For a team that’s six games below .500 like the Orioles are, there are a greater number of things at stake than you might expect in today’s game. These mostly involve some years-long quests back towards the general direction of respectability after several seasons of the rebuilding/tanking era.
One big one is that the Orioles enter this game with three straight wins. If they win today and get a fourth straight win, that will be the first time they’ve won more than three in a row since August 2020. A win today would also be a big boost for the Orioles hopes of securing their first winning full month of baseball since August 2017; they’d only need to go 1-3 in the final four games of the month to have an above-.