Orioles fighting for third place

The Orioles will try to play a game tonight at its regular starting time and without the aid of a tarp or 5,000 tons of drying compound.

Are they asking too much?

We're down to the final series of the season, as long as Joaquin lets them play. The Orioles need to sweep the Yankees to finish at .500 and avoid their first losing season since 2011.

The Orioles are 7-9 against the Yankees this season, but 4-2 at Camden Yards. They're 36-37 versus the American League East.

They still didn't know yesterday which Yankee was starting against them. Manager Joe Girardi didn't tell the New York media, leaving the group to assume that the winner will come from a pool consisting of Adam Warren, Luis Severino and Ivan Nova.

The wild card race was influencing Girardi's decision. The Yankees have clinched a playoff spot, but there's still the matter of home field advantage.

There's no race for the Orioles besides trying to finish in third place and avoid falling into last. It could go either way. The Orioles, Red Sox and Rays are tied for third at 78-81.

Wei-Yin Chen could be making his final start as an Oriole. Informal polls, as opposed to the ones that require a tuxedo, show Chen as being the least likely of the pending free agents to stay in Baltimore.

Chen could be at the top of the second tier of free-agent pitchers. He's not in the David Price class, but he's going to get paid.

Chen is 10-8 with a 3.35 ERA in 30 starts, not including his outing at Single-A Frederick, which remains a sore subject in his camp. He's 1-1 with a 3.70 ERA in four starts against the Yankees this season and 3-5 with a 4.88 ERA in 13 career starts.

Chris Young is 6-for-14 with two doubles and a home run against Chen, Stephen Drew is 4-for-13 with two doubles, Jacoby Ellsbury is 8-for-26 with two doubles, Chase Headley is 5-for-12 with a double, Jose Pirela is 5-for-7 with a triple and Alex Rodriguez is 4-for-21 with two home runs.

The Breathe Deep Baltimore LUNGevity walk at Camden Yards to honor Monica Barlow has been moved to Oct. 18 due to weather concerns on Saturday.

The LUNGevity Foundation still will hold a silent auction during Saturday's 7:05 p.m. game against the Yankees that features various Orioles memorabilia items and takes place by Gate E through 9 p.m.

Monica's husband, Ben, said the latest fundraising effort has been a success.

"It's going great," he said. "I want to make sure that you make fundraising targets. They set the fundraising goal up really high last year, and then when I logged in this year and saw the goal was $125,000 for the walk, I was thinking, 'How are we going to do that?' But I looked a couple days ago and they were up over $90,000 raising it for the walk, and I think they've got the other money coming in, so it looks like they're going to surpass the fundraising goal.

"Things are going really good, but a lot of that is due to the tie-in with the Orioles and the awareness that the Orioles have been able to bring to LUNGevity and lung cancer research over the last few years."

The walk ends inside Camden Yards and again is heavily impacted by the Orioles.

"I think it really helps," Barlow said. "Selfishly, I think it buoys me and the family because of the special connection. So many of the other charities that everybody knows about that do cancer research advocacy, they really get a lot of traction because of their connection with either sports leagues or teams, and that's really how they're able to get a lot of awareness out.

"In our culture, if you don't have entertainers or a sports team behind you, it's hard for any of these causes to really get a lot of traction. The Orioles and the Angelos family and then MLB last year, it just makes a world of difference to an organization like LUNGevity that's doing really great work dealing with a seemingly insurmountable issue.

"I think about a couple of lung cancer survivors who have the same thing Monica had and are season-ticket holders here with the O's. When they see a connection with something else that means a lot to them, it provides a lift. It's hard to explain it any other way than that."