For Orioles outfielder Austin Hays, as he produces an All-Star caliber season, there are probably not many highlights that will top when he hit for the cycle recently. He became the sixth Oriole in team history to do that. And he got it a game that was shortened to six innings by rain a week ago Wednesday, when the Orioles were hosting the Washington Nationals.

But most nights, Hays is just as excited, probably more so, when he can make a big defensive play such as running a ball down in the gap or throwing a runner out on the bases. He and the Orioles are doing that often. Heading into Wednesday’s game at Seattle, the club’s 17 outfield assists were fourth-most in the major leagues and Hays was tied for second with seven outfield assists. His 19 assists since 2020 were tied for fourth most in the majors.

“I take so much pride in my defense, I think it means more to me when I can throw out a runner or make a big defensive play in a tight situation late in the game," Hays said in a recent interview with me on my WBAL Radio Orioles postgame show. "I’d say that’s more fun for me or means more to me when I do that than do it on the offensive side of the ball.”

The guy is making accurate throws with a lot on them. The arm-strength-and-accuracy combo is very impressive. The Orioles recently released a stat showing that, since 2016, Hays' arm speed from the outfield has recorded the five fastest and 10 of the 11 fastest Baltimore outfield throws.

97.6 mph – May 20, 2022 against Tampa Bay

BOWIE, Md. – It had to be a pretty neat moment for high Single-A Aberdeen manager Roberto Mercado and some of his top players. He was about to tell three of his best players and three O’s top 10 prospects on Sunday that they were going to be promoted to Double-A Bowie. And outfielder Colton Cowser and infielders Coby Mayo and Connor Norby were going together to join the Baysox of the Eastern League.

“Berto, he kind of called us in and you kind of had a feeling like something was up,” Norby said yesterday during an interview at Bowie’s Prince George’s Stadium. “And then he was like, ‘You know, when is your off-day?’ We were like Monday is usually that day. He said, ‘Monday is not your off-day. You guys have to get to Bowie.’ We all got excited and started hugging everybody. It was a really cool moment. But I don’t think you can top Buck (Britton) with Adley (Rutschman), but every call-up is special.”

No, that may have been an all-timer when Rutschman got the call to go from Triple-A to join the Orioles and his skipper delivered that news.

But this was still pretty cool for the then-Aberdeen trio, which had also moved up together as part of a larger group from the Rookie-level Florida Complex League to low Single-A Delmarva late last year. And they started this season together with Aberdeen, helping to lead the IronBirds to a first-half division championship going 43-23 in the South Atlantic League.

“We all got called up together,” said Cowser. “We were in Berto’s office in Aberdeen and he said we didn’t have quite the off-day on Monday. We had to get moving down here and it was really exciting.”

After taking three of four games in Chicago and splitting games the last two nights in Seattle, the Orioles and Mariners play the third and deciding game of their series this afternoon at T-Mobile Park.

The Orioles hit five homers on Monday night as they won 9-2 over the Mariners, but then they were held to just one hit on Tuesday night in a 2-0 loss.

The Orioles (35-41) are 7-4 in rubber match games as they play yet another such game today. Overall, they are 4-2 on this road trip and 17-24 on the road for the season. They have gone 11-8 in their past 19 road games. They have won five of seven games overall and also six of nine and eight of their past 12 games. They are 11-6 over the last 17, 13-9 in 22 games and 21-17 over 38 games since May 19.

The O’s lost Tuesday while giving up just two runs, and they’ve allowed two runs or fewer in nine of their past 12 games with a team ERA of 2.01 in that span. O’s pitchers have allowed 11 runs the past seven games, 15 in nine and 24 runs in the past dozen games.

Baltimore starting pitchers have a 1.54 ERA (8 ER/46.2 IP) over the last nine games after Dean Kremer threw seven scoreless innings Tuesday. In allowing two runs last night the Baltimore bullpen saw a 13-game streak snapped in which the ‘pen allowed one earned run or none. The O’s bullpen ERA is 1.69 (9 ER/48 IP) over the last 14 games.

