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Sometimes baseball just puts you in a good mood. You could feel it in Camden Yards last night. Even with a number of tense moments where it looked like things would all fall apart, everybody was happy, the Jumbotron was full of excited people, and a fun time was had all around. Here's hoping the Sunday afternoon crowd gets to experience that feeling as much as the Saturday night crowd did.
Where last night's Royals starter was old friend Jeremy Guthrie, today it's old foe James Shields, who spent a while in the American League East. A few Orioles have seen him a number of times, including 75 plate appearances by Nick Markakis, which is a fair number of times. The last of these was in 2012 as Shields did not face the Orioles last year. So, whatever is there, there's probably not much to glean. Another Oriole with pretty good numbers against Shields is Matt Wieters, who is getting the day off today. Oh well.
Win and take the series, moving farther above .500. Lose and fall back to .500. It's very simple. The Orioles have not excelled in recent years at putting together long winning streaks, but we're not even asking them for that today. Just two in a row. If the Yankees stumble on Sunday Night Baseball, they might even have a chance to move closer to a division lead. Now that would be something.