Home plate mob scenes have been a familiar sighting in Baltimore this season.
Let’s start with the O’s just to get the really wacky stuff out of the way 1st. At this point, Baltimore’s season is akin to unexplainable phenomena like Stonehenge and Big Foot. Last night’s 8-7 comeback win in the 14th inning against the Mariners pushed the Orioles to their 12th straight extra inning win…12 f***ing straight! If that wasn’t enough, they have also won 11 consecutive 1 run games as well. (For the year, they are an astonishing 12-2 in extras and 22-6 in 1 run games, both league bests by far.) That probably speaks a lot to their bullpen strength, clutch hitting, and "never give up-ness," but given the oddities of baseball it might just be sheer luck as much as anything else. O’s defenders will tell you that they actually have a very potent lineup – Nick Markakis, Matt Wieters, Chris Davis, Adam Jones, JJ Hardy – but they are only 10th in the American League in runs scored out of 14 teams. And their lousy starting pitching has more than made up for their solid bullpen, as they are only 10th in the AL in runs allowed to boot. Further confounding baseball nerds around the country, the O’s have a -54 run differential so far this year. To put that in perspective, only 7 teams in the majors have a worse run differential, and they are all at least 10 games below 0.500…meanwhile, the O’s sit 8 games above 0.500…4.5 games back of the Yankees in the AL East, a game back of the Tigers for the top Wild Card spot, and tied with the A’s for the newfangled 2nd Wild Card. It defies all logic, but it looks like they’re here to stay.
On the other hand, the Nats are befuddling in that they have exceeded all expectations, but the numbers actually support their record this year. Washington also won in extra innings last night, beating Houston 3-2, but they have looked much more like a dominant team. At 67-43, they own the best record in the majors, and their run differential of +84 looks much more like a typical playoff team than that of their American League neighbors up I-95. Their 5 man pitching rotation of Strasburg, Zimmermann, Gonzalez, Jackson, and Detwiler is the envy of all of baseball, and their lineup – which had question marks earlier in the year – is starting to get healthy and round into form. Adam LaRoche and the suddenly sputtering Bryce Harper carried the load for much of the earlier part of the season, but the bats of Ryan Zimmerman, Jayson Werth, and Michael Morse are all waking up after they suffered injuries early on. If Ian Desmond can return from an oblique strain, this lineup could look downright scary. Now, the biggest questions facing the Nats are experience and what they will wind up doing with Strasburg, who at 24 might already be the best pitcher in the universe. At 127 innings and counting, “Stras” looks like who will be shut down in another 5 starts or so if Washington sticks to the innings restriction they have placed on him for this year. The problem is that assumes they are using Zimmermann’s 160 innings limit from last year following a similar injury and rehab, but the Nats’ brass hasn’t been forthcoming with what Strasburg’s magic number actually is. Is it 160 innings? 170? 250? No one really knows, and it wouldn’t surprise me if they pull a “each player is different and will be treated case by case” spin on this as they move closer to the postseason. Innings limit or not, you don’t know how many chances you will get as an organization to win a World Series. Fortunately, Washington looks to be a capable team even without Strasburg throwing every 5 days…they just look that much better with him on the mound though.
How far Washington goes this year could depend on what they decide to do with their young phenom.
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