For the Orioles, the AL East looks ripe for the taking

Nice response to Friday's blown save wasn't it? The Orioles hit four homers to beat the Yankees 6-1 Saturday and became the first American League team to beat Masahiro Tanaka with an 8-0 win on Sunday. Since Zach Britton gave up that homer Friday, the Orioles outscored the Yankees 14-1 on their home turf. Has a good run of baseball finally come for this team? Is the club finally going to support all the quality starts they've been getting recently with enough runs to reel off some wins now? The Orioles play within the American League East this season bodes well for their chances to win this division. They are now 21-13 in games against the AL East. The second-best record by an AL East team in division games is New York at 15-11. First-place Toronto is 15-14 in AL East play. I didn't realize until checking yesterday, but the Orioles have not lost an AL East series since April 11-13 against Toronto. They are 6-0-2 since then, winning all six three-game series (one Tampa Bay series was two games with a rainout) and splitting four-game series against Toronto and Boston. The Orioles have a .618 winning percentage in division games. The 2012 playoff O's went 43-29 (.597) in AL East play. A few more notes on the O's: * Orioles starters pitched to an ERA of 1.02 in the series at Yankee Stadium. Ubaldo Jimenez, Bud Norris and Chris Tillman combined to give up just two runs and 13 hits over 17 2/3 innings. * The Orioles, Blue Jays and Yankees are all now tied in the loss column with 35. Toronto leads the East by 1 1/2 games over Baltimore and New York. The Orioles were 6 1/2 games behind on June 6 and, after losing the first game of the road trip to Tampa Bay, were five games out. As the Orioles host the White Sox tonight, Toronto will be hosting the Yankees to start a three-game series. Each game the O's win the next three nights, they'll put themselves in better position than one of the top division teams. * With 12 hits Sunday, the Orioles ended a 14-game run where they had fewer than 10 hits each game. The team average was .230 in that time. The Orioles had scored three runs or less in five of seven games until scoring 14 the last two games at New York. * Here is a strange stat: At a time when Nelson Cruz's homer pace has slowed, the team is hitting more homers than at any point in 2014. Cruz hit six homers in April, 13 in May and has three in June. The Orioles lead the majors with 30 June homers. In Cruz's slowest month for homers, the O's have hit their most as a team. O's homers per game by month: * 0.70 in April * 1.23 in May * 1.50 in June. The AL East is clearly winnable for this team. The Orioles have fared well against the other teams in the division and have lost just two of 11 AL East series on the year. The Orioles hit six homers the last two days and the homers are starting to come. It bodes well that they lead the majors in homers this month and they are spreading the longball wealth. Adam Jones leads the club with seven June homers and Chris Davis is next with five. I look at Davis, Manny Machado, J.J. Hardy, Tillman and Jimenez as five key players that have somewhat underperformed compared to their track record to this point. If all five step up their games, the O's could make a run for an AL East crown over the season's final 88 games. The Orioles have not won the AL East since 1997. Based on what we've seen from the division so far this year, the chance to end that drought is very real in 2014.