Zach Wilt: What a difference 24 hours makes in defensive perception

Baseball has a funny way of balancing things out over the course of 162 games. The thing I've learned in my years of watching is that a team is never as good as it looks during a lengthy winning streak and never as bad as it looks during a losing skid. It's easy to think that your team is going to win 100 games when they're going good or lose 100 when they've dropped a few in a row. Both extremes are incredibly rare.

The Orioles have been one of the best defensive teams over the past few seasons. You could make a case that they had the strongest infield in Major League Baseball in 2014. With Gold Glovers J.J. Hardy, Adam Jones and Manny Machado back in the field this season, many, including myself, expected the O's to be strong defensively again this season. So far, though, that hasn't necessarily been the case.

On Tuesday night, the O's 2-2 game against the Blue Jays unraveled in the seventh inning after a few defensive lapses. Justin Smoak advanced to second on a throwing error by Machado, his eighth of the season, then scored the go-ahead run on a Josh Donaldson RBI single one batter later. After that, Donaldson crossed home on a passed ball by Caleb Joseph to give Toronto a 4-2 lead.

The Orioles added two more errors in the top of the eighth, one from Chris Davis on a Ryan Goins grounder and another by Hardy on a throw to first. It was an ugly way to lose a game, especially to a division rival, and Machado was insistent on turning things around moving forward. "That wasn't us," Machado told MASNsports.com's Steve Melewski after the game. "Then it kept rolling. That was an inning where we lost the game. We collapsed and they took advantage of it. We have to keep our head up high and come out tomorrow."

A day later, the real Orioles defense showed up, the one I think Machado was referring to on Tuesday night. In the third inning, Machado showed off his defensive prowess when he tagged out Ezequiel Carrera at third base on a grounder hit down the line at third. Carrera took a couple steps toward home and Machado dove at him to make the tag as the Blue Jays right fielder jumped back to the bag. The very next batter, Jose Bautista, grounded into a 5-4-3 double play.

Then in the fourth, Edwin Encarnacion hit a high, deep shot to right field that Alejandro De Aza tracked down into the corner of the yard and made a running catch for the first out of the inning. Russell Martin then hit a screaming line drive that second baseman Rey Navarro grabbed with a leaping catch. In two innings, the Orioles made everyone completely forget about how bad the defense was 24 hours earlier.

Despite the Orioles defensive lapses early on this season, the Orioles rank in the middle of the pack in the field. With 22 errors as a team, the O's are tied in 12th place with the Minnesota Twins. Their .981 fielding percentage is seventh best in the majors. After a few more games like Wednesday, I expect to see those numbers level out even more and Baltimore's defense rise to the top like they did in 2014.

It's important to remember that Machado is still getting adjusted defensively coming back from his knee injury, that the Orioles' backup catchers have been behind the plate all season and that Hardy has played in just seven games. When you take all that into consideration, it's hard not to feel good about the O's in the field over the next 4 1/2 months.

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.