Wild card gives Orioles more chances to dream of October

The wild card has made the 98 remaining games on the Orioles’ schedule must-watch baseball. So many teams are contending for an American League wild-card spot that there’s the potential for each of those 98 games to be meaningful.

Entering Friday night’s games, the Orioles and the Toronto Blue Jays were tied, just one-half game behind the Athletics and Texas Rangers, who were tied for the third and final wild-card spot.

The guess here is that there will be many similar sentences written over the next three-plus months.

Minnesota, Houston and Boston each began the night within 3 ½ games of the final wild-card berth.

If you read BaseballReference.com’s Orioles page, you might be pessimistic about their chances. The Orioles have a 10.1 percent chance of qualifying for the postseason. Toronto, which began Friday with an identical record, has a 32.1 percent postseason chance while the Athletics (30.6 percent) and Rangers (67.9 percent) were given better playoff odds.

Baseball’s most surprising team, the Chicago White Sox,, current holders of the second wild-card position, have a 53.6 percent chance of playing in October.

If you’re like me, you might want to check FanGraphs’ projections instead. They give the Orioles a 33.5 percent chance of making the playoffs while the Blue Jays are given 42.5 percent. Texas (43.6), the Athletics (37.4) and Chicago (17) each have lower FanGraphs odds than in BaseballReference.com.

Besides two more games this weekend, the Orioles have six games in September with Toronto. They also have games remaining with the Rangers, Athletics and White Sox.

If you’re thinking the Orioles are conceding the American League East and concentrating on a wild-card berth, well, that would be realistic.

FanGraphs calculates the Orioles odds of winning the East at just 2.1 percent.

After his start on May 22^nd, starting pither Chris Bassitt was both optimistic and realistic about the Orioles’ chances. At that point, they were three games back in the race and were coming off a demoralizing three-game sweep at Tampa Bay.

“It’s not a big hole,” Bassitt proclaimed. “I mean, how many games back of the wild card are we? Yeah, that’s nothing. I won the division last year. I would love to win the division. It’s just cool. But the reality is, it’s just get to the playoffs. The No. 1 goal for me always is just get to the playoffs.

“It’s not win the division, because there are so many times that I feel like in the past a team that I’ve been on has chased the division, and then, OK, we didn’t win the division, but we made the playoffs, and we were absolutely fried from trying to win the division. So, to me, it’s just how do you get into the playoffs? And then how to get into the playoffs healthy, just given the amount of time off certain guys need. So, yeah, I don’t think there’s a fear of a deficit, because there really isn’t one.”

About two weeks later, the Orioles are looking better.

“Well, I mean, we’re three games back and I feel like we could not have played much worse, so, yeah. I think it’s just, again, getting guys going and staying healthy. We’ve been pretty dang banged up overall. So, just getting guys healthy, staying healthy, and just playing better baseball.”

The Orioles are playing better, and they’re another good week away from solidifying their playoff hopes—or a bad week away from making them harder.

After Sunday’s game in Toronto, the Orioles have a lengthy break from the AL East. They’ll have completed a home-and-home series with each of the four East teams and won’t play another division game for 34 games—when they visit Fenway Park for a three-game series from July 20^th-22^nd.

After that, they don’t play another East team until August 14^th when the Orioles will begin a 10-game stretch with the Rays, Yankees and Rays again.

In the meantime, there are some challenging interleague series ahead—three games next weekend with San Diego and three in Los Angeles against the Dodgers two weeks from now (June 19^th-21^st). In late July and early August, they have two difficult series with Atlanta (July 24^th-26^th) and Philadelphia (July 31^st-August 2^nd).

FanGraphs projects the Orioles will finish with an 80-82 record, which wouldn’t be good enough to qualify for the postseason. Their model shows the final wild-card berth going to Toronto with an 82-80 record.

That could mean lots of important games between now and September 27^th when they end the season at Yankee Stadium, and many opportunities to rebound from disappointing stretches.

Call for questions: I answer Orioles questions most weekdays. Please send yours to: Rich@BaltimoreBaseball.com