Friday night Orioles game thread: at Red Sox, 7:10

Nothing says “Let’s start getting excited about postseason chances” quite like a late August Jeremy Hellickson start in Boston. The Orioles are tackling the Red Sox tonight, hopefully not literally, with Hellickson, who could easily get destroyed by the Sox in Fenway.

But the Orioles are close enough, at least in the wild card, that you can’t help thinking about their postseason chances anyway. Yes, there are five teams to pass, but they’re only three games out. A six game winning streak and they’ll be somewhere interesting. Even a team that’s struggled a lot, like the Orioles have, can be capable of getting lucky or clicking for a few games and rattling off a winning streak.

The O’s haven’t been good on the road, and Boston is a good team, so it’ll be an uphill battle this weekend. At least the O’s will miss seeing Chris Sale. Tonight they’ll get last year’s AL Cy winner, Rick Porcello, who hasn’t been pitching to that same form this season. Maybe that will turn out to be good news.

This is MLB’s Player’s Weekend, so you can look forward to (or dread) Little League-style uniforms that include player nicknames on the back. Players will allowed to have other little uniform touches outside the normal. We can have fun noticing these things if the Orioles aren’t losing 6-0 before the fourth inning.