After Sweeping The Phillies, Many Are Asking If The Orioles Are One Of The Best Teams In Baseball
Who are these Orioles? Is this really gonna be a thing they do all year? Ever since the Marlins swept them, they haven't lost a game. Took 2.5 games from the Nats which included that rain tarp mess game which they are finishing today, and then last night they whooped up on old friend Jake Arrieta and capped off ANOTHER series sweep. Overall it's 5 in a row and a 10-7 record, a +15 run differential, 7-1 on the road and overall just 1.5 games back of the Yankees in the division.
After their drunk game on Tuesday night, the Birds pulled another tight one out of Wednesday, and then made an absolute mess of the Phillies last night. 11-4 and the game wasn't even that close. All series long all they did was push in runs after the 5th inning. Thursday's game was another key outing by the pitching staff, 0 walks for the fourth time this season. THAT IS HUGE. Orioles also hopped all over the Phillies bullpen which legit may be the worst in all of baseball, thats not even an exaggeration. Phillies brought in a rookie making his MLB Debut as well, Connor Brogdon. Connor had a rough night. He did something I've never seen before in all my years of watching baseball.
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His first pitcher EVER in the bigs went about 420 feet the wrong way. You literally can't start out a pitching career worse than that. Pedro Severino welcome Brogdon into the league in a big way. That summed up everything you needed to know about the Philadelphia bullpen this series. It also speaks to the wagon that is the Orioles offense right now. They're smoking the ball, absolutely smoking it. Check out these stats.
-96 runs in 18 games for the Orioles. The Yankees have 94 in the same timespan.
- They're third overall in the AL in runs (96), have the fourth most hits (163), have the second most doubles (41), fourth most homers (27), third in RBIs (94), third least amount of strikeouts (145), have the best team average in the AL (.269), tied for second in OBP (.337), lead the league in slugging (.473), and second best OPS (.810). This team can fucking SMOKE the ball, and that's exactly what they're doing.
Can they keep this up? Probably not. Hanser Alberto isn't going to hit .340 all year and lead baseball in doubles, Anthony Santander probably won't finish second in the AL in RBIs, Renato Nunez prob won't continue to hit bombs all season, Rio Ruiz won't be near the top of the HR list either. But right now, the team that was expected to be one of the two worst teams in baseball would be in the playoffs, and they're playing as well as anyone else in the league. Brandon Hyde has these guys ready to play every single night, take away the Opening Night game in Boston vs the last place Red Sox, and they are in every game. Something about a team with nothing to lose and a short season. Philly media people were FUMING after they lost 1 game to them, let alone 3. This Orioles team has people jazzed up, they're playing insanely well, and for right now we're going to enjoy it.
This weekend vs the Nats will be interesting but theres no reason to believe they can't come back home and wreck the Nats like they did last weekend, minus the tarp mess up. All I know is we're almost 20 games in and I have loved everything I've seen from these guys. They are without the face of their franchise, Trey Mancini. Ace John Means has basically pitched a game and a half and has been battling some personal issues, and lets not forget they still have the albatross known as Chris Davis on the team. This is a team put together of waiver pick ups, DFA'd guys, with some Rule-5 guys mixed in. For whatever reason, these guys are clicking and hitting the hell outta the ball. Who knows how long it'll go, but who's to say they can't make a run in this sprint of a season?
PS. Shout out this writer for the four letter network, great stuff here.