The Wildcard Race

[FlipTheBird]

41 minutes ago, sportsfan8703 said:

A little optimistic, I'll give you that. But why not?  

We've played the hardest schedule in baseball so far. 

https://www.teamrankings.com/mlb/ranking/schedule-strength-by-other

Bal- 1

NYY- 14

Don't buy into the yankee hype. 

I don't need to buy into any hype, I've watched them all year.

They're no powerhouse (nor is any AL team - the Astros are the closest, but they've got flaws, too), but they're a very good baseball team. Top 5 in OPS. Top 6 in ERA.

Plus, their schedule down the stretch is very similar to that of the O's. And they're not relying on Wade Miley and Ubaldo Jimenez for 40% of their starts for the rest of the season.

[FlipTheBird]

31 minutes ago, Camden_yardbird said:

The other way to look at this is:

Judge can back to earth and has not been great on awhile.  Hicks is coming of injury after playing way over his head.  Chapman is showing the signs of overuse from last year and is no sure thing.  Severing is breaking out but may be coming up to new frontiers as far as workload.  Sanchez was benched for defensive reasons.

I have thought the Yankees were a year early all year, and teams that are like that usually limp to the finish.

We could play that very game with the Orioles right now, too. It's all conjecture.

[TommyPickles]

Nice that we have seven games against Oakland (without Gray or Alonso) this month. 

Feel like the Os could get into this WC game.  

[FlipTheBird]

1 minute ago, TommyPickles said:

Nice that we have seven games against Oakland (without Gray or Alonso) this month. 

Feel like the Os could get into this WC game.  

Though this is certainly handy in playing the A's, we will now see Gray and Alonso with the Yanks and Mariners, respectively. Both of whom we play numerous times.

[eddie83]

I think we need to have a big month. It is going to be hard to gain ground in September. 

[schittenden]

1 hour ago, Frobby said:

As I posted yesterday, I think there's a better than even chance that 85 wins is sufficient to get the 2nd wild card.     Nobody has really stepped up.    The Royals and Rays are currently on pace to win 83 games each.   History since the second wild card was adopted shows that the final wild card cutoff has been no more than 2 games above where the cutoff was projected to be at this time of year.     Obviously this year could be an exception to that rule, but odds are that it won't be.    Remember,  KC and TB are playing roughly .514 ball, and the other WC contenders are below that.    To get to 85 wins, here's what the contenders would need to do:

KCR 28-23 .549

TBR 27-22 .551

SEA 28-21 .571

BAL 29-21 .580

MIN 31-21 .596

LAA 30-19 .612

TEX 32-19 .627

It's really not all that likely that one of these teams will exceed what they'd need to do to get to 85 win.

 

 

I thought the Orioles were playing .800 ball the rest of the way? 

[SteveO]

It's all about the starting pitching IMO. They don't even need to sustain the level they have as of late. They simply need to be good enough to keep them in games and give their bats a chance to win. Also not overtaxing the bullpen would be nice . A month ago I would have given the O's a 10% chance or less based on just how god awful the SP was. Now .....50/50%

[El Gordo]

They need to take 5 out of  7 v OAK and SEA. That will put us in much better shape.

[ScGO's]

Looks like King Felix is going to miss a few weeks with shoulder bursitis. We probably don't have to face him in either series.

[SteveO]

1 minute ago, ScGO's said:

Looks like King Felix is going to miss a few weeks with shoulder bursitis. We probably don't have to face him in either series.

Even though he had not been "King" Felix since coming back from the DL, I'll take it.

[mdbdotcom]

The O's have played .603 baseball at home all season but are 21-33 on the road.

If they can play .500 ball on the road the rest of the way and continue to play .600 ball they will end the season with 83-84 wins. 84 wins might be enough to get the 2nd wildcard slot.

To do better than 84 wins will require Oriole Magic. I hope we see it happen.

[sportsfan8703]

14 minutes ago, mdbdotcom said:

The O's have played .603 baseball at home all season but are 21-33 on the road.

If they can play .500 ball on the road the rest of the way and continue to play .600 ball they will end the season with 83-84 wins. 84 wins might be enough to get the 2nd wildcard slot.

To do better than 84 wins will require Oriole Magic. I hope we see it happen.

If we can avoid a starter implosion we can make up some ground on that road record this trip. 

• Dont let Trout beat us. 
• Oak is a AAAA team. 
• Grind out a series win vs SEA. 

[SteveO]

No matter what happens from here on out, you kinda gotta tip your cap to this team.

It would have been easy for the team to collapse under the weight of the atrocious starting pitching and swirling trade rumors. My guess is that Buck had a simple message. Play better, win and give them a reason to think otherwise. To the teams credit, whatever the reason, they have done exactly that. These are some scrappy dudes IMO. No team that had as bad a run of starting pitching as we did should be sniffing the playoffs and yet, here we are in striking distance now. That's some pretty cool stuff. Yea we can debate if they should have been sellers but hey, at least the team is making the most of the decision that was made.

[OFFNY]

o

 

The Blue Jays lead the Yankees by a score of 4-1 on the strength of two 2-run home runs by Josh Donaldson early in their game at the SkyDome.

 

o

[Tx Oriole]

1 hour ago, SteveO said:

No matter what happens from here on out, you kinda gotta tip your cap to this team.

It would have been easy for the team to collapse under the weight of the atrocious starting pitching and swirling trade rumors. My guess is that Buck had a simple message. Play better, win and give them a reason to think otherwise. To the teams credit, whatever the reason, they have done exactly that. These are some scrappy dudes IMO. No team that had as bad a run of starting pitching as we did should be sniffing the playoffs and yet, here we are in striking distance now. That's some pretty cool stuff. Yea we can debate if they should have been sellers but hey, at least the team is making the most of the decision that was made.

You got to do that for sure.