, who has focused his research on sports psychology.

Laughter.

Hatfield said he recalls speaking with a group of high school baseball coaches, and one of their most common questions was what to say to a young pitcher struggling on the mound.

“And I told them to keep it very simple — and even to tell a joke,” Hatfield said.

Across the Orioles clubhouse, everyone has their own strategy for staying cool. For outfielder Anthony Santander, it’s taking a moment to pray before games. For reliever Jacob Webb, another recent addition to the roster with a few games of playoff experience, it’s focusing on his breathing during stressful situations.

For 25-year-old rookie reliever DL Hall, it comes in the form of a mantra, of sorts.

”It’s all about — I always say — not running away from the storm. Everything is a storm — all the extra, outside noise,” Hall said. “Instead of trying to run from it, you just kind of embrace the storm. It’s going to come either way.”

With an average age of 27.9 years, according to ESPN, the Orioles’ current roster sits close to the middle of the MLB pack.

But only one team remaining in the playoffs is younger: the Philadelphia Phillies.

The Rangers are the second oldest, with an average age of 30. The Dodgers are first with an average age of 30.5.

Several of the Orioles’ best players are in their early 20s and set to make their postseason debuts.

That includes 22-year-old infielder Gunnar Henderson, a leading candidate for the American League Rookie of the Year, who is also the only player on the roster born in the 2000s.

It also includes 23-year-old pitcher Grayson Rodriguez, who cruised to a 1.80 ERA in his final six starts of the season, following a brief demotion to the minor leagues after beginning the year with an ERA above 7.00.

Some young Orioles, like Henderson and Rodriguez, bypassed college ball to sign with the team, but others gained postseason experience there, including 25-year-old star catcher Adley Rutschman.

In the 2018 College World Series — as a sophomore — Rutschman helped lead the Oregon State Beavers to the championship, setting a record for the most hits in the series with 17.

To win the championship that year, the Beavers defeated the University of Arkansas, where Orioles rookie Heston Kjerstad, now 24, played outfield. Kjerstad was named to the All-Tournament Team as a freshman.

But postseason games in the majors are different.

And veteran Kyle Gibson, one of three Orioles pitchers with a postseason resume, said the conversations about how to prepare for key moments have begun already.

Before the Orioles played the Tampa Bay Rays, their closest division rival, at Camden Yards in mid-September, Gibson reminded his teammates not to overemphasize the moment.

”We sat down, and I said: ‘Listen, everybody is going to come in here and make this to be the biggest series of the year,’” Gibson said. “The biggest series for us is going to be the first game in the playoffs that we play.”

Yet, when those games finally arrive, the message might change.

”As these young guys get closer to it, and get in the moment, I know the other veteran players are just going to be telling them: ‘Hey, yes there [are] more consequences for losses, but at the same time, the game is still the same. And if you make more of it, it really kind of gives you just the chance to put too much pressure on yourself.”

On the advantages of age in baseball, at least one mathematician has run the numbers.

In 2017, Kennesaw State University professor Joe DeMaio published a paper that tracked the average age of World Series-winning teams, compared with the major league average. The results don’t exactly bode well for the Orioles.

DeMaio studied the most recent 39 World Series-winning teams, separating them into two categories: batters and pitchers.

Twenty-eight of the 39 teams had an average batters’ age that was older than the rest of the majors. When it came to pitching, 30 of the teams were older than the league average.

And not only were World Series-winning teams older than the average — they were often significantly older, ranking in the top 25% of the league.

But DeMaio has a message for hopeful Orioles fans in Baltimore:

Chicago Bears quarterback Justin Fields wanted to return to Sunday’s game against the Minnesota Vikings, coach Matt Eberflus said.

But Fields couldn’t grip the football because of the right hand injury he suffered during a third-quarter sack and was sidelined for the rest of the 19-13 Bears loss.

Whether Fields will miss more time is now the major question. The X-rays on Fields’ hand were negative for any fracture, but the Bears are awaiting the results of an MRI. Fox Sports and NFL Network reported Fields dislocated his thumb.

“We’ll know more information tomorrow,” Eberflus said.

In a 1-5 season that has become so much about determining whether Fields is the Bears’ quarterback of the future, those test results are perhaps more crucial than the final result on the field Sunday. Eberflus said Fields’ demeanor after the game was “great.”

“He goes, ‘Coach, we’ll see where it is tomorrow,’” Eberflus said. “He was positive, and he was upbeat.”

Fields was trying to get rid of the ball as Vikings outside linebacker Danielle Hunter sacked him from behind with 10 minutes, 43 seconds to play in the third quarter. Fields’ hand was outstretched as he tried to toss the ball, and it hit the ground before his body did.

Fields held his hand and grimaced as he jogged to the sideline and sat on the bench briefly. He headed first to the medical tent and then the locker room. The Bears eventually ruled Fields out of the game, turning to undrafted rookie Tyson Bagent to take his first NFL snaps.

“It sucks to have a guy like that and not be able to have him on the field,” running back D’Onta Foreman said of Fields. “But this locker room has a lot of trust in Tyson and what he brings to the table. We’ve seen him work each and every day in practice and the things he’s been able to do. It definitely sucks but we have a lot of confidence in (Bagent). … His poise and his calmness, the way he commands himself in the huddle, just getting everybody on the right page.”

