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The Monday night Orioles game thread: vs. Rangers, 7:05

The Orioles bring a four game winning streak into a four game series with the Texas Rangers that starts on Monday night. Bud Norris and Wandy Rodriguez are the starting pitchers for the opening game of the set.

Winslow Townson/Getty Images

You can't have a much better day of baseball than the Orioles had yesterday in shutting out the Indians in both ends of a doubleheader. That was great for yesterday and not so great for today, which will almost assuredly be worse. Maybe they'll still find a way to win, even if it's not a beautiful goose egg of a shutout.

One reason why pitching another shutout is not likely is the matchup of O's starter Bud Norris and Rangers DH Prince Fielder. Against right-handed pitchers this year, Fielder, a lefty, is mashing to the tune of a 1.027 OPS. Yikes. The rest of the lineup is loaded up with left-handed hitters as well, with a total of five natural lefty batters and one switch hitter in there. Norris against lefty batters in 2015: .325/.400/.558. So basically if you are a lefty you are a Hall of Famer against Norris this year.

Rangers starter Wandy Rodriguez is coming off of an outing where he was bombed for eight runs in four innings against the Athletics. He was having a nice June and a nice year up until that point. Before that last start his ERA sat at 3.20 for the season. Now it's 4.06. Rodriguez, a lefty, is a lefty whose fastball is averaging 88.2 mph this year, according to Fangraphs. I think we already have a pretty good idea of what is going to happen here, although the one Oriole who has seen a lot of Rodriguez, J.J. Hardy, has at least batted .292 with two home runs.

Today's Lineups

TEXAS RANGERS BALTIMORE ORIOLES
Rougned Odor - 2B Manny Machado - 3B
Shin-Soo Choo - RF Nolan Reimold - LF
Prince Fielder - DH Adam Jones - CF
Adrian Beltre - 3B Chris Davis - DH
Mitch Moreland - 1B Delmon Young - RF
Joey Gallo - LF J.J. Hardy - SS
Elvis Andrus - SS Steve Pearce - 1B
Leonys Martin - CF Ryan Flaherty - 2B
Carlos Corporan - C Caleb Joseph - C
Wandy Rodriguez - LHP Bud Norris - RHP