The Baltimore Orioles Will Make the Playoffs in 2020

The Baltimore Orioles are shocking Major League Baseball and their fans as well.

The Baltimore Orioles  are 11-8 and have swept the Tampa Bay Rays, a team ESPN’s Alex Rodriguez said would win the World Series in 2020. They have also swept the Phillies, a team with a $74 million payroll, and the defending World Series champion Nationals.

The Orioles’ bats are on fire. The O’s lead the American League with a .269 team batting average and are second in all of MLB. They have eight players with an OPS of .837 or higher. In 2019, the Orioles were No. 21 in team batting average.

We knew the Orioles’ lineup was capable before the season started but we expected the pitching staff to be awful. However, the surprise this year has been the O’s ranking No. 17 in team ERA, up 13 from spots from their league-worst 2019.

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Oriole starters Alex Cobb, Tommy Milone, Asher Wojciechowski and Thomas Eshelman all have ERA’s of 3.95 or lower. The bullpen has been shocking this season. The pen has only taken two losses in the Orioles’ first 17 games and have five guys with an ERA of 3.18 or lower.

The Orioles’ resiliency has been amazing to watch this season. They have shown the ability to be down in games but rally when the time is right to win. They seem like a group of guys who do not back down when times get hard which is a measure of a good team. They were swept by the Marlins’ taxi squad and came back to sweep the defending champions.

Currently, the Orioles are sitting second in the A.L. East behind the Yankees and would make the expanded playoffs in 2020 if the season ended today. I believe they will keep this up and make the postseason this year.

The O’s lineup is just too good for this team to not make the playoffs in this season. Hanser Alberto, Anthony Santander, José Iglesias, Rio Ruiz and Pedro Severino have been excellent and I don’t see them falling off too much.

While the starting pitching concerns me, I still have faith a finally healthy Alex Cobb can keep up his great start. I do not believe the bullpen will fall off. They seem to have figured out their woes from last year. The Orioles will continue to play well and play postseason baseball in 2020.