Is Manny Machado's power increasing in front of our eyes?

We are seeing the ups and downs of the season. The Orioles lost last night to fall to 12-12 and they are back at .500 for the eighth time this year.

Remember when they were scoring all those runs? They got 18 against Boston, eight against Chicago and had 59 over a nine-game stretch. Now they have scored just 10 runs over the last four games. The pitching of Tampa Bay and the Mets' Bartolo Colon had something to do with that.

Colon last night became the first pitcher to beat a team (the Orioles) for seven different teams. He has wins against the Orioles for the Indians, White Sox, Angels, Red Sox, Yankees, A's and Mets.

He will be 42 later this month and we may still see him facing the Orioles at 52. I would say he's amazin', but it's probably too soon to utter that phrase around an Orioles fan.

Meanwhile, let's talk about Manny Machado for a moment.

He hit his fifth homer last night and his fourth in the last nine games. Those that wondered if all those doubles would eventually start going for homers for Machado, well, we might be seeing the start of that.

Did you know that Machado has homered more often in the majors than he did in the minors? He hit one every 36.2 at-bats as a minor leaguer and now has hit one every 33.4 at-bats in the big leagues.

Last year, Machado homered once every 27.2 at-bats and this year he has a longball once every 16.8 at-bats.

Sometimes it is easy to forget Machado is just 22. He has already played 313 major league games and he missed half of last season.

In 24 games this year, Machado is batting .250 with four doubles, five homers and 13 RBIs. His current slugging percentage of .476 is ahead of his career number of .434 through 2014. His OPS is .803 and was .747 for his career before this season.

As he gains more experience and better understands both how opponents will pitch him and how to best get the most from his own offense, Machado could really blossom as a hitter.

Most of the talk about Machado this year has been his error total, but now his homer total should start getting some notice, too.

Is he starting to show more pop as a hitter? How many homers can he hit this year?

Bundy starts and Bundy relieves in Bowie: Both Bundy brothers pitched for Double-A Bowie last night. Dylan Bundy got the start. He pitched a scoreless first inning and then walked the leadoff batter in the second. The rains hit then and he did not return after a delay of 1 hour, 19 minutes.

But his brother, Bobby Bundy, did take the mound when the game resumed and went 3 1/3 scoreless innings to get the win in a 3-1 victory, which was Bowie's seventh win in eight games.

J.J. Hardy went 1-for-4 in his second rehab game and Ryan Flaherty went 1-for-3 with a walk. Both Orioles are expected to play again for Bowie at home tonight at 6:35 p.m. Hardy is 3-for-8 over two games there and Flaherty is 2-for-7.

Frederick won a wild 12-10 game at home against Winston-Salem. The Keys hung on late after building an early 9-1 lead. Third baseman Drew Dosch went 4-for-5 with a double and three RBIs and is now batting .327. I recently wrote about Dosch; click here to read that entry. Jeff Kemp and Anthony Caronia added two RBIs each for the Keys.

Triple-A Norfolk lost 2-1 at Syracuse. Starter Tyler Wilson went seven innings allowing five hits and two runs and falls to 1-4 with an ERA of 3.58. Nolan Reimold, Chris Parmalee and Dariel Alvarez had two hits each for the Tides, who are 13-13.