Riding These 2 Bats Might Help The Orioles Extend Their Season Past Toronto This Weekend

The Orioles enter their final extended road trip of the campaign with another lost season on life support, kinda, and an uncertain future ahead with the Toronto Blue Jays looming.

The O’s are merely 16.5 games off the pace in the AL East – a division charlatan failure baseball exec Mike Elias claimed they’d be near the top of for a decade run – and trail the final Wild Card, in an incredibly down year in the AL, by three games and they trail the Blue Jays by two. They are more likely to finish 10 games below .500 then they are to even win 81 games, but, hey, they won’t have overpromoted and overpaid Elias underling Matt Blood holding them back anymore! One failure gone, and the biggest of them all likely safe.

There is every reason to believe by the time the Orioles come back from New York (facing the Mets) a week from now than they will be eliminated and more of their firings will get out in the media and Elias will be planning his silly talking points about all the thing he’s learned by being a total joke at this job and a stubborn fool at that.

So we’ve got that to look forward to, Birdland.

In the interim, the Jays are playing their best ball of the season, they have a playoff pedigree from a year ago, and that can be a tough place to play with the weird surface and dome and all. Here’s what you need to know heading into the weekend:

Are The Jays Any Good?

Look, they are below .500, their best player has been dealing with a more serious injury than they’ve let on all season, I believe, in Vladdy Guerrero, and they haven’t been very consistent. But they are 18-12 in their last 30, which has vaunted them back into playoff contention while most of the AL continued to sputter. They are .500 against the AL East, which has been huge (the O’s are 17-26) and they are solid at home.

They are in the mix despite trading Kevin Gausman at the deadline, but they don’t have a starter named in the series yet besides Max Scherzer, and while he has struggled allowing over six runs per game, and he can’t strike anyone out anymore, he does have a 3.79 ERA in his last seven starts.

However, it seems likely that Saturday we see Dylan Cease, who has performed like a Cy Young candidate and is precisely the kind of arm Elias always pretends he was about to land, and then Jose Soriano, who they added at the deadline (which is part of why they have caught and passed the Orioles).

Who Is Doing The Damage?

Guerrero is in a bad way, still no power and a .602 OPS (gulp) in his last 19 games. He hasn’t been right all season.

Rookie Kaz Okamoto does provide power and pop, catcher Alejandro Kirk has been a sparkplug since returning from injury and infielder Josh Smith has been a revelation since being acquired from the Rangers. In 12 games with Toronto he has four homers, six RBIs and a 1.192 OPS. That won’t last forever but they’ll gladly ride it now.

They can catch the baseball, a key to their World Series run last year. The Orioles, well, cannot, with The Elias Way and all.

The Right Lineup For Birds

Seemed to me like Hall of Fame pitcher and All-World broadcaster Jim Palmer was making the case for Dylan Beavers to be the leadoff guy during the broadcast of the Guardians series. With Taylor Ward, thankfully long gone, and Jackson Holliday failing there and Blaze Alexander hurt again, there is no reason not to do this.

Beavers has 19 doubles despite the missed time and is the rare player on this roster who knows what he is and doesn’t try to be something he’s not. He wants to shoot the ball to all fields and take doubles to the gap and not chase homers. In his last 20 games he has 17 hits, 12 RBIs and a .266/.338/.516 slash for an impressive .854 OPS. Lean into that, Elias.

And can we please keep Coby Mayo in the top four of this batting order the final two weeks? He has mashing the ball since the All-Star break (.911 OPS with 10 homers) and has been good enough against righties while hitting lefties better than anyone in MLB – HYPER.

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