Thoughts on Wade Miley, the AL East and O's-Boston series

The Orioles played just two extra-inning contests among their first 19 games this year. Now they have gone extras in three of the past four games, winning two of the three.

Last year, Zach Britton went 47-for-47 in save chances. But over the weekend, with Britton pitching on a rehab assignment with Double-A Bowie, the Orioles blew two ninth-inning leads. At least the one yesterday was only a blown save and not also a blown game.

The Orioles beat the Yankees 7-4 in 11 innings to tie New York atop the American League East at 15-8.

Here are a few notes and thoughts from a wild weekend in the Bronx, one in which O's pitchers allowed 10 homers and 30 runs. The Baltimore bullpen, which allowed 14 runs in eight innings Friday and Saturday, allowed just two over six innings on Sunday. But those two runs tied the game in the ninth and forced yet another extra-inning game.

A good start: The Orioles end April at 15-8 and tied for first. This record is tied for the sixth best opening month or combined opening months of March/April in team history.

Best March/April in club history by win percentage:
.917 (11-1 in 1966)
.696 (16-7 in 1969, 1997 and 2005)
.684 (13-6 in 1970)
.652 (15-8 in 1994 and 2017)

Miley was solid again: When he had an ERA of 8.41 after his first eight starts with the Orioles, no one saw this coming from left-hander Wade Miley. But he has become, along with Dylan Bundy, the club's most reliable starter.

He had a wild ride on Sunday.

Miley walked five batters and gave up a homer in the first inning. He needed a staggering 114 pitches to get 15 outs. However, Miley bent but didn't break against a Yankees offense that had scored 26 runs on 24 hits with nine homers the previous two days.

He kept getting into and then out of jams. In the second, with runners on second and third and no outs, he struck out Kyle Higashioka, Brett Gardner and Aaron Hicks for a big early escape. Over five innings, he gave up eight hits, two runs, five walks, six strikeouts and one homer. New York went 2-for-9 with runners in scoring positon against him and left nine runners on base.

The team that exploded for all those runs Friday and Saturday had a chance to blast Miley and open up a big early lead, but he didn't allow it. We shouldn't overlook that.

Miley has an ERA of 2.32 through five starts. He has allowed three runs or fewer each time and two runs or fewer in four of those games. Over his past eight starts - dating to the middle of last September - he is 3-1 with a 2.17 ERA. The Orioles are 5-3 in those outings.

At a time when Chris Tillman has still not made his season debut and Kevin Gausman and Ubaldo Jiménez are struggling, where would the Orioles be without Miley?

The Yankees look good: The Yankees were 10-1 at home and 9-4 versus American League East teams until Sunday's loss. They entered that game with the best run differential in the major leagues at plus-46. Now at plus-43, they still easily lead the AL, with Houston next-best at plus-23. The Orioles have an identical won-loss record to the Yankees, but with a run differential of plus-1. Of course the Orioles are also 11-2 in games decided by one or two runs.

New York has the look of a surprise team. Aaron Judge has been tremendous and Starlin Castro is off to a fast start. Catcher Gary Sánchez had played just five games. They have a tremdous bullpen, a team ERA of 3.35 and a rotation that has been mostly solid.

What happens at Fenway?: Does it seem like about three months have passed since Boston right-hander Matt Barnes threw a pitch behind the head of Manny Machado? It was one week ago yesterday. It feels like the Orioles have played about 30 games since then, but it has only been six.

Barnes has already served the resulting suspension and is eligible to pitch for Boston tonight. It was on Friday of that Boston-Orioles series when Manny Machado's slide into Dustin Pedroia injured Pedroia and seemed to anger most in a Boston uniform except ... Pedroia. The Red Sox second sacker returned to the lineup last Thursday. He threw his team under the bus last Sunday, telling Machado on the field at Camden Yards, "Its them, not me" when it came to head-hunting Machado.

On Monday, Barnes was hit with a four-game suspension for "intentionally throwing a pitch in the area of the head." He appealed the suspension, then last Wednesday dropped the appeal and missed games Wednesday through Saturday, returning to the active roster for last night's game with the Cubs.

The Orioles took two of three games in that series at Oriole Park and are 3-2 this year versus Boston. When asked last weekend if the clubs could see any lingering bad blood carry into a four-game series at Fenway Park that starts tonight, the O's Chris Davis essentially said no.

"You have to do your best to put that aside. There's more at stake, obviously. We weren't happy with the way things went (last Sunday). Not only with what happened late in the game but with losing the game. I think, for us, it's more important to win the game. You can't get caught up in that stuff," Davis said.

So another O's-Boston series is set to begin and Machado, Pedroia and Barnes will all be on the field tonight at Fenway Park.