Friday night's crushing walkoff loss notwithstanding, the Orioles just finished up a pretty satisfying road trip. Two out of three in Tampa, followed by two out of three in New York. Today Chris Tillman and T. J. McFarland combined to shut out the Yankees on four hits, and the O's hitters scraped together three runs against ace Japanese import Masahiro Tanaka before piling on some insurance runs against the Yanks' pen to take the rubber game, 8-0. They handed Tanaka only his second loss in the past two years. Combined with their 2-1 series win in Texas earlier this month, the Birds have now won three consecutive road series for the first time since the summer of 2012. That's a pretty good season to emulate, as illustrated above. The O's may be without Matt Wieters for the rest of 2014, they might be holding their breaths every time Ubaldo Jimenez throws a pitch, they are almost certainly wondering when Manny Machado and Chris Davis will return from oblivion...but they are even in the loss column with the Blue Jays and Yankees, and well ahead of Boston and Tampa Bay. They've got 88 games left to do some damage and create some separation. It shouldn't be a dull summer.
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