O's surge closer to top of AL East with six-game win streak

So the Orioles have put together a six-game win streak, and beyond just reeling off those wins, the Orioles have beaten two American League East teams in the process.

They pretty much sent Boston out of Camden Yards reeling, and now they've slowed a Yankees team that was 11-4 in its previous 15 games when they got to Baltimore.

According to STATS, today the Orioles go for their first consecutive sweep of Boston and New York since Sept. 9-13, 1970.

The O's have knocked off the division leaders, hammering the Yankees 11-3 and 9-4 on consecutive nights to turn the AL East into a race where now four teams are separated by just two games. The Orioles are in fourth place, yet they are two games out of first.

The Orioles have also matched their record from this point last year:

2014: Orioles 31-30, 5 1/2 games out
2015: Orioles 31-30, 2 games out

They are doing this without getting deep outings from their starting pitchers recently. The Orioles have not gotten an outing of six innings or more for seven consecutive games. They have not gotten an outing of at least seven innings from their starter for 13 consecutive games.

But the offense is suddenly unstoppable. Overnight, it seems the Orioles went from barely scoring two runs a night to cranking out the runs.

The Orioles offense:

* Has scored 20 runs in this series with 31 hits including five doubles, a triple and five homers.

* Has scored 31 runs the last four games with a .359 batting average and eight homers.

* Has scored 45 runs the past eight games with a .313 batting average and 12 home runs.

In the last week the Orioles have looked superior to Boston and New York and today they go for their first three-game home sweep of the Yankees since June 28-30, 2013.

A week ago did it even seem possible that the Orioles could sweep Boston and New York back-to-back?