Peter Schmuck: Why an Orioles win today matters more than you think

If it looked like the bad old days when Yankee fans would regularly take over Oriole Park while the O’s suffered through a 14-year string of losing seasons, well, looks aren’t always deceiving.

The Yankees are on their way to the playoffs and their fans drowned out the home crowd when Giancarlo Stanton and Aaron Judge hit early-inning home runs on the way to a 6-1 victory Saturday night. The Orioles had no answer and it would be easy to think they might be ready to go softly into another unhappy offseason.

There is seemingly nothing to play for except the hollow satisfaction of possibly keeping the latter-day Bronx Bombers from staging a late-season rally to overtake the Toronto Blue Jays and win the American League East title.

I beg to disagree. There is quite a lot to play for, both during Sunday’s series finale and when they go to New York for the final three games of the regular season.

We all know that the postseason has been out of the question for months and yet the young O’s have become a thorn in the side of several top-flight contenders during the past several weeks. They took six out of eight games against Seattle, Houston and Boston in mid-August and opened September with a three-game road sweep of the San Diego Padres and a series win over the first-place Dodgers.

So, they have shown that with a little more pitching they can compete with anyone, but they also would benefit greatly from making a strong last impression over the next eight days.

That needs to start Sunday when Kyle Bradish takes the mound against Yankees rookie Cam Schlittler with a chance to even both this four-game series and the overall season series (5-5).

Of course, that would do some damage to the Yankees’ division title hopes and a lot of Oriole fans would take comfort in quieting the irritating fans that take advantage of this disappointing season by scarfing up enough good tickets on StubHub and SeatGeek to control the crowd noise.

That’s fine, but it isn’t the point. The Orioles need to finish strong enough to reinforce in both the clubhouse and the front office that they are close to restoring the team they were supposed to be this year with only a few key moves in the offseason.

Doing that next weekend against a team that might just head back to the World Series would not only take some of the sting out this submarine ride of a season, it might give Tony Mansolino a better chance of getting rid of that pesky interim label.

It wouldn’t be enough to make a silk purse out of a sour year, but it would be one last big step in the right direction.