September so far has been a surprisingly fun month for the Orioles. After taking series against two definite playoff teams, they’ve done just enough to win another series against the Pirates. You might rather see more offense from these guys, which is fair enough. The win column speaks for itself: 7-1 this month. They have a chance to sweep, if they can pull off a win in the finale of the series here on Thursday afternoon.
The Orioles would have to keep up that kind of torrid pace for the remainder
of the season to be able to close out a winning season. It’s not very likely, though it’s fun that they’ve played well enough to keep that hope alive. There was a while there where it seemed like the Orioles might just end up diving down to a 100+ loss season.
Whatever else happens this season, they didn’t join one of the infamously awful finishes in team history. The Orioles have managed to stave off elimination in the AL East (tragic number: 3) and in the wild card race (tragic number: 8) for longer than I thought they would be able to do, especially with the way things were trending with the offense at the end of August.
We can hope that maybe this means positive things for next season. Certainly, some of the contributors are guys we’ll be hoping are good next year. Just in this current streak of “the last four wins have all been walkoffs,” Samuel Basallo had two of the walkoffs and Dylan Beavers added one last night. That’s good! The most realistic (perhaps still unachievable) goal for the final weeks has to be to see players who will be back next year succeeding in ways that feel sustainable.
Orioles lineup
- Jackson Holliday – 2B
- Jeremiah Jackson – RF
- Gunnar Henderson – SS
- Emmanuel Rivera – 3B
- Dylan Beavers – LF
- Colton Cowser – CF
- Samuel Basallo – DH
- Alex Jackson – C
- Coby Mayo – 1B
Cade Povich makes the start for the Orioles today. He hasn’t been good this year and probably has only made as many starts as he had because of all of the chaos around him. He could have been worse, to be sure.
Pirates lineup
- Jared Triolo – 3B
- Tommy Pham – LF
- Bryan Reynolds – RF
- Nick Gonzales – 2B
- Andrew McCutchen – DH
- Joey Bart – C
- Nick Yorke – 1B
- Alexander Canario – CF
- Liover Peguero – SS
Pirates starter Johan Oviedo is a 27-year-old righty in his fifth MLB season. He’s appeared in five games this season and has a 2.70 ERA so far, with batters hitting just .159 against him.
