Orioles Game 99 Game Thread: vs. Rockies, 7:05

The Orioles have now won five games in a row. If they are going to continue their streak of having a seven game winning streak each month, they need to win the next two games. That's a tough sell, even at home. It's tough to get two sweeps in a row. It would be a good way to start to close out the month, though - July started out not so great for the O's.

Can they do it? Sure. One thing that's fun about the Orioles right now is they can win every night. That's a frustrating thing too, because it means when they don't win, you feel like they should have won. They are good. They don't have a 2.5 game division lead in the last week of July by accident. They can win even when their offense sucks against a soft-tossing lefty for no explainable reason, like they did last night.

No soft-tossing lefty awaits tonight. Colorado's Chad Bettis is a medium-tossing righty. Bettis, too, is bad. He comes into this game with a 5+ ERA for the season. He has been bad at home as well as on the road. Maybe Bettis has been unlucky - though his ERA is 5.31, his FIP is only 4.11. But the Orioles, with Hyun Soo Kim returning to the lineup, should destroy him. It will be frustrating if they do not do so.

Meanwhile, Chris Tillman, who has been receiving a head-scratching amount of early Cy Young talk lately, is starting for the Orioles. Again, the result that should happen is fairly obvious, but we know that in baseball what should happen is not always what does happen. They need to play well to make it six wins in a row. They're capable of doing so. Hopefully they do.