The Orioles finished a 13-game stretch against American League East opponents with an 8-5 record and now return home for 11 straight games against teams with a sub-.500 record. After the 11-game homestand, the O’s go on the road for a three-game set against the Boston Red Sox, so the next 14 games will be against teams with (currently) more losses than wins.
The O’s find themselves only 1.5 games back from the Toronto Blue Jays for first place in the East. Between the schedule and the Blue Jays and New York Yankees starting a three-game set tonight, the Orioles have a huge opportunity ahead of them to continue to make a move in the standings.
It will not be easy tonight with Chris Sale taking the mound for the White Sox. It wasn’t easy yesterday with Masahiro Tanaka on the mound, but between the solid pitching performance of Chris Tillman and the clutch hitting from the offense, the O’s found a way to score enough runs before finally breaking the game open against the bullpen.
Time to Sit Crush?
I will be curious to see what Buck Showalter does with the lineup tonight. With Chris Davis’ average at a season-low .216, does Showalter dare sit Davis against the tough lefty in Sale and start Delmon Young? Davis has already been lowered to 5th in the lineup, but is there a point where Davis has to sit more often if he continues to struggle? I can’t believe I am even suggesting that for a guy who carried the offense last year, but Davis is looking more like the player that the Texas Rangers gave up on than the guy who hit 53 home runs in 2013.
Bounce-back Kids
I can’t say enough how resilient this team is. After a gut-wrenching loss on Friday night, the Orioles came back to win the series. This has happened many times already this season, with the other notable coming against the Red Sox earlier this year after blowing a huge lead on Sunday Night Baseball and winning the next day. Who knows where this season will go, but with us fans overreacting from pitch-to-pitch and game-to-game, it is good to know that the team is able to keep things in perspective and not allow negativity to creep in and affect them going forward.
