Boston Red Sox and Baltimore Orioles Set to Make History on Monday Night
The two hottest teams in baseball will square off in a once-in-a-142-year matchup.
Video Transcript
What's up everybody?
Zach Coe here for Roundtable.
On Monday night at Fenway Park, two of the hottest teams in baseball will square off, the Boston Red Sox riding a 13-game winning streak, and the Baltimore Orioles riding a seven-game unbeaten streak.
And according to Opta stats, the two teams will make history during that matchup, becoming only the second pair of teams to face off in MLB history with winning streaks of seven or more games, where the combined win streak is 20 or more wins, and the first time such a matchup has occurred since September 1884 when the St. Louis Maroons put their 12-game winning streak on the line against the Washington Nationals and their 11-game winning streak.
So, I wanna take a minute to look into this Orioles winning streak, which has brought them right back into the American League wild card picture.
They trail the Red Sox by just two games for the third and final wild card position.
And like the Red Sox, their winning streak has been propelled by strong starting pitching.
Over the course of their last seven games, Orioles pitchers have allowed just 14 runs, good for a 180 ERA, which is the third lowest in baseball in that stretch.
Offensively, though, the Orioles have struggled.
They've hit just 210, but they're relying instead on 11 home runs and a 294 batting average with runners in scoring position to get the job done.
And I think that this Orioles winning streak might be a little bit more of Cam Newton's fool's gold than anything else, when you consider the two teams that they beat, the Kansas City Royals and the Houston Astros, are among the worst pitching staffs in baseball, both ranking in the bottom five in ERA allowed.
And this is a team that isn't doing a ton of damage against these really putrid pitching staffs.
So it'll be interesting to see Baltimore come into Fenway Park with a rolling Red Sox team, of course, looking to take sole possession of the second longest winning streak in franchise history.
But also, this is unequivocally the best pitching staff that Baltimore has faced, and they have been struggling against these bad staffs during the course of their stretch.
Of course, none of it will matter if the Orioles pitching continues to deliver the same way that they have over the course of their last seven games.
But
