When the Orioles quite recently lost 19 consecutive games, what really made it so unbearable is that they were nowhere close to winning in so many of those games. They were not losing because they had bad luck. They were losing because they were bad. On Friday night, they dropped back into the loss column, but it wasn’t one of those gruesome losses. If a few things had turned out differently, the Orioles might have won. Instead, they lost to the Rays, 6-3.
The game had the potential for that ugly feeling early on. Starting pitcher Matt Harvey struck out the first two Rays batters he faced.