Baltimore Orioles: Postseason chances rise after sweep of Red Sox

The Baltimore Orioles end Players Weekend with a sweep of the Boston Red Sox on Sunday afternoon as they climb in the American League Wild Card standings.

The Baltimore Orioles shined as bright as their MLB Players Weekend jerseys at Fenway Park as they swept the Boston Red Sox and find themselves right back in the middle of a heated AL Wild Card. Not to mention, the Baltimore Orioles are a .500 team for the first time since Aug. 7 when they stood at 56-56.

As a result, the 65-65 Orioles are only two games back from the Minnesota Twins (67-63) for the final playoff spot in the AL Wild Card standings and ride a four game winning streak back to Baltimore.

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Following Sunday’s action, the Orioles were able to leap over the Kansas City Royals with the Seattle Mariners and Los Angeles of Anaheim ahead of the O’s in the Wild Card standings.

With so much focus on the Wild Card, the Orioles quietly gained ground in the AL East and now trail the AL East-leading Red Sox by eight games.

So, don’t count out the Orioles just yet in the race for the AL East crown as Dan Clark points out an intriguing graphic from MASN yesterday during the Orioles-Red Sox series finale:

As noted above, the 2017 Orioles are trying to remake history from the 1974 Orioles team. On Aug. 28, 1974, the Orioles were two games below .500 at 63-65 and eight games back from first place in the AL East, almost identical to the 2017 Orioles.

However, after stringing together 10 consecutive wins, the Orioles found themselves just a game back from sitting atop the AL East. The team went on to win 28 of their final 34 games to win the AL East title with a two game cushion.

Do the Orioles have another historic run to not only just make the playoffs as a Wild Card but also division title for the first time since 2014.

Baltimore Orioles Standings: Postseason Probability 

With the final month of the 2017 MLB season just about here, let’s transition to some baseball analytics and discover the latest playoff chances for the Orioles after sweeping the Red Sox this weekend.

FiveThirtyEight

FiveThirtyEight’s 2017 MLB Predictions calculates the Orioles chances of reaching postseason play at 14 percent entering their critical series versus the Seattle Mariners and 10-game homestand. Despite moving within eight games from the AL East-leading Red Sox, FiveThirtyEight gives the O’s less than one percent chance of winning the division.

Ahead of the third place Orioles are the New York Yankees (70-59) who has a 90 percent chance of making the playoffs, along with a 31 percent chance of a division title.

FanGraphs Baseball

At the start of the Orioles-Red Sox Players Weekend series, the baseball statistics and analytics site, FanGraphs had the Orioles playoff probability at 3.7 percent. Once the Orioles completed the sweep of the Red Sox, Fangraphs playoff projection increased to 8.6 percent.

Oddly enough, the site puts the Tampa Bay Rays, who are two games below .500 with a 12.9 percent chance of reaching postseason play.

TeamRankings.com

MLB baseball standings projections on TeamRankings.com present the Orioles with a playoff probability 10.7 percent and just a 0.3 percent of a division title in 2017.

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At the top of the AL East, the Red Sox and Yankees are given a 99 percent and 94.5 percent probability of a postseason berth.