They absolutely can rely on Bautista as their closer. The guy is lights out also. It just seems curious they would trade maybe the best closer in baseball during a pennant race when they're not hurting for prospects. The three at the backend together meant on most nights the O's had to only play 6 inning baseball.
Because they're smart enough to see that they're the fourth-best team in their own division. When that's the talent level, there is just too much that has to go right for the pennant shot to turn into a reality.
Yes, the expanded playoff format gives them an outside shot of making a Wild Card, but this isn't 1996 when a Wild Card is pretty much the same thing as winning your division. It's not even 2019, when you can fluke a win in a single Wild Card game and move on.
Look at Baltimore's realistic path if they make the playoffs: (1) a best of 3 against Cleveland, with all of them on the road; (2) if they win that first series, a best-of-5 (3 on the road) against the Yankees, against whom they're 5-11 this season; (3) if they're still alive, a road best-of-7 against the Astros, and only then the World Series. That's a lot. It's one thing when you're a talented team that has underachieved to get to the bottom seed. It's quite different when you're an up and coming team that has overachieved to even get to the edge of playoff contention. And when you're maybe 2 years away from really having something and a couple extra prospects could matter in those years, I can totally see why they did what they did.