This O's team could do something even Ripken didn't do

With their 10-3 victory over the Angels on Wednesday night, the Baltimore Orioles have raised their record, improbably, to 88-51. With one more win, it will equal the most they've won since going 89-73 in their last playoff season of 2016, which is impressive even when you consider it is, uh, only Sept. 7, and there are still 23 games left to play.

But it is worth, in the midst of a knock-down, drag-out fight between the Orioles and the Rays for the AL East title (and a potential No. 1 seed in the American League playoffs), reflecting on just how good this season is for the Orioles, in the historical context in the franchise. In fact, there is a good chance they could reach heights the club didn't reach even during Cal Ripken Jr.'s heyday. (More on that in a minute.)

The Orioles' struggles this century have been well-documented. From 2000-11, the best record they had was 78-84 in '04 -- a team that had peak Miguel Tejada but also 215 2/3 innings and a 5.30 ERA from Sidney Ponson -- and all that record got them was a third-place finish, 23 games behind the first-place Yankees.

Things changed when Buck Showalter came to town midway through the 2010 season. There was optimism for Showalter's hiring -- he had built, fairly, a reputation as a manager who could shepherd young teams into contention. The first full year was rough (69-93), and thus there wasn't much hope for '12. But then Showalter and the Orioles went on a five-year run, from 2012-16, that would put them among the best teams in the American League; it was, in fact, the first five-year stretch the Orioles had without a losing season since 1976-80. It was not always clear how the Orioles were actually having as much success as they were having; they regularly outperformed their Pythagorean record, and the advanced stats analysts of the time -- an era in which sabermetrics was finally receiving widespread acceptance -- constantly pooh-poohed the Orioles' success, calling it unsustainable, or even a mirage entirely. "From a statistical perspective," FanGraphs' Jeff Sullivan wrote in 2017, "the Orioles have been uniquely bizarre."

The cruelest aspect of the Orioles' five years of success last decade is that for all that regular-season success, they had a few notable postseason disappointments. The 2012 ALDS loss to an otherwise-uninspiring Yankees team. Two years later, they won their first postseason series since the 1997 ALDS against the Mariners with a three-game sweep over the Tigers, but they were swept by the Royals immediately thereafter in the ALCS. And then there was the all-timer of a loss in the 2016 Wild Card Game against the Blue Jays, in which Showalter never brought in Zack Britton (who had just finished one of the best relief seasons of all time) in extra innings and ended up losing 5-2 in the 11th with … Ubaldo Jiménez on the mound.

After that, the Orioles went through a full rebuild, ending up with the No. 1 pick in the Draft twice (2019, '22) and the No. 2 pick once ('20). The first signs of life arrived last year when Adley Rutschman debuted, and this year has been the true breakthrough. Thanks to a seemingly limitless number of position player prospects, not to mention the emergence of Rutschman (one of those No. 1 picks) as a guy who sure looks like he's going to win an MVP Award someday, the Orioles are doing things that can make you forget the lean years.

With Wednesday night's win, the Orioles aren't just still in first place; they're on pace to win 102 games. 102 games! If the Orioles win 100 games -- something they only need to go 12-11 the rest of the way to do -- they will become the first Orioles team to win 100 games since … 1980. That 1980 team, which finished second in the AL East behind a 103-win Yankees team, had Jim Palmer, Eddie Murray, Ken Singleton and Steve Stone, who won 25 games and the AL Cy Young Award. But you know what that 1980 team didn't have?

It didn't have Ripken.

Ripken would not make his MLB debut until Aug. 10, 1981 -- he wouldn't take his first at-bat until two days later, grounding out against Paul Splittorff -- and he would not start his consecutive games streak until May 30, 1982. That streak, you may vaguely remember, lasted 2,632 games, all the way until Sept. 21, 1998, and Ripken would retire after his final game on Oct. 6, 2001, a total of 3,001 games, and 12,883 plate appearances, over 21 seasons. During that time, Ripken established himself not just as the face of the Orioles, but one of the faces of baseball, the gold standard this franchise would forever be striving to return to, their True North.

But one thing Ripken never did in his unprecedented Hall of Fame career? He never played on a team that won 100 games. The highest number his teams ever reached was 98, in the World Series winning-season of 1983 and then again in 1997, for a Davey Johnson-managed team with Roberto Alomar, Rafael Palmeiro and Mike Mussina. Great teams. Historic teams. But they never won 100 games.

• Cal Ripken Jr.'s Top 10 career highlights

They never did what this Orioles team sure looks like it's going to do. It remains to be seen what the young Orioles will be able to pull off in the postseason, which is ultimately how history will judge them. But over 162 games -- a number that, because of Ripken, will always have specific significance to Orioles fans -- what the Orioles are doing this year is something they never once did in the Ripken era. Ripken's career came and went without the Orioles doing something they're likely to do in 2023. The future looks bright for the Orioles; this is hardly the end of anything. But it also is extremely hard, in the end, for it to be much better than it is right now. These are the good times. Enjoy them.