For two last place teams, like the Orioles and Royals, the All-Star break provides a welcome reprieve from the normally scheduled bad baseball they are asked to endure for the majority of the summer. Both teams had lost four consecutive games going into the mini vacation, and now they emerge with a somewhat favorable match-up, a series against a team existing in the same realm of poor performance as themselves.
Of course, the Royals, just like our O’s, have their bright spots. Whit Merrifield and Salvador Perez were deserving All-Stars. Merrifield leads MLB with 24 stolen bases, four more than second place Fernando Tatis Jr.