Five biggest questions facing the Orioles after the All-Star break

He's a notoriously hot starter whose power and contact skills have historically waned for long stretches late in the season. His career first-half OPS of .830 is well above the second-half mark of .709. But considering he's making his free agent push and the team will be in the thick of a pennant race, there's plenty of incentive to buck that.

That's what happened to Chris Davis last year, when he hit 28 of his league-high 47 home runs after the All-Star break and cashed in with a seven-year, $161-million contract. He's already ahead of last year's pace with 22 home runs at the break. Having one of the two boom-or-bust batters in gear for the second half is a requirement. Both would be a dream.

3. Will the return of Darren O'Day save the bullpen?

Since he suffered a tricky high hamstring strain at the beginning of June, reliever Darren O'Day has left quite a hole in the Orioles bullpen. Brad Brach slid seamlessly into the eighth-inning role, but that moved both him and Mychal Givens out of their useful jobs as stoppers, and the whole group has suffered.

The hope is O'Day progresses quickly out of the All-Star break, and Showalter believes having O'Day back will free him up to go to Brach and Givens earlier and more often than recently. The Orioles will add left-hander Donnie Hart to the bullpen after the break, a mirror image of O'Day, though untested. Until the All-Star right-hander's return, it will be on Chaz Roe and Despaigne to bridge the gap to the late-innings with a lead.

4. What to do with Dylan Bundy?

One man left out of that bullpen equation is Bundy, the rookie right-hander who is relieving in longer stints on what amounts to a starter's schedule. It's worked out well, to the point that there's clamoring for him to get stretched out a bit more and join the starting rotation.

What remains to be seen is just how quickly that will happen. The plan entering this season was to get him to a certain number of innings while healthy so he could get into the rotation next spring. All of that is contingent on health, and the main question for this year is how increasing his workload to a starter's would affect his durability.

Bundy joining the rotation would be a gamble on an asset who could be a pivotal part of the Orioles rotation for the next five years. Jeopardizing that for a short-term need, even if it's in a pennant race to fill the team's one major deficiency, will require a lot of hard thinking.

5. If Toronto plays to its potential, does any of this matter?

Through the first half of the season, the Orioles' frequent meetings with the Boston Red Sox as those two teams were atop the division were the subject of much attention. But this was never a two-team race, even as the New York Yankees and Rays tanked. The Blue Jays were essentially the opposite of the Orioles — their lineup was underperforming, and their pitching staff was far exceeding expectations. Once the lineup comes around — and it's starting to — it's hard to see anyone in the division having a more deserved claim to the AL East crown than the Blue Jays.

FanGraphs' projections have the Red Sox, Orioles, and Blue Jays all within two games of each other at the end of the season, with Boston projected to win 89.8 games, Toronto 88.9 and the Orioles 88.1. Their playoff odds, respectively, are 76.4 percent, 69.4 percent and 62.7 percent.

At Baseball Prospectus, Toronto is projected to win the division with 89.1 wins, Boston next at 88.5 and the Orioles. It's clear that even with a slim two-game lead in the division coming out of the break, the Orioles aren't running away with anything yet. Whether they finish the second half of the season where they finished the first will be more the results of what the teams chasing them do as what they do for themselves.

jmeoli@baltsun.com

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