Orioles among the biggest risers in Fansided's latest power rankings update

The way that the Baltimore Orioles started their season made it difficult for their fans to enjoy reading any sort of power rankings-type article. For those who dared to click on any of the early-season power rankings that are available, inevitably found the Orioles in the bottom third of the rankings. The Athletic even put them as low as 28th in one of their updates. The little blurb beneath their rankings, where whoever did the rankings would explain why they were ranked so low, always said something along the lines of "this team was supposed to be good, but their pitching stinks, so they're actually bad" or something like that. It was tough to read, but at the time, the Orioles deserved every bit of criticism they were getting.

Over the last few weeks, however, things have started to change for the Orioles. They ripped off a 7-3 homestand that included three walkoff wins as well as a sweep of the best team in the AL. Sunday's loss to the Blue Jays stung, but even after dropping that series, they returned home today after a 3-3 road trip against Boston and Toronto. Even for good teams, the goal is always to win your series at home and split on the road, and that's what the Orioles have done over the last two weeks.

The Orioles have risen out of the basement of Fansided power rankings

During this stretch, the Orioles have experienced a meteoric rise in the Fansided power rankings. On May 24th, they sat at 25th; a week later, they were up to 18th, and on Sunday, when the latest rankings dropped, they climbed all the way up to 14th. They sit ahead of several teams that have better win-loss records than they do because, over the last two weeks, several aspects of this Orioles team clicked into place.

The improvements go beyond just managing to win more games. The stats and the eye test both agree that they are a much-improved team. Kyle Bradish and Shane Baz have both looked much more like the pitchers the Orioles envisioned coming into the season, and Brandon Young looks way better than anyone could have possibly imagined. Through May 20th, the Orioles had the third-worst rotation in baseball by ERA. Since that date, their rotation has had the sixth-best ERA in the league. That's a massive leap.

Talent-wise, the Orioles don't have the sixth-best rotation in baseball, so they're due for some regression, but as long as they regress to being a middle-of-the-road rotation and not one of the worst in the league, they'll be OK.

The offense has looked a lot more complete over that span as well. Colton Cowser and Blaze Alexander each have an OPS over 1.000 since May 20th. Coby Mayo has looked like a completely different player in that span as well, and Jackson Holliday's return has nicely buoyed the bottom of the Orioles lineup.

For most of the season, the 6-9 spots in the Orioles batting order were easy outs. As long as a pitcher could get through the top half of the Orioles lineup, they were in for a nice run of easy outs.  With so many of these young Orioles hitters surging at the same time, pitchers are now having a harder time navigating the bottom of the Orioles lineup than the top.

When you can go into an inning with the bottom of your lineup due up and put up a crooked number, that is super demoralizing for opposing pitchers and makes it so the Orioles never feel like they're out of a game.

The Orioles have a tough home stand coming up this week as they take on an ascending Mariners team and a Padres team that is fighting to stay in the NL playoff picture. They'll need to brush off their tough loss in Toronto and show up at home if they want to continue rising up the standings and the power rankings.

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