One week into June, the A's ruled the American League, and the Orioles were contemplating another flop. Oakland owned the league's best record, a 5½-game lead over the Angels in the AL West, and the biggest run differential in the game.
Baltimore, on the other hand, was a game over .500, owned the eighth-best record in the league, and was already 6½ games behind first-place Toronto in the East. The Orioles seemed to be fading behind a pitching staff that had no particular strengths.
Neither team knew that their fortunes were about to change.
Oakland entered this weekend with virtually zero chance of claiming its third consecutive division title; the A's are clinging to a wild-card spot in a race that's probably no better than a tossup with two weeks to go. Baltimore this week will formally lock up its first division title since 1997.
Here's the crazy part, though: Guess which team has lost two of its cornerstone players to injury?
Yes, the Orioles are thriving despite playing without catcher Matt Wieters, lost early this season to elbow surgery, and third baseman Manny Machado, who went down two weeks ago with a knee injury.
"I don't think anybody said, 'Oh, this changes things,' when [Machado] got hurt. Just like they didn't get down when Matt needed [surgery]," Orioles manager Buck Showalter said. "It's been a confident bunch of guys since [spring training in] Sarasota. … There's a point where you say, 'You know, we can win,' and that counts for a lot."
Still, they're about to be tested again, after Chris Davis tested positive for the stimulant Adderall without a waiver. His 25-game suspension is particularly worrisome, considering he'd hit 26 homers and piled up 72 RBI even while hitting .196.
And home runs are important in Baltimore. For the second season in a row, the Orioles will be the only major league team to hit 200 homers, and it's a good thing, too.
The Orioles rank last in stolen bases, 13th in walks, 11th in doubles and last in triples. They hit singles and homers, and the combination somehow makes them a top-five run-scoring offense. No team comes close to relying on home runs the way the Orioles do, and those long balls, plus one of the best defenses in baseball, help them survive despite a starting rotation in which no pitcher owns an ERA better than Chris Tillman's 3.36.
The A's have better pitching, and a more versatile offense — and a much tougher road to a championship, thanks to an ugly late-August collapse that nobody expected. Oakland had lost 12 of 15 games entering Saturday, and went 9-22 while the Angels got hot and pulled away. Much has been made of the injury to closer Sean Doolittle, and the trade of Yoenis Cespedes, but the A's problems center on their offense. In June, they held the major league lead in runs scored. In August, they ranked 12th.
They are 3-12 in one-run games since Aug. 1, and 1-7 since Sept. 1, suggesting that bad luck is playing as big a role as bad hitting in their collapse.
"We're putting way too much pressure on ourselves, and on our pitching," manager Bob Melvin told reporters last week. "We've got to find a way to add on some runs."
Yet they still possess a four-man rotation of Sonny Gray, Jeff Samardzija, Jon Lester and Scott Kazmir, formidable come the postseason. And they're still basically the same team that once looked like a runaway winner.
"We'll keep grinding. That's all we can do," Melvin said. "This thing isn't over."
Stats
- With three starts left in 2014 (entering Saturday), Twins righthander Phil Hughes has walked only 15 batters in 187⅔ innings pitched, putting him in position to become the 10th player in major league history (since 1901) to walk 20 or fewer batters in 200 or more innings.
He also could set a record for fewest walks allowed; the record is 18, held by three players.
- The major league record for fewest walks in a season by a pitcher who qualified for the ERA title (minimum 162 innings) is held by a Twins pitcher: Carlos Silva walked only nine batters for the Twins in 2005 while pitching 188⅓ innings.
Target Field home runs
If the Twins can connect on a few long balls during their final homestand of the season, which begins Monday, they can reach a couple of firsts: They are seven home runs away from their team record of 69 homers at Target Field, and they can outhomer the opposition for the first time in the park's history; they currently trail their opponents by four home runs in the five-year-old park.
With 62 home runs in Minneapolis and 53 on the road, entering Saturday, the Twins have already virtually assured that this will be the second time they hit more homers in Target Field than on the road. (They hit 69 at home in 2012, and 62 on the road.)
Central Intelligence
By season's end, about a quarter-million fewer fans will have visited Target Field in 2014 than a year earlier, but the Twins are hardly the only AL Central team with attendance concerns. A look at the not-so-rosy numbers:
Indians: Despite making the playoffs last year and lingering around the fringe of the race in 2014, Cleveland is in danger of falling behind Tampa Bay and finishing last in the majors in attendance. An 8 percent drop this year means the Indians draw only 17,651 per game.
Royals: They're the only AL Central team with rising attendance this season, an increase of more than 155,000 fans over last year, which sounds great. But Kansas City still ranks only 25th in the majors with an average of 23,648 fans per game.
Tigers: Detroit will miss drawing 3 million for the first time in three years, and the Tigers have dropped to eighth in the majors. The Tigers blame an April-heavy schedule, but they've lost an average of 2,000 fans per game.
White Sox: A top-10 team in attendance just eight years ago, Chicago has fallen to 28th in the majors, and may fail to average 20,000 for the first time since 1999.
Former Twins outfielder Hunter, now working with Angels, open to managing
