That sweep of Oakland was awful nice, but the Orioles are facing a real baseball team again - weird as it is to place the Mets in the "real baseball team" category, given their performance in recent years. The Orioles did not play their best yesterday and they lost. If they don't play their best today they'll probably lose again.
The good news is that Mets starter Noah Syndergaard has struggled on the road in his young career. The bad news is that the Mets may very well have identified why he struggles on the road, so tonight we will have the good fortune to experience possibly the first Syndergaard road start where he's not pre-disposed to suck. Well, doesn't that just figure?
At present, the Orioles do not have an above-.500 record against any team that itself has an above-.500 record. There's no way they'll get there against the Mets, either, since this is the last regular season game the two teams have together this season and the O's have lost the first three games already. So that's a pretty tough way to get into the playoffs, where, even if the O's do make it, they'll surely have to face one of those above-.500 teams they have played poorly against. Go figure.
It is Manny Machado-Jonathan Schoop handshake t-shirt night. Let's hope that the two of them have multiple occasions to demonstrate the handshake to all of the fans wearing their shirt tonight.