Game 156: Orioles (81-74) @ Rays (86-69), 3:10

Beyond when all hope is lost, there is still baseball to be played. For the 2013 Orioles, it's only about a week worth of baseball games, which does beat the heck out of having no hope by the time the middle of May rolls around, but we are in that time where there's nothing to do but figure out which other team to vaguely root for through the postseason.

They only need one more win to secure back-to-back winning seasons, but with the way they're playing, scoring one more run seems like an impossible task. Only the Trop's fluky catwalk nonsense allowed them to score a run yesterday. They aren't hitting for anything. Perhaps they are tired, with the season's long grind wearing them down and exacerbating aggressive tendencies that every pitcher in history now knows how to exploit. Who knows.

The Rays, on the other hand, still have plenty to play for, as they need to keep winning games to secure their spot in the playoffs and possibly even secure the wild card playoff game being held on their luxurious carpet. Note the sarcasm at the close of the previous sentence.

All that's left for the Orioles to do is play spoiler, and there's not even any satisfying spoiler scenarios, because they've got just this one game left against the Rays and am I really supposed to get excited about Texas making the postseason instead of them? Then there's Boston, and that could affect seeding or whatever, but who cares. That's loser talk, and after last season, I'm not in the mood to relish that stuff any more.