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The latest way that the Orioles have demonstrated that they're a bad baseball team is the way that they have lost two out of three games against what was, before this series, the worst team by record in MLB. The series so far has put the Orioles at the bottom. Well, if they win today to close out the series with a split, they will be percentage points ahead of the White Sox once again. So you can't say there's no stakes.
Win or lose, it would be nice to see Dylan Bundy pitch well against one of the AL's worst offenses so that we might at least start to get some feeling that not everything will be completely terrible for the rest of the season - and that there might be reason to believe in the potential of parts of the O's rotation in subsequent seasons.
Through nine starts, White Sox pitcher Lucas Giolito has pulled off the impressive feat of walking more batters than he has struck out. That's hard to do. He's walked 34 and struck out 27 in 47.2 innings. My sources say that this is bad. It would, therefore, be very good if the Orioles offense - bad as it is - could find a way to take advantage of this young pitcher who is having a tough time of things.
The Orioles being the Orioles, it may be more likely that they will strike out ten times without drawing any walks. I guess we will see what happens. One further thing that would be nice is if Chris Davis channels his anger about Jim Palmer's post-game remarks into doing something other than going 0-for-every game with multiple strikeouts.