Orioles just blew a golden opportunity to bury weakened Blue Jays

Through the first two games of their series against the Blue Jays, the Baltimore Orioles had thoroughly outclassed their AL East rival. The offense was looking unstoppable, the Orioles' pitching staff held Toronto to three runs total over two games, and the totality of the experience was making Blue Jays' manager John Schneider looking foolish for not giving respect to the Orioles' name.

However, things took a turn after that. With the Orioles' 6-5 loss on Thursday, Baltimore only managed a series split with a Blue Jays team that is looking very vulnerable, creating a sense that the Orioles just blew a chance to put the nail in the coffin of one of their division rivals' season.

Toronto figures out Povich in MLB debut, Orioles only manage series split against Blue Jays

In fairness to the Orioles, they certainly made Thursday's game more interesting late than it originally looked like it was going to be. Baltimore was actually down 6-1 through seven innings as Toronto wasn't fooled by Cade Povich, who was making his debut, but two-run homers off the bats of Ryan O'Hearn and Adley Rutschman got the Orioles to within a run of making an epic comeback.

That said, this is a pretty disappointing result for Baltimore all things considered. It was looking like this series was going to be a pretty easy series win and would have probably insured that Toronto would have entered the trade deadline in last place in the AL East. Instead, the Blue Jays are still kind of hanging around .500 and have some semblance of hope for a turnaround.

When you have a chance to crush a key rival's dreams, you just have to take it. The Blue Jays came into this series with real pitching problems (both in the rotation and the bullpen) and have gaping holes in their lineup at multiple positions. One can only hope that Toronto coming back to salvage a split in this series doesn't come back to haunt the Orioles down the road.

More Orioles News from Birds Watcher