Toronto at Baltimore, August 8-10

When the Yankees left the Jays (and everyone else) in the dust early on, we told ourselves - well, all right. We see all those games they've played with the Orioles. The Yankees took 4 of 6 from them in April. They took another 5 of 7 from them in May. The Jays didn't play a single game with the Orioles those first two months. Baltimore was a tasty morsel we thought we were saving for the last two months of the season, when the Orioles would provide the opposition no less than 15 times in Toronto's final 54 games.

Except these don't seem to be the Orioles we were promised, the Orioles we looked forward to. Oh, they started out true to form. They went 7-14 in April, a pace that matches almost perfectly their 2021 form, when they lost 110 games.

And then came July, and it appears that merely playing better than .500 was no longer good enough for them. They'd had a taste of success, and thought it would be even more fun to play really well. What would you say to a month of .640 (16-9) baseball, highlighted by a ten game winning streak, that actually inserted them into the hunt for the three AL Wild Card spots?

I'd say what on earth is going on? And, incredibly, we were all obliged to wonder - what would Orioles management do at the deadline? As if it actually mattered! Because it did!

So... would they bring in reinforcements, to aid their sudden charge towards a completely unexpected chance at post-season play?

 While Camden Yards is definitely home run friendly, it's a fairly neutral park overall, offense increases there just a little. This has been a team with about an average offense. But they're probably a little better than that. The Orioles best hitter is their hotshot rookie catcher, Adley Rutschman, who only came up in May, took a few weeks to get comfortable, and then decided to show the world that he was the best hitting catcher in all of baseball. Since the 4th of July, Rutschman is hitting .329/.477/.529 which is a pretty decent way to make your case  (he's getting DH action on the days he's not behind the plate.) And while both Cedric Mullins and Anthony Santander got off to horrible starts, which are still dragging down their season numbers - they've both been much more like themselves these last couple of months. Which is pretty good, as you may recall. This is a deeper and more dangerous bunch of hitters than they had in April, although they will miss Trey Mancini, of course, (the Astros probably asked themselves - who could we get that no one anywhere could possibly boo?) But they have lots and lots of young prospects that they'd like to see in action.