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Hope for the playoffs is essentially over, but the Orioles still have six games to go through the motions. Following on the heels of Monday's freak injury suffered by Manny Machado, all we can do is hold our breath and hope that no one else gets hurt as they play out the string of a decent season.
The O's enter tuesday's game against the Blue Jays needing only one more win over the last six games to secure their second straight winning season for the first time since 1996-97. This has been the case for each of the last five games as well, and the Orioles have decided to lose all of those games.
Chris Tillman gets things started tonight, needing 5.2 innings to have over 200 innings pitched on the season. If he keeps his ERA below 4, he will be only the second Orioles pitcher since Mike Mussina left following the 2000 season to log over 200 innings while keeping an ERA below 4. Jeremy Guthrie also did so in 2010.
Whether the O's can win any games against the Blue Jays will probably happen as a result of the bats waking up. The team scored only 30 runs over ten games of the most recent road trip, batting a whopping .195 collectively over those games. This made for a 4-6 trip despite the pitching staff having a 2.99 ERA in 96.1 innings on the trip.
The Blue Jays starter is Todd Redmond, who gave up only three hits in 6.1 innings when he faced the Orioles in Rogers Centre on September 13. In essence, abandon all hope of everything and have a good night.