Mirage or miracle? The Orioles have kicked off a hot June with just-good-enough pitching and plenty of offense. Against the American League’s No. 1 team in the Tampa Bay Rays, the team probably won’t sleepwalk into a bunch of easy wins they way they did against Cleveland. The Rays got off to a slowish start, finding themselves dead last in the AL East on May 1, but have since ridden an 11-game winning streak all the way to the top of the division. They’re 16-5 since the last time these two teams played.
As Mark Brown explained in the series preview, the Rays are doing this by scoring a lot and not giving up many runs.