This is as good a time as any to examine the curious case of the Orioles offense, which has improved significantly since the team traded this year’s most valuable player, Manny Machado, and last year’s actual Most Valuable Oriole, Jonathan Schoop.
It doesn’t seem to make any sense, unless you embrace the notion that the Orioles are hitting better now than at any time during the first half of the season because it would have been almost impossible to do any worse.
The offensive futility was unprecedented, so maybe there was nowhere to go but up, but it’s still hard to explain why they averaged 3.