In his first plate appearance at the Double-A level for the Bowie Baysox last night, outfielder Colton Cowser drew a walk. The second time up, in the third inning, he lined a two-run homer to left-center field as Bowie went on to beat Richmond 9-3 Tuesday night at Prince George’s Stadium.

The game featured the Double-A debuts of Cowser, the Orioles No. 4 prospect per MLBPipeline.com, Coby Mayo, ranked No. 7, and Connor Norby, rated No. 10.

Norby led off for Bowie and played second base with Cowser batting second in center field and Mayo hitting third as the designated hitter. Cowser wound up going 3-for-3 with a walk and scoring two runs. Norby went 1-for-4 and Mayo was 0-for-5.

Bowie finished in last place at 27-42 in the first half, but last night the teams began the second half, with every club starting with a clean slate and 0-0 record.

Meanwhile, high Single-A Aberdeen lost those three players after winning the first half title in its division of the South Atlantic League.

As the Orioles continue to play winning baseball and are 21-16 since May 19, they are compiling a number of good stats on both the pitching and hitting sides. Let’s take a look at several of them as they get set tonight to play the second game of a three-game series at Seattle.

A 21-16 record produces a win percentage of .568 over a 37-game span, which is nearly a quarter of the season. A team that could play at that percentage for 162 games would finish 92-70.

The Orioles' 9-2 win last night at Seattle gives them a 35-40 record and they have won five of six, six of eight and eight of 11 games. The Orioles are now 11-5 the last 16 games and 13-8 over their past 21. While they have an overall losing record in road games at 17-23, they are 11-7 in their past 18 games away from Oriole Park and they are 4-1 to start this 10-game road trip.

The Baltimore pitching staff has put together a stunning run with a team ERA of 1.99 over the last 11 games, and they have allowed two runs or less in eight of those games. O’s pitchers have allowed nine combined runs the last six games, 13 in eight and 22 runs over the last 11 games.

In addition to that, the O’s starting pitchers have an ERA of 1.82 over the last eight games. And the Baltimore bullpen has allowed zero or one earned run for 13 consecutive games with an ERA of 1.34 in those 13 games and 0.93 over the past six games.

When Triple-A Norfolk infielder and sometimes center fielder Terrin Vavra was a teenager, he got quite an experience in baseball. He learned things that help him today as he plays for the O’s Norfolk affiliate and he closes in on his first call to the major leagues.

He got off to a great start this year for the Tides – and was batting .327 through 13 games – when he suffered a hamstring injury. He would return a little over a month later after a short rehab assignment with high Single-A Aberdeen. He has picked up hitting just as he had in April.

Through 28 games with Norfolk through Sunday's games, Vavra was batting .312/.419/.422 with an OPS of.841 and showing solid walk (13.8) and strikeout rates (16.2) with 18 walks to 21 strikeouts. A third round draft pick of the Colorado Rockies out of the University of Minnesota in 2018, Vavra was added by the Orioles when they traded Mychal Givens to Colorado on Aug. 30, 2020. That deal sent Vavra, Tyler Nevin and a player to be named later to the Orioles. The PTNL became young outfielder Mishael Deson, who is now with low Single-A Delmarva.

But as for Vavra, his baseball education includes rubbing elbows as a teen with players like Joe Mauer, Jim Thome, Michael Cuddyer and Justin Morneau. His father, Joe, was the hitting coach for the Minnesota Twins during much of his time on their staff from 2006 through 2017 and he later also coached for the Detroit Tigers. Vavra has two older brothers that played in the minors too. Tanner was a 30^th round draft pick by Minnesota in 2013 and Trey was selected by the same Twins team a year later in round 33.

That is some impressive family background in the pro game.

After taking three of four games at Chicago, the Orioles' road trip moves on to Seattle tonight for the first of a three-game series. A win would give the O’s a big leg up on another series victory and a winning road trip, and would also clinch a winning month for the Orioles for the first time in nearly five years.

