Baltimore Orioles: Previewing the Home Stretch

The Baltimore Orioles are holding on to a one-game wild-card lead over the Tampa Bay Rays, and there are only 22 games left in the regular season. However, despite this favorable position right now, the American League East race is far from over.

As I mentioned, the Orioles are one game ahead of the Tampa Bay Rays, but they are also only one game behind the New York Yankees for the American League East crown.

In theory, all three teams could make the playoffs if something were to go wrong for the similarly surprising Oakland Athletics, but right now, it seems as if there will probably be two spots for the three contenders.

That being said, the Baltimore Orioles seem to be in a pretty strong position going down the stretch because of their schedule.

Their next three games could easily help them put this playoff race to rest, as they will be playing Tampa Bay. The three-game series could make a huge difference in their final push, for rather obvious reasons.

After that, the Orioles get those Athletics, and, depending on what happens for the rest of this week, they could be in a position to vault into the first wild-card spot and put the pressure on Oakland to hold off Tampa Bay and the surging Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim.

Following these two series, Baltimore will not play anyone over .500 until it goes down to Tampa Bay for the final series of the season.

With this type of schedule, the Orioles are really the masters of their own fate.

They do not need to depend on other teams to win. They can directly defeat the teams that are chasing them, make their first playoff appearance since 1997 and finish the season above .500 for the first time since that same year.

There is a lot of incentive here, and with a relatively weak schedule other than the matchups that were highlighted above, the Baltimore Orioles seem to be in a strong position to try to make some noise in the postseason.

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