O's game blog: O's try to hand A's rare road series loss today

The Oakland A's have lost just five series all year and just two of 10 road series in 2014. Can the Orioles become the third team to pin a road series loss on the A's today? Oakland has won seven, lost two and tied one road series. The two series losses came against American League East teams. Oakland went 1-2 at Boston from May 2-4 and 0-3 at Toronto from May 23-25. The A's have the best road record in the league, which is now 21-12 after Saturday night's loss. Ubaldo Jimenez (2-6, 4.39 ERA) makes his 13th O's start today. He is winless at home, going 0-4 with a 5.72 ERA in five starts. In four career starts against the A's, Jimenez is 3-0 with a 3.09 ERA and 25 strikeouts in 23 1/3 innings. Left-hander Scott Kazmir (6-2, 2.40) gets the start for Oakland. Kazmir is fourth in the AL in ERA for a team that leads the league in ERA at 2.95. Kazmir is also second in the AL in opponents' batting average at .215. Over his last five starts, he is 2-1 with a 2.05 ERA. In 16 career starts against Baltimore, he is 5-5 with a 4.43 ERA. Meanwhile, in an interview airing today during MASN's "O's Xtra" at 1 p.m., O's scouting director Gary Rajsich told me the club is close to signing several draft picks and these could be top 10 round picks. Rajsich is quite happy with a draft that produced a lot of pitchers and several power arms in the top 10 rounds. We could get signing news on some of these picks as early as today.