They are 13-10 in June, outscoring their opponents 112-94 (+18). They need one win in their next three games to clinch their first winning month since August 2017, when they went 17-12. The Orioles have secured their first .500 month since July 2019 (12-12).

The Orioles took two out of three games the last time they visited the Mariners, from May 3-5, 2021. And the last time they played in Seattle, on May 5, 2021, left-hander John Means threw the sixth no-hitter in Orioles history in a 6-0 victory at T-Mobile Park. It was the first Orioles no-hitter since a combined effort by Bob Milacki, Mike Flanagan, Mark Williamson and Gregg Olson on July 13, 1991 at Oakland, and the first individual, complete-game no-hitter by an Orioles pitcher since Jim Palmer on Aug. 13, 1969 versus Oakland.

O’s batters struck out 16 times in Sunday’s 4-3 loss to the White Sox, which kept the O’s from completing a four-game sweep. The Orioles had a four-game win streak end in that loss, their longest winning streak in a single season since they won four in a row from Sept. 4 (in the second game of a doubleheader) through 8, 2020, and their longest overall since winning four in a row from Sept. 27, 2020 to April 4, 2021.

Over their streak, O’s pitchers owned a 0.55 ERA (two earned runs over 33.0 inning pitched), their first time holding their opponents to two earned runs or fewer over a four-game span since June 5-8, 2016 (2 ER/36.0 IP). And the Orioles are one of six teams to limit opponents to only two earned runs in a four-game stretch this season, along with the Boston Red Sox, Houston Astros, Los Angeles Dodgers, New York Yankees and San Diego Padres.

At a time when the Orioles are making real progress on the field and getting better in front of our eyes, another chance to greatly improve the organization is just around the corner.

The 20-round 2022 First-Year Player Draft will be held July 17-19, providing a great chance for the Orioles to add to the so-called elite talent pipeline. It's produced one of the best farm systems in the sport and now will see the influx from a draft where the Orioles not only have the No. 1 pick for the third time in team history, but have five of the first 81 picks for the first time in four drafts under executive vice president and general manager Mike Elias.

The Orioles selected Ben McDonald with the No. 1 overall pick in 1989 and Adley Rutschman in 2019. Now for the second time in four drafts, they pick 1/1 again.

This draft the O’s have selections at No. 1, No. 33, No. 42, No. 67 and No. 81. Perhaps they make a score as strong as the last time they selected No. 1 when their top three picks were Rutschman, Gunnar Henderson and Kyle Stowers.

MLBPipeline.com ranks the top five players in this order:

When this Orioles series in Chicago began, the team had not posted a four-game win streak since the end of the 2020 season. Today, the O's seek a five-game streak and a four-game sweep on the road against the White Sox – which would be their first four-game sweep at Chicago since 1995.

Baltimore's pitching has led the way to 4-0, 4-1 and 6-2 wins in this series. As a staff, the team's pitchers have allowed just the three runs on 16 hits with seven walks and 25 strikeouts.

The O’s pitchers have allowed two runs or less in seven of the last nine games, pitching to an ERA of 1.73 in that span. In the last four games, the O’s staff has allowed two total earned runs for an ERA of 0.55.

Over the last six games, O’s starting pitchers have an ERA of 0.98. The bullpen, which has been strong almost all year, has now gone 11 straight games allowing one earned run or less with an ERA of 1.29 in that span.

Couple that with some solid defense and an offense that has produced six runs or more 11 times in 22 games, you can see why the club has moved to 34-39 and is now five games from .500.

With the 2022 All-Star game set for Tuesday July 19 at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles, it’s about the time to ponder and wonder what Oriole or Orioles will be there this time?

Sure seems like they have at least two very strong candidates in outfielder Austin Hays and reliever Jorge López. Others have played well too, but this duo is, for me, separating themselves from the pack for that game.

