Sprint to the Finish. Sort Of

It might be a bad sign when you're watching a game, and one of the highlights is a home run hit the night before. That said, I did enjoy seeing the replay of the ritual of the team ignoring Jose Igelesias (pictured) after his first major league homer. They didn't keep it up for long, but you can't blame them, they could use some good news.

Oh, and they lost 4-2. It was Jon Lester's first ever loss against the Orioles, which wouldn't have been that notable if it happened two years ago or even last year, but in light of this year that's an impressive streak he had going.

By the way, the Orioles are 19 games ahead of the Sox in the standings and STILL have a negative run differential (-8). We can't throw out run differential yet, though -- the Orioles are the only anomaly (negative differential, positive record) in either league. The Red Sox were the reverse of that, until a few weeks ago.

For example: today's's starter is Randy Wolf, 5-10 on the year. His ERA was 5.69 with Milwaukee, and it's been 5.22 since he joined the Orioles. But he's won both of his starts for Baltimore.

The Sox will send Aaron Cook, who's coming off a strong start and one of his four wins on the year.  Spoiler alert? Not yet.