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This might seem hard to believe with the way their season started, but coming into today’s games in Major League Baseball the Tampa Bay Rays will not be in 1st place in the American League East.

Tampa Bay won their first 13 games of the season and looked as though they could go wire to wire in the A.L. East. The Rays are just 1-4 in their last 5 games and are 4-6 over their last 10 games.

Tampa Bay’s struggles have allowed the Baltimore Orioles to move past them in the standings and take over 1st place in the A.L. East.

The Orioles are 3-2 in their last 5 games and 7-3 over their last 10 games. Baltimore also strung together an 8-game winning streak from July 5th until July 16th.

The Orioles and the Rays will meet today in the fourth and final game of this weekend’s series. Baltimore has won two of the three games they’ve played in this series so far.

Friday night the Orioles won 4-3 in 10 innings to take over 1st place. Tampa Bay bounce back on Saturday shutting out the Orioles 3-0, so they were tied for 1st place. Yesterday the Orioles regained 1st place in the division by beating Tampa Bay 6-5.

Tyler Wells will start the game for the Orioles today and they look to take three of four from the Rays. Wells is 7-5 with a 3.54 ERA this season. Rookie Taj Bradley will be Tampa Bay’s starting pitcher today. Bradley is 5-6 with an ERA of 5.29.

Since MLB is no longer using the unbalanced schedule the Rays and the Orioles will only play each other four more times this season after today. Baltimore will host Tampa Bay for a four-game series September 14th, 15th, 16th and 17th.

Can Tampa Bay right their ship and get back into 1st place or will the Orioles be able to hold them off? It appears as though both teams will make the playoffs it might be just the difference of which one goes in as the division winner and which one goes into the playoffs as probably the top wild card team.

I guess will have to see as it’s right around the corner, but you have to wonder if the upcoming trade deadline will have any effect on this division race.

The Orioles are a young team and it’s doubtful that they’d move a large number of their prospects for a rent-a-player type, but it wouldn’t be surprising if they added a veteran pitcher or bench player.

Tampa Bay isn’t usually involved in bigger trades, but they have been linked to a possible Shohei Ohtani trade, but in reality, which teams haven’t been. I wouldn’t be surprised to see the Rays make a similar move to what the Orioles might make and add a veteran pitcher or bench type of player.

In the end though it looks as though the A.L. East race will actually be a race and not just everybody trying to chase down Tampa Bay.

I hope that you’ve been reading, enjoying and hopefully commenting on my friend Jennifer’s All-Time team lineups.

She’s getting very close to wrapping things up. I have two All-Time teams from her set and ready to post tomorrow. I’ll be posting her All-Time teams for the Arizona Diamondbacks and San Diego Padres. After those two are up there will only be four more teams to go. She’ll still have All-Time teams coming from the New York Yankees, Seattle Mariners, Chicago White Sox and Chicago Cubs.

Jennifer kept both of the Chicago teams for last since we live in the Chicago area. She held off on the Mariners because she knows that I like them. I’m not sure why she waited on the Yankees. It might be the fact that an All-Time Yankees team might be tough to narrow down with their history.

Don’t forget to look for two more of her All-Time teams going up tomorrow and as always look for me on Twitter, I’m @Burketime.