During the Orioles' last winning run, from 2012 through 2016, they put multiple players in the game each year:

* 2012: Jim Johnson, Adam Jones, Matt Wieters
* 2013: Chris Davis, J.J. Hardy, Adam Jones, Manny Machado, Chris Tillman
* 2014: Nelson Cruz, Adam Jones, Matt Wieters
* 2015: Zack Britton, Adam Jones, Manny Machado, Darren O’Day
* 2016: Brad Brach, Zack Britton, Manny Machado, Mark Trumbo, Matt Wieters

But they had just one player in the years since with Jonathan Schoop (2017), Machado (2018), John Means (2019) and Cedric Mullins (2021). There was not a game in 2020.

After posting wins by 4-0 and 4-1 the last two nights, the Orioles look for another victory in Chicago against the White Sox this afternoon. The game is expected to start late due to rain, and no official start time has been announced as of this writing.

A win would give the Orioles (33-39) both a series victory and a four-game winning streak for the first time this season. At 33-39 they are playing .458 ball, which projects to a final record of 74-88 over 162 games.

With Friday’s win the O’s have won three in a row, four of five, six of eight and nine of their past 13 games. Over the last 18 games, they are 11-7 and are 19-15 since May 19, when they were 10 games under the .500 mark.

Since going 7-14 in April, the Orioles are 14-16 in May and now 12-9 in June for a combined 26-25 record since May 1. With five games left this month, the Orioles need to go 2-3 or better to post their first winning month since August 2017.

The Orioles are 14-11 in their last 25 games. The last time the team won 14 in a 25-game stretch in a single season was from Aug. 12 to Sept. 8, 2017. When the Orioles last had a winning month, they finished 17-12 in August 2017. Their last month with a .500 record was July 2019 at 12-12.

As we watch some homegrown Orioles excel in recent days – with players like Austin Hays, Ryan Mountcastle and Adley Rutschman coming to mind – it might be exciting for Birdland to ponder a future with even more of the same.

A future where more homegrown and original Orioles join the current crop to produce the first legit playoff contending team in Baltimore since the 2016 American League Wild Card club. A future with players like Gunnar Henderson, Jordan Westburg, Kyle Stowers, Grayson Rodriguez and DL Hall all together in the major leagues. With Hays, Mountcastle, Rutschman and the rest.

Hey, that could be fun.

And that nucleus, likely with a few key additions, could produce a unit that could be playing meaningful games deep into the year and maybe even playing postseason games in October.

Where once a segment of the fanbase expressed opinions here that the Orioles are so far away they may never get there, now maybe it is within reach.

The Orioles are in search of their second three-game winning streak this season as they take the field at Chicago tonight. From May 8-10 they won three in a row, taking two in a row at home against Kansas City and the first game of a series at St. Louis.

They try to match that streak tonight in the second game of a four-game series and 10-game road trip.

The Orioles have pitched back-to-back shutouts, covering 15 innings scoreless starting with Wednesday’s six-inning, rain-shortened game in Baltimore. The Orioles have shut out their opponent in consecutive games for the first time since June 28-29, 2019, when they defeated Cleveland 13-0 in back-to-back games at Oriole Park.

The Orioles are one of nine teams (12 occurrences) with back-to-back shutout wins this season, and no team has shut out their opponent in three consecutive games in the same season since Cleveland did so from Aug. 25-27, 2017. The New York Mets had three straight shutout wins spanning two seasons from Sept. 29, 2018 to March 28, 2019.

The Orioles team record for most consecutive shutouts is five, done twice, first from Sept. 2-6, 1974, and most recently from Sept. 26 to Oct. 1, 1995, which was also their last shutout streak of at least three games. Baltimore's seven shutout wins this year are tied for third in the American League and tied for fifth in the majors, and are the team's most in their first 71 games of a season since the 1997 team also had seven. The O's had five shutouts in all of 2021.

This might have been one of the best feel-good nights of the year around Birdland. O’s fans could watch and see a lot to like about the Orioles' latest win.

The Birds blanked the Chicago White Sox 4-0 last night, pitching a second straight shutout and recording their third shutout in the last six games. The O’s picked up an impressive win against the defending American League Central champions and beat a club that went 7-0 versus them last year.

