Zach Wilt: The Orioles' balance of power

If the Orioles could go back and time and play the 2012 version of themselves, I'm certain that the series would like identical to what we just watched against the Astros. A.J. Hinch's club reminds me exactly of what I watched here in Baltimore two seasons ago. The 'Stros are a scrappy group of power hitters who deliver clutch hits, are never out of games and win by a close margin. It was fun to watch on this end, but now I can totally understand why the 2012 O's frustrated their opponents.

The Birds wrapped a three-game series against the Astros with a pair of victories. Any other season that wouldn't be particularly exciting, but against the team that was tied with the most wins in baseball entering Wednesday's contest, it's not too shabby. In fact, that was Houston's first road series loss of 2015.

More than anything, the last three games really highlight the importance of the home run to the Orioles offense. It's something that I continue to keep an eye on as nearly 50 percent of the O's runs were scored via the longball this season. Baltimore scored 10 runs this series and eight of them came when the ball was hit over the fence. They picked up a win over ace Dallas Keuchel in the opening game with a pair of two-run blasts and scored four of their five runs on three homers in their victory yesterday in game three. The other two runs this series came from a sac fly and a steal of home plate.

Obviously, Chris Davis' name immediately comes to mind when we start talking about homers. After going 0-for-3 with a pair of strikeouts in the middle game, Buck Showalter moved Davis from the cleanup spot down to the five-hole in the finale against Houston and he responded with his first homer since May 11. Oh, yeah, then he added another in the eighth to give the O's a 5-4 lead.

Since that last homer on May 11, Davis had gone just 4-for- 42 with 15 strikeouts entering Wednesday. That's a .095 batting average. Yet despite that stretch, he's still on pace to hit 37 homers and drive in 96 this season. How could anyone be disappointed with those numbers?

If I had to make a bold prediction, I'd say that Davis will probably have another 4-for-42-ish stretch, but he'll pair it with something like the 18-for-61 he put together from April 10-26. That's sort of what power hitters do.

After that series win over Houston, the Orioles are now two games under .500 at 21-23. They also find themselves just 2 1/2 games back of the first-place New York Yankees in the American League East. Forty-four games into the 2014 season, the O's record was flipped at 23-21, but they fell 2 1/2 games back of the Toronto Blue Jays three days later.

I don't need to say it, but I will: They won the AL East by a dozen games.

This division is just as winnable as it was a season ago. Each team has its strengths, but also clear flaws. The first-place Yankees' starting rotation has a 4.22 ERA. Their bullpen has thrown 155 2/3 innings in 46 games. The Rays are hitting .244 as a team and they've scored 179 runs, which is the seventh-fewest of any team in the league. Blue Jays pitchers have given up the third-most runs (230) and third-most home runs (59) in baseball. How about the Red Sox? Their rotation has the worst ERA in the league (5.17) and they're hitting .233 as a team in May.

If the Orioles can continue to get good starting pitching, dependable innings from their bullpen and harness the power of the homer, there's no reason to think that they can't put together a 17-8 or 19-9 stretch like they did in July and August of last season.

Zach Wilt blogs about the Orioles at Baltimore Sports Report. Follow him on Twitter: @zamwi. His views appear here as part of MASNsports.com's season-long initiative of welcoming guest bloggers to our pages. All opinions expressed are those of the guest bloggers, who are not employed by MASNsports.com but are just as passionate about their baseball as our roster of writers.