The first games have been played at Camden Yards since the White Sox series, and the Orioles made national headlines by compensating their hourly employees for the shifts they missed due to the cancellations or postponements of six games in Baltimore that week, but the Orioles have been much less impressive on the field than they have been off of it — and the rest of the division is starting to find its feet.

NY Yankees

21

15

.583

Tampa Bay

20

16

.556

1.0

Boston

17

18

.486

3.5

Toronto

17

19

.472

4.0

Baltimore

15

17

.462

4.5

(Discuss this post on the BSL forums here.)

It is the middle of May. We’re not at the panic point yet. A couple of Orioles — most notably Adam Jones and Ubaldo Jimenez — are off to fantastic starts. But we’re three or four more “it’s still early”s away from having to shift to “this is trouble if it keeps up.” Maybe fewer. Especially if Tampa Bay keeps playing like this.

New York: The Yankees had an aggravating week, as far as Baltimore’s concerned: they beat up on the Orioles, and then immediately went to Tampa and dropped three of four. In a way this is good for the O’s, since it keeps either one of the two teams above them from building a strong lead in the AL East, even early. But Baltimore fans had hoped their club would be better than a Tampa Bay team that clearly is rebuilding — and so far this year, that hasn’t been the case. That said, New York still looks threatening, as Baltimore got the business end of a 7 inning, 16K start from Michael Pineda, who looks fantastic so far. And he hasn’t been caught doctoring the ball, an offense he was suspended for last season; to be fair to him, though, the only thing exceptional about Pineda’s use of pine tar in was how brazen he was. The Red Sox, and likely other teams have been using spray-on sunscreen to grunge up their breaking pitches for years to silence from the league, because they’re thoughtful enough not to wave their rulebreaking in the umpire’s face and force the issue. If it turns out Pineda’s again getting extra spin on his pitches from doctoring the ball, then that is cheating; but it if that’s the case, he’s unlikely to be caught doing the same thing the same way twice.

Tampa Bay: The Rays had a good week in the standings and a horrible week outside of them, losing Alex Cobb and Drew Smyly both for the season with throwing arm injuries. Chris Archer and Jake Odorizzi continue to pitch out of their minds at the top of the rotation — and Nate Karns has gotten his numbers back to acceptable since being touched up earlier in the season by a number of teams, Orioles included — but Cobb and Smyly turning that rotation into perhaps the best in baseball would have given them a clear path to the postseason. As it is, they’re getting by on half an elite rotation, a strong young outfield whose hot start is beginning to slow down, Evan Longoria, and bizarrely, former Padre Logan Forsythe, who is having an excellent start to the season at second base and has heated up the past few weeks.

Boston: The big news this week was the Red Sox finally having enough of Justin Masterson and banishing him to the 15-day DL, despite him explicitly and repeatedly claiming to be healthy before amending his tune. The Red Sox don’t have the ability to banish Masterson to AAA outright like they did the disastrous Allan Craig, but it’s hard to imagine any team picking up the tab on Masterson as he is right now, with an ERA north of 6 and a $9.5 million price-tag for this season. The amusing thing about this Boston team — which is in the middle of a West Coast roadtrip that’s been successful so far, after dropping two of three to Toronto — is that should they eventually decide they have to be sellers at the deadline, the only non-bullpen pieces of remote interest are Shane Victorino and Mike Napoli, who have been respectively injured and ineffective so far this season. Outside of relievers Koji Uehara and Junichi Tazawa, most everyone on the club is either too old and expensive to trade, or too young and psychotically hyped by the team and media to let go. One assumes they’ll bite the bullet and trade someone, but by the time they’re convinced of the need it might already be too late.

Toronto: Toronto’s sort of like Boston this year but without the gimmick stadium or the expectations. Like Boston, their lineup is full of talented bats who can hit. Like Boston, their pitchers can’t get anyone out. Unlike Boston, however, their minor league system has been thinned to the point where they don’t really have a pitcher to call up (other than the just-sent-down Daniel Norris), nor do they have the assets to make a trade. Randy Wolf and Johan Santana are still lurking around the Jays system though; things go really far south, and we could see a 2015 rotation featuring both of those guys and Jeff Francis.

The Week Ahead

NYY: @ KCR, 5/15-17; @ WAS, 5/19-20

Light week for the Yankees, who play three games against the Royals, get a day off, then two games against the Nationals followed by another day off. Unfortunately for them, the Royals are tied for the second best record in baseball and the Nationals finally seem to have roused themselves from their stupor.

TBR: @ MIN, 5/15-17; @ ATL, 5/19-20; vs OAK, 5/21-24

We’re fully into non-division play here, and considering how few games the Yankees are playing this week and whom they’re against, the Rays are poised to take over first place by the end of action on Thursday — neither Minnesota nor Atlanta are very good teams, and Oakland continues to struggle.

BOS: @ SEA, 5/15-17; vs TEX, 5/19-21

The Sox continue to play their way through the AL West — they’ll see every team in the division except the first-place Astros over this four-series set — and given the general anemia displayed by the West so far this year, should be able to continue limping around at .500 or slightly better.

TOR: @ HOU, 5/14-17; vs LAA, 5/18-21

The Jays, of course, get the good half of the AL West. With good week by the Orioles and a bad week by the Jays starting pitchers, Baltimore could find themselves in fourth (or perhaps even third) by the time next Friday rolls around.

 

Jonathan Bernhardt
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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