Zach Wilt: As weather cools, O's starting pitching heats up

Like most people across the country, I updated my phone's firmware to its fancy new version yesterday evening. I've gotta have those updated emojis and goofy message effects that all my friends are talking about. After it completed, I was sure that something went wrong because the calendar app read "September 14," but according to the Orioles' matchup against the Red Sox that I was watching, it was surely October.

The road crowd at Fenway Park was raucous and every pitch seemed to have huge meaning for the fate of both clubs. Behind a stellar performance by Kevin Gausman, the Orioles handed the Red Sox just their second shutout in Boston this season. It was the Birds' first 1-0 win at Fenway since September 24, 2000, their third shutout victory of September and became Rick Porcello's first loss of the season in front of his home crowd. With the win the O's took a one-game lead over the Blue Jays for the top American League wild card spot and are now just a game out of the division lead behind the Red Sox.

Buck Showalter's club moved to 8-7 against Boston this season and after back-to-back losing months are 8-4 in 12 critical games in September. The Orioles are picking up these victories in seemingly the most unlikely way possible, with great starting pitching. All year long, the O's starters have struggled and their offense and bullpen has had to carry the bulk of the load. In June, they won 19 games by crushing the league with 56 homers, 10 more than the next closest team, despite their rotation pitching to a 5.56 ERA, the fifth worst in all of baseball. This month it's been a little different.

After Gausman's gem, in which he limited the Red Sox lineup to four hits and a walk with six strikeouts over eight innings, the Orioles have three starters with ERAs of 2.81 or lower in September. Their rotation's ERA over the last 12 games is 3.71, down over a full run from their total in August. Yeah, that's a super small size because we're talking about six innings from Chris Tillman and five from Yovani Gallardo, but it's a positive sign for a team surging towards a postseason berth.

We're also talking about some fantastic starting pitching in crucial games here. In his return from the disabled list, we saw Tillman pitch six quality innings against a Detroit Tigers team with playoff aspirations on Sunday. Tillman outdueled Justin Verlander and helped his club take two of three in Detroit to gain some ground in the wild card race. That start came after Ubaldo Jimenez's performance in Game 2 in which he held the Tigers to two runs over seven frames while the Birds' offense scored six in the first inning against Jordan Zimmermann.

Five days earlier, Jimenez became the first Orioles starter in 2016 to throw a complete game when he limited the Rays' offense to three runs on just two hits in the Orioles' 7-3 victory over the Rays at The Trop. When the Birds have needed it the most, Jimenez has stepped up. The team is 3-1 in his last four starts, he's limited opponents to a .160 batting average over that stretch and has a 2.83 ERA. Three of the four outings have come on the road against the Nationals, Rays and Tigers. The other was against one of the toughest offenses in baseball, the Toronto Blue Jays.

Seeing the versatility that the Orioles have shown through the first half of September has given me hope for their playoff future. We know they're going to hit home runs and that Zach Britton will get it done in the ninth inning, just like he did for the 43rd consecutive time last night. Seeing starters step up makes this team a little more of a threat in a tight American League race. They've proven this month that they can go toe-to-toe with the league's best starters and win close games when it matters. That's a scary thought of you're the rest of the league.

Zach Wilt blogs about the Orioles at Baltimore Sports Report. Follow him on Twitter: @zach_wilt. His views appear here as part of MASNsports.com's season-long initiative of welcoming guest bloggers to our pages. All opinions expressed are those of the guest bloggers, who are not employed by MASNsports.com but are just as passionate about their baseball as our roster of writers.