Before Fields was injured, he and the Bears offense did little to build momentum from their strong performance against the Washington Commanders in Week 5.

Fields completed 6 of 10 passes for 58 yards, no touchdowns, an interception and a 36.7 passer rating. He was sacked four times. The Bears had minus-3 passing yards following their first three drives before Fields connected with Darnell Mooney for a 39-yard pass. The Bears had a chance to take the lead late in the second quarter, but Hunter got in Fields’ face on a pass, and Jordan Hicks intercepted him.

Wide receiver DJ Moore, who had 230 receiving yards against the Commanders, was targeted twice in the first half, with one 7-yard catch. Moore said at one point the Vikings had three players on him.

“All the different looks, all the pressures and everything that was coming at us,” Moore said. “It’s hard when you go out there and think they’re going to do one thing and they do a whole multitude of things that they either put in or just had something to beat our play call with.”

The inconsistency of the passing offense behind Fields through six games has left major questions for the Bears about whether they are going to stick with him beyond 2023, especially as they and the Carolina Panthers, whose 2024 first-round draft pick the Bears own, drop deeper into the NFL basement — with higher draft picks in sight.

Fields can’t convince them one way or the other if he’s out for any extended time with a hand injury.

Bagent’s turn as the Bears leader didn’t exactly unfold as a fairy tale for the quarterback from Division II Shepherd University who played his way into the Bears backup role through preseason and practice performances.

Bagent, who said he got a “handful” of snaps with the first-team offense in practice last week, completed 10 of 14 passes for 83 yards and an interception and also had a lost fumble and a touchdown run.

He fumbled on a strip-sack by Vikings safety Josh Metellus on his third NFL snap. Hicks recovered the ball and turned it into a 42-yard touchdown and a 19-6 Vikings lead.

“A little bit of miscommunication,” Bagent said. “But at the end of the day, I’ve got to keep two hands on the ball. I’ve got to protect the ball.”

Bagent recovered to lead the Bears to a touchdown three drives later, connecting with Moore on 18- and 24-yard passes and scoring on a 1-yard run. He then got the Bears to the Vikings’ 35-yard line on their next drive with a chance to win it, but he underthrew Moore on a pass that Byron Murphy Jr. intercepted.

Bagent spoke of mixed emotions after the game — but said primarily he was thinking about not getting the win.

“More than anything, just wanting a couple of those plays (back),” Bagent said. “Obviously I would have liked a different outcome in the game. I think after you process and think about that, I’m just extremely grateful for the life I’ve been blessed with.”

If Fields can’t return this week for next Sunday’s game against the Las Vegas Raiders at Soldier Field, Bears players said they expect Bagent to be a poised and confident leader.

“He’s got a lot of self confidence,” tight end Cole Kmet said. “He has conviction in what he does and what he says, and if he has to take over here for a bit, we’re going to rally around him and make this the best situation possible for him.”

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Banks must comply with US, EU, and UK sanctions in addition to local regulations, Swissinfo reports

G7 countries, particularly the US, have questioned whether Switzerland is doing all it can to track Russian assets stashed away in bank vaults, Swissinfo reported.

Swiss banks complain that on top of existing tax evasion and money laundering regulations, they now have to comply with US, EU, and UK sanctions. The situation is particularly complicated and challenging for banks with multiple branches abroad.

“Contradictions between sanctions regimes [of the US, EU, and UK] are repeatedly leading to major difficulties with implementation and unnecessary compliance risks,” Philipp Rickenbacher, the CEO of Julius Bar bank and president of the Swiss Wealth Management Association, was quoted as saying earlier.

Switzerland, which is not an EU member state and considers itself neutral with regard to foreign policy, at first adopted all the sanctions that the EU imposed on Russian citizens and companies, including asset freezes, in 2022. The government justified the move as an “extraordinary situation,” claiming that Swiss neutrality remains intact but “of course we stand on the side of Western values.” 

After the Swiss decided to take part in the EU sanctions, it had no choice but to adopt the US sanctions as well, which have “extra-territorial reach due to the power of the dollar and US financial system,” the report said.

Swiss bankers reportedly argued that instead of neglectfully adopting these measures, the government should in the future actively seek to influence global sanctions packages in a way that suits its domestic agenda.

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The report also pointed to the fact that there is no exact information about how much money wealthy Russians hold in the country. According to the Swiss Bankers Association estimates, the total could be around 150 billion Swiss francs ($170 billion), while the amount in offshore assets that are managed by Swiss banks could be $2.4 trillion.

“The sparse information on Russian assets in Switzerland suggests that the authorities are not active enough in looking for hidden assets of sanctioned persons,” Martin Hilti, the head of Transparency International Switzerland, told Swissinfo. “They should implement sanctions proactively by joining international task forces,” he argued.

Bern has so far rejected this type of international cooperation, arguing that Swiss sanctions already function perfectly well without joining the REPO task force (the Russian Elites, Proxies, and Oligarchs Task Force), established between the EU, G7, and Australia in March 2022.

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