Keeping Up with the AL East: June 12

We’re going to start doing these a little more infrequently, if only because it’s hard to come up with various different ways to say the same things about four teams who haven’t really changed their narratives much at all over the first third of the season. And as the trade deadline approaches, everyone else staying in their lanes is great news for the Baltimore Orioles.

(Discuss this post on the BSL boards here.)

One thing to note: New York’s .559 winning percentage there is tied for fourth best in baseball, behind St. Louis (.650), Kansas City (.596), the Los Angeles Dodgers (.583), and tied with the Minnesota Twins. Outside of St. Louis, no one is really running away with anything right now — and that means not only is every division (except, at the moment, the NL Central) wide open, but the Wild Card races are a muddled mess as well — especially in the American League, where the team with the worst record, the Oakland Athletics, is still only 7.5 games back of a Wild Card Game berth. Everything remains wide open; unless that changes substantially over the next couple weeks, we could be heading for an interesting trade market.

New York: Masahiro Tanaka’s back and has been even sharper in his two starts since coming off the DL than he was before going on it, needing just 78 and 87 pitches to give his club seven innings of work in winning efforts against the Seattle Mariners and Washington Nationals, respectively. The Mariners, of course, remain something of a laughingstock — and currently avoid last place in the AL West only by dint of the disastrous year the Oakland Athletics are having — and the Nationals don’t have anyone really hitting right now outside of early MVP candidate Bryce Harper and (somehow) Danny Espinosa, but 15 strikeouts against no walks in 14 innings is great news for a guy who has been dealing with lingering elbow problems and had to change his style a bit to compensate. Alex Rodriguez and Mark Teixiera are still hitting the cover off the ball, carrying a team that continues to get weak performances at the plate out of the rest of its infielders. Jacoby Ellsbury will be back from the disabled list soon, but not soon enough to participate in the series starting Friday night in Baltimore.

Oh, and reliever Dellin Betances’s ERA+ is currently 1404.

Tampa Bay: What else is there to say about the Tampa Bay Rays, except that they’re somehow managing to hold onto the second Wild Card slot and continue to challenge for the division with a catcher platoon that is OPSing .443 (Rene Rivera) and .349 (Bobby Wilson)? There’s buying into pitch framing, and then there’s that kind of gruesomeness. Still, given the seasons that Jake Odorizzi, Chris Archer, and their bullpen are having, it’s a bit difficult to argue with the results. Odorizzi’s headed to the disabled list with an oblique injury, however, so he’ll be out for a bit; oblique injuries can be tough for pitchers — you’ll recall that Brian Matusz dealt with a similar lingering injury (an intercostal strain) back when he was still a starter that messed him up for awhile — but at least they’re not arm or shoulder problems.

The Rays still continue to get good offensive production from franchise cornerstone Evan Longoria, 2B Logan Forsythe, and a very solid outfield of Brandon Guyer/Kevin Kiermaier/Steven Souza, Jr., along with an unlikely DH platoon of David DeJesus and Joey Butler that’s hitting the cover off the ball; whether they’ll be able to weather the loss of one of the staff’s two remaining good starting pitchers remains to be seen, but the good news for the Orioles is that it’s unlikely that the Rays will be heavy buyers at the deadline — that’s not their style.

Toronto: The Blue Jays haven’t lost since the first game of their doubleheader on June 2nd against the Nationals, which you can chalk up either to a team nap…or to scoring almost 7 runs per game since then. Which isn’t to say the pitching has been struggling: outside of a six-run outing against the Astros and a shutout against the Nats, the Jays have been consistently only allowing 2 or 3 runs over their streak, which is a huge improvement over what was previously one of the leakiest staffs in baseball. Obviously this is the Jays at their best, just like that miserable stretch of May was them at their worst — but it’s a reminder that these Jays are utterly terrifying at the plate, and if the pitching comes around to any degree, no matter how unsustainable, they could win the division outright.

That might require some action at the trade deadline, though — at least a reliable starter, even if he’s about to hit free agency. Problem is, this year’s FA class is either wildly underperforming — Mat Latos and Hisashi Iwakuma were two of the big names, and you can check their stat lines yourself to see that horror show — or on contending teams; it’s hard to see the teams currently employing John Lackey, David Price, or Zack Greinke (who can, and probably will, opt out of his deal with the Dodgers) dealing them away. That said — even a Yovani Gallardo would help the Jays at this point.

Boston: Ahahahaha. This team needs no real introduction at the moment; Orioles fans got to see up close and personal how dysfunctional they are right now. The standard caveats apply: there’s a lot of raw talent on this club, especially at the plate, that could turn their fortunes mildly around. But more and more, it’s starting to look like 2013 was a fluke, a combination of a bunch of career years all hitting at once. The one difference between this club now and the last time we checked in is, of course, Eduardo Rodriguez — and this is something more concerning about the O’s pitching development than anything else.

After being traded to Boston, Rodriguez made two main mechanical changes: a refinement of his delivery by Boston’s pitching dev, and a change in the kind of changeup he’s throwing. Baltimore’s dev, according to someone close to the Boston side of things, had been forcing a change-up on him he didn’t like. Boston let him go back to throwing his change the way he wanted, refined his delivery slightly, and, well. You’ve seen him, no doubt. Could this all be nonsense? Sure it could, but a combination of “slight mechanical changes and letting the guy do what he wants” has already led to Jake Arrieta, NL Cy Young Contender. He’d be even better if Chicago gave in and fielded an actual shortstop at the position instead of Starlin Castro. At some point, you have to start taking a look at your own process. And seeing as the last successful starting pitching prospect the Orioles converted from draft to MLB was Erik Bedard, a junior college draftee who barely spoke any English when he arrived, maybe that time is now.

The Weeks Ahead

New York: A weekend series in Baltimore, and then the Yankees get four games against a Marlins team the Jays just finished knocking around before heading home to face Detroit and Philadelphia in a homestand. While the O’s might win the weekend series, hard to see the Yankees dipping out of first place with an upcoming schedule like that.

Tampa Bay: The Rays get a weekend set against the White Sox, another recent contender for worst team in baseball who have only just started to climb out of the toilet, then have to face the slumping Nationals. By the time they get to the Jays and Red Sox for some divisional play, it’ll almost be July.

Toronto: Given the roll they’re on, the Jays should stomp the Sox this weekend — but then, the Jays’ pitching isn’t really this good and the Sox’ hitting isn’t really this bad. The Jays get four games against the Mets after that — it’s the AL East’s week to pair up with the NL East and do two home games and two away games — and then it’s back to divisional play. Hopefully they’ve cooled off by the time they host the Orioles next Friday.

Boston: Oh, Boston. They’re lucky they draw the Braves for their home/away series in the middle of next week, because the bookends are the white-hot Jays and the AL-best Kansas City Royals, followed by a solid week of divisional play. Things could get worse for Boston before they get better. Which would be nice.

Jonathan Bernhardt

Jonathan is a contributing writer for VICE Sports. His work has previously appeared in Sports on Earth, Baseball Prospectus, The Classical, and ESPN’s SweetSpot Network. Born in central Maryland, Bernhardt currently lives in the New York metropolitan area.

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