Notes on Davis, OBP, Bourn, Wieters and Britton

Not only did the Orioles drop two games behind the Blue Jays last night for the first wild card, their lead over the Tigers for the second spot was reduced to one.

Chris Davis was ejected last night by plate umpire Will Little for arguing a called third strike in the top of the seventh inning. Davis kept his cool all season despite having plenty of reasons to vent, but Little actually made the right call last night.

Davis didn't go ballistic, but he must have said the magic word(s).

Manager Buck Showalter also was tossed, the frustration reaching its peak in a 5-1 loss that assured the Blue Jays of the tie-breaker over the Orioles.

Davis struck out three times to raise his season total to 213, putting him third on the all-time list. He moved past Chris Carter (212 in 2013).

Mark Reynolds holds the record with 223 in 2009 and Adam Dunn is second with 222 in 2012.

* The Orioles posted a .333 on-base percentage in the first half that ranked third in the American League and eighth in the majors. Quite an accomplishment for a team routinely at or near the bottom.

Going into last night's game, the Orioles had posted a .296 on-base percentage since the break that ranked last in the AL and 29th in the majors. The Padres were last at .291.

The Orioles' .234 average in the second half also ranked last in the AL and was 28th in the majors. They hit .272 in the first half to rank fifth in the majors.

Meanwhile, the Orioles were 51-36 heading into the break and are 34-36 in the second half.

* Michael Bourn's inclusion in last night's lineup at the expense of Hyun Soo Kim wasn't done entirely for his defense.

Bourn was a career .308/.368/.375 hitter in 29 games (25 starts) against the Jays and a .333/.407/.396 hitter in 11 games at Rogers Centre. Manager Buck Showalter went with the track record.

Kim was 4-for-20 at Rogers Centre. Not a big sample size, but Bourn gets the edge in supremacy.

Bourn collected two hits, including an infield single. Guess it wasn't such a terrible idea. But I'd try to play Kim as much as possible because he actually works a count and gets on base.

* The news yesterday that Nationals catcher Wilson Ramos must undergo season-ending knee surgery led to immediate speculation that Matt Wieters would benefit in free agency if he tested the market.

One man's torn ACL is another man's gain.

Wieters could vault over Ramos on various wish lists. From what I've heard, the Nationals' reported interest last winter was overblown and it became a moot point when Wieters accepted the qualifying offer. Do they make a run at him this offseason?

The Braves always are linked to Wieters because he attended Georgia Tech and bought a home in the Atlanta area. I'm not sure if he fits in a rebuilding effort, but they've made other moves for veteran players that were much bigger head-scratchers.

Agent Scott Boras was in Baltimore during the Red Sox series, but not strictly because he wanted to talk extension. He has, at last count, nine clients among the two teams. I'm told the conversation with executive vice president Dan Duquette was light in nature, with no possibility of Wieters getting a long-term deal last week.

Boras wasn't trying to slip in and out of town unnoticed. He sat beside the Orioles' dugout during batting practice.

* Closer Zach Britton, also a Boras client, can't go a week without another question regarding his historic season, whether he's reflected on it, whether he's thinking about his chances of winning the Cy Young Award.

Let's go with reflections here.

"You think about it during the season," he said, "but when you're in the offseason and you're with your family and maybe you've got some time to yourself and you're away from the game and you're away from all the craziness that gets involved with the season, I think you can sit back and say, 'Wow, that was pretty cool that I was able to do that.' But I always find that if you get too wrapped up in how well things are going or how bad things are going during the season, it can really affect you negatively to an extent, so I try to avoid it.

"There's so much going on anyway that you don't really have time to think about it, but I will when I get home and maybe a couple weeks in the offseason I can sit back and maybe write down in a journal how cool it was to experience that, so I remember those feelings or those thoughts I had during the season, so I can always fall back on those in the next few years."

Unlike other starters moved to the bullpen, Britton doesn't seem to be itching to get back in the rotation.

"Every year that I've been doing it, I think I just get a little more comfortable," he said. "At first when you move from the rotation to the bullpen, I think you can kind of look at it as a demotion, but I try to put that out of my mind a little bit and think that was an opportunity for me to pitch in the big leagues.

"You get away from the mindset that you're just happy to be in the big leagues. You want to do well consistently. I think that's the biggest thing now that you strive for as you get going out of the bullpen is to be consistent year in and year out, and that's kind of been my mindset lately with that. But I'm enjoying it. It's been great.

"I've learned a lot about pitching. Being down there, being focused every pitch of every game, not knowing when I'm possibly going to get in the game."

Not knowing if he's going to win the Cy Young. Britton received another endorsement yesterday from Jon Heyman on MLB Network.

No starter has been so dominant that a reliever can't touch the award. Rick Porcello poses the biggest threat to Britton, a 22-game winner with 25 quality starts, 0.99 WHIP and 6.10 strikeout/walk ratio. But the 3.11 ERA works against him and he's receiving 7.80 runs per nine innings.

Not that he's always needed them, of course, but it comes up among his detractors.