Orioles firing on all cylinders

The Orioles won AGAIN last night, 9-2 over the Kansas City Royals. They haven’t lost since before the All-Star break, and have won five in a row for the first time all year, and nine of ten overall. The Birds are a season-high 14 games over .500 and sit only 2.5 games back of the Boston Red Sox.

The bats, which seemed to all go to sleep at once on the road in Chicago and New York a couple weeks back, are sizzling. Don’t forget about the starting pitching though. The O’s are getting quality starts almost every game these days. Hell, Chris Tillman and Scott Feldman had back-to-back eight inning starts.

To me this is the key. Hitting is great, but a team needs good pitching if it wants to makes deep run into October. The return of Wei-Yen Chen and the addition of Feldman may have been just what the doctor ordered. This staff doesn’t have a prototypical ace, but they aren’t a bunch of bums either. Chen, Feldman, Gonzalez, and Tillman are all pitching well at the moment. If Jason Hammel could possibly regain last year’s form, things would be scary.

Speaking of scary, that’s how I would describe the recent contributions from the bottom of the Orioles lineup. I mean scary in a good way. Henry Urrutia had three hits last night and Brian Roberts has been giving the team quality at bats from the nine hole. If this continues, opposing pitchers could have nightmares the night before they face this lineup.

Urrutia is raw, and he seems to fall asleep on the bases at times. That said, you’d have to be blind to not see the potential he has at the plate. Have I mentioned Matt Wieters is heating up as well?

Happy days are here again in Birdland!