In beating the White Sox, Orioles pitchers slowed what has recently been a hot-hitting Chicago team. Here are a few excerpts from the White Sox media notes last night showing how well Chicago's offense had been humming recently.

* The Sox are hitting .318/.379/.459 (160-for-503) with 92 runs scored (7.1 R/G) over the last 13 games, scoring seven-plus runs eight times and collecting 12-plus hits eight times.

* The White Sox are batting .310/.377/.442 (85-for-274) with 52 runs scored (7.4 R/G) over their last seven home games.

The Orioles' latest road trip begins this evening and it’s a long trek. They will play 10 games over the next 11 days in Chicago, Seattle and Minnesota, beginning tonight at the White Sox.

The Orioles (31-39) just completed a 3-2 homestand, where they won two of three versus the Rays and went 1-1 against the Nationals. The Orioles have been playing winning baseball for over a month now. They are 4-2 in the last six games, 7-4 in the last 11 and 17-15 in 32 games since May 19. The Orioles are 10-9 in June.

The Birds are 13-22 in road games for the season, but are 7-6 in their past 13 away from Camden Yards. They went 4-4 on their last trip to Kansas City and Toronto. The Orioles are 3-5-2 in road series for the year and are 4-6 in series-opening games on the road.

After being shutout 3-0 on just four hits Tuesday night by the Nationals, the Orioles won 7-0 last night with 11 hits in a game shortened to six innings by rain. The Orioles hit three home runs and have now scored 70 runs their past 14 games (5.00 per game) and 261 runs the last 58 games (4.50 per game) since they scored 24 runs in the season’s first 12 games.

O’s outfielder Austin Hays became the sixth Oriole to hit for the cycle on Wednesday with an infield single in the first inning, a solo homer in the third, a triple in the fourth and a two-run double in the sixth. He joined Brooks Robinson (1960), Cal Ripken Jr. (1984), Aubrey Huff (2007), Felix Pie (2009) and Jonathan Villar (2019) as O’s to hit for the cycle. He is the first for Baltimore to do that in the first six innings of a game. He's the fourth in the majors to hit for a cycle in the 2022 season. And Hays did this after going 0-for-4 with four strikeouts on Tuesday and 4-for-31 over his previous eight games.

He is one of baseball’s best pitching prospects, lefty DL Hall of the Triple-A Norfolk Tides, the Orioles top draft pick from 2017. They selected the lefty from a Georgia high school No. 21 overall and now he is on the doorstep of the majors. But when he'll take that next big step is the question now for the Orioles as Hall closes in.

Perhaps his latest outing on Tuesday at Lehigh Valley showed us both reasons to go get Hall and reasons why more time on the farm would also not be a bad thing for the 23-year-old hurler.

Through nine Triple-A starts, Hall is 1-2 with a 3.86 ERA over 35 innings, which is already a few more innings than he threw in seven 2021 starts with Double-A Bowie. He has allowed 27 hits with 23 walks while getting 57 strikeouts, recording a .206 batting average against and 1.43 WHIP.

That WHIP number is a bit of a challenge right now, as are the walks. In Tuesday’s outing, Hall threw a season-high 92 pitches but cleared just 4 1/3 innings. He allowed four hits and five runs, just two earned, and recorded five walks and three strikeouts. In his two previous outings he has walked five and fanned 17 over nine combined innings. The strike-throwing ratio took a step back on Tuesday night.

Before Hall's start on Tuesday, Norfolk Triple-A pitching coach Justin Ramsey, who is spending time right now helping the O’s staff, said Hall had indeed made some gains in this department this year.

After being shut out 3-0 on Tuesday night in Baltimore, the Orioles need a win at home tonight versus the Washington Nationals to split this two-game interleague series. And they turn to their hottest starting pitcher to get it done.

The Orioles have won four consecutive starts made by right-hander Tyler Wells (4-4, 3.62 ERA) and he has recorded three quality starts in that span, including in his last two games. Over this four-start stretch, Wells is 3-0 with a 2.45 ERA, allowing six runs and 14 hits in 22 innings. He has thrown 88, 62, 84 and 86 pitches in those games, allowing a batting average against of .180 and a .597 OPS.

