The Orioles. (sigh) No matter how hard fans hope for a solid stretch of quality play, it just doesn’t seem to materialize. For nearly three months now, they’ve been consistently inconsistent, playing at a .500 pace since June 10. Saturday’s 7-1 loss to the Rays was another frustrating game, with a variety of things going wrong.
Once again, the offense has vanished. Whether this is a temporary slump or the start of another extended dry spell remains to be seen. Over the last three games, the Orioles have managed just four runs. While they were fortunate to win one of those games, they won’t maintain even a .500 pace for long unless they start scoring 4+ runs per game again.
Making matters worse, the Yankees won on the same day, moving half a game ahead of the Orioles. After shutting out the Cubs in back-to-back games, New York has leapfrogged Baltimore. The Orioles will have plenty of chances in their final 20 games to reclaim that ground, but they’ll likely need to do better than 10-10. The series from September 24-26 looms large.
Looking at the wild card race, things are a bit more optimistic. The Orioles’ magic number to secure a postseason spot is 11. If they reach 93 wins, no team currently outside the playoff picture can catch them. Their magic number to secure the first wild card spot (WC1) is 15, which would guarantee them home-field advantage for the wild card round.
The simplest way to lower all these numbers is to win and maintain their lead over the teams chasing them. It would be great if the Orioles could, you know, win more than half of their remaining games to finish the season strong. They have a chance to shake off the sting of yesterday’s loss with a win today. And if other teams lose too, all the better to chip away at those numbers in one day.
Leave a Reply