This is the first paragraph to SI.COM’s Power Rankings that came out today:
“Baseball’s hottest teams will try to cool each other off north of the border this weekend, as the Blue Jays (winners of eight straight and 11 of 13) host the Orioles (winners of 8 of 11 and employer of Chris Davis) in Toronto.”
The first thing that I thought was, finally showing some love to the Birds!
The second was, it’s about time that the nation started to recognize that this team has earned everything that they’ve gotten, as stated above, winning eight of their last 11, and are not just a nice story, or a flash in the pan.
And as they stated above, you can’t say enough about Chris Davis and the year he has had. The stats are mind blowing: 26 homers, a .720 slugging percentage, and a 1.132 OPS all lead the majors. While he’s not on pace for 76 home runs any longer, he is still on pace for 58, to go along with 51 doubles. If he gets to those totals he would be the first to go 50-50 in homers in doubles since Albert Belle in 1995. I apologize for having to mention THAT guy’s name. I may have to wash my fingers out with soap.
It seems as if our rivals to the north have finally turned a corner, even though they haven’t reached .500 yet, (35-36 entering tonight). But they are the hottest team in baseball right now, with eight straight wins. They are doing it with starts from Esmil Rogers (never heard of him) and Chien-Ming Wang (didn’t know they had him). So it seems that the O’s and the Jays are riding similar streaks by using similar formulas. After all, we brought up Jake Arrieta and Zach Britton this week. With Jason Hammel sick and Miguel Gonzalez on paternity leave it didn’t leave us with much choice. But Hammel opens the series on Friday, and Gonzalez has to come off the Paternity list on Friday as well
(Wait, do they really have a Paternity List? They probably do; they have a list for everything else.)
So starting tomorrow evening we get to see which one of these mirror images of each other is really the hottest team in baseball. Maybe Crush Davis and the rest of our soon-to-be All Stars can continue what they started Wednesday in Detroit, and make it plainly obvious who is the better team.