In his most recent start, Wells limited Toronto to one run and five hits over six innings last Thursday afternoon at Rogers Centre, and he won his battle with Toronto right-hander Kevin Gausman. The Orioles scored six runs in the third inning that afternoon to provide him an early 7-0 lead, and Wells told us after that game how he approached having such a big lead to work with.

“Honestly, whenever you get a big lead like that it’s easy to kind of say you can sit back, relax and breathe,” he said in Toronto. “The way that I try to trick myself into thinking, I try to make sure that I am more intense, more focused than I was before. It’s great to have big innings, and the guys absolutely crushed out there today, but it’s also just as important to have a shutdown inning. Trying to stay intense with my focus and getting into that next inning and being able to shut it down is also important.” 

He did that, for sure, producing his fourth career quality start. At the end of that game the Orioles had just three quality starts in their previous 22 games, and Wells had been the pitcher for all three.

Jordan Lyles delivered a quality start but the Orioles at-bats too often lacked true quality and they were blanked 3-0 by the Washington Nationals.

The Orioles were shutout for the fifth time this year as earlier they were blanked by the Rays, Tigers, Yankees and Mariners.

Baltimore beat Tampa Bay on Friday with one run on five hits and again won Sunday with just two runs on four hits. But winning again with four hits was a bridge too far.

The O's were held to four hits - Ryan Mountcastle reached on an error in the ninth that was later changed to a single - and had one runner get into scoring position all night.

That was catcher Adley Rutschman, who reached on a two-bagger with 106 mph exit velocity in the seventh. But he was stranded as they lost the opener of the brief two-game interleague series.

After winning just one game all of last year against the Tampa Bay Rays, the Orioles have already won two of three series against the Rays this season. They are 4-5 versus Tampa Bay after Sunday’s win gave them a series victory. The O’s lost the first three games of the year at Tropicana Field but are now 4-2 in the last six versus the Rays.

But after going 15-19 versus the American League East – and 11-8 in their last 19 division games – the Orioles begin a stretch of 21 consecutive games outside of the division tonight. They host the Washington Nationals for the start of a two-game interleague series and the first two of four games these clubs will play in 2022.

The Orioles (30-38) have won three of four and six of their past nine games. They are 8-6 over the last 14 games, 9-8 this month and 16-14 since May 19. They are 17-16 at home this season. And they are 4-3 in games against National League opponents.

The Nationals (24-46) ended an eight-game losing streak with Sunday’s 9-3 win over Philadelphia. But Washington has lost 11 of its past 14 games, and is 6-15 in series-opening games and 3-7 in road series openers. The Nats are on a pace to finish 56-106.

Last season, the Orioles went 3-3 against the Nationals. They were swept in three games at Nationals Park from May 21-23 before sweeping Washington in three games at Oriole Park from July 23-25. The Birds have gone 48-38 against the Nats since the team moved to Washington in 2005, including 26-17 against them at home. The Orioles have gone 4-3 in interleague play this season and own an all-time record of 219-251 against NL opponents in the regular season.

As mostly a starting pitcher the last two years for the Orioles, right-hander Jorge López had an ERA of 6.34 in 2020 and 6.07 during the 2021 season. This year, among all pitchers that have thrown 30 innings or more, he is second in the majors in ERA.

Clay Holmes of the New York Yankees is first at an amazing 0.55 and Lopez comes next at 0.79. He looks good both through the eye test and on the stat and in advanced metrics. He just looks good by almost any standard or measurement.

It is tough enough for any pitcher to get the last three outs of the game, but López is often being asked to get the last four or even five outs.

Heavy lifting indeed.

He’s allowed just 16 hits and no homers in 34 1/3 innings with 13 walks and 34 strikeouts. López has a WHIP of 0.845 that ranks fifth and his opponent batting average of .137 is second among pitchers that have thrown more than 30 innings.