The unsweepable O's, and other fascinating storylines this week

There’s always something fascinating going on in the world of baseball -- and there’s always something new. Every Friday morning throughout the season, heading into the weekend, inspired by *Zach Lowe’s terrific “10 Things I Like” NBA column for ESPN, we present the Five Fascinations, five fun things going on in the baseball world. Also, we’d like to shout out* *the always excellent Ben Clemens at FanGraphs, another progenitor of a similar format. Submit your personal fascinations to* will.leitch@mlb.com, or just yell at me about mine.

1) The incredible, unsweepable Orioles
The Orioles were this close to getting swept. Down 2-1 in the bottom of the ninth to the Blue Jays at Camden Yards on Wednesday afternoon, Adley Rutschman came to the plate with a runner on first base. If he would have hit into a double play, the Orioles would have been one out away from their first sweep since losing three to Detroit way back in May 2022, a week before Rutschman made his MLB debut. On a 2-1 pitch from Jordan Romano, Rutschman lofted a high arcing ball down the right-field line that just inched over the wall -- something it took an extended replay to determine -- and thus keeping the streak alive. This streak is really becoming quite a thing: It is now tied with the 1903-05 Giants for the third-longest sweepless streak in MLB history. (If you, uh, don’t count their ALDS last year, anyway.)

This is wild for many reasons, the biggest of which is the fact that the Orioles lost 110 games the very season before the streak started (a season that included a lot of sweeps; the 2021 Orioles were swept 19 times). This is now 105 straight series the Orioles have gone without being swept, which is 19 short of the record of 124 by the 1942-44 Cardinals.

If the Orioles keep rolling, they would have a chance to tie the record at Miami from July 23-25 and break it from July 26-28, at home against the Padres. Obviously, it’s difficult to make any sort of prediction about whether they can pull this off, but the best thing they’ve got going for them is that their only remaining scheduled two-game series comes Aug. 13-14 against the Nationals. (Although rainouts could be a factor; that’s what nearly did them in this week against Toronto.) This is quietly one of the craziest things going on in baseball right now, though after Rutschman’s homer, it might not be quiet for that much longer.

2) Is this the year for Bryce Harper?
About a month and half before his first MLB at-bat, I wrote a long feature about Bryce Harper for GQ magazine, the basic premise of which was that Harper was a highly controversial figure who seemed poised to rattle the entire baseball establishment. That hasn’t really turned out -- Harper is the ultimate team player, has grown into a humble superstar and is basically one of the most beloved players in the sport -- but something much better has happened: He has become the sort of inner-tier face of the game-type player who has won multiple MVPs and seems destined for the Hall of Fame. He’s Bryce Harper! Everybody loves Bryce Harper!

One thing Bryce Harper doesn’t have, though, is a World Series ring. This is particularly an issue because the team he came up with, the Nationals, the team that built an entire roster around him, won one the very next year after he left. Coming up, Harper was constantly compared to Mike Trout, the player he swapped spots with atop prospect boards for years. But while Trout has won more MVPs and had a 10-year stretch that outpaces anything that Harper (or anybody else) has done, Harper is still healthy and mashing and -- and this one is key -- makes the postseason every year.

Which is why it must be said that the smoking-hot Phillies, who have the best winning percentage in baseball, very much look like the best team Harper has ever played on, the one that may give him the best chance to win a championship that he will ever have. The Phillies made the World Series two years ago and certainly should have last year, before those two terrible games against the D-backs after they’d secured a 3-2 NLCS lead. But the way this team is constructed -- great, but already kind of old -- Harper might never have a better shot than 2024. For a player who has consistently risen to the occasion in big moments, this ensures we’re going to see him at his best as well.

3) Whoa, look at the Rockies!
Psst. Psst! Yeah, you over there. Got something to tell you, a secret no one else knows about: The Colorado Rockies have won seven in a row. It’s true! And it’s MLB’s longest active win streak. The Rockies haven’t managed a streak that long since 2019, and let’s be honest: You’re sort of surprised they did it that recently, aren’t you?

So how are they pulling this off? Well, when the Rockies are good -- and obviously sample size here is pretty small! -- it’s not because of their elevation-inflated hitting: It’s because of their pitching. And during the seven-game winning streak, with four games at home and three games on the road, they gave up a total of just 14 runs, or two per game. Colorado’s rotation has driven the success, namely Austin Gomber (the “main” guy in the Nolan Arenado trade) who has a 3.02 ERA this season, but the whole staff has a 1.96 ERA during the seven-game streak.

Rookie Jordan Beck has come alive during the streak, hitting his first big league homer on Wednesday. But the team’s best hitter has been Ryan McMahon, who, at the age of 29, is finally having the season (.304/.384/.472) the Rockies have been waiting for for a half-decade. Now, it should be noted that this seven-game win streak has not in fact gotten them out of last place in the NL West; they’re still four games behind the Giants, who aren’t exactly tearing it up right now. The Rockies are 13 games under .500 still. But a win streak is a win streak, and the Rockies are on one. And we wanted to make sure they knew we noticed.

4) The Reds’ frustrating start
There are few worse things you can say about a team than to say they remind you of the 2023 San Diego Padres. This is not because the 2023 Padres were so bad, necessarily: They did have Juan Soto, Manny Machado, Fernando Tatis Jr. and Xander Bogaerts, after all. But they were famously snake-bit, going 2-12 in extra-inning games and a shocking 9-23 in one-run games. Just a normal amount of good fortune would have won them 90 games, yet they ended up 82-80, then traded Soto. All the talent in the world does you no good when the baseball gods decide to rule against you. Just the way the sport works, I’m afraid.

The 2024 Reds, sad to say, very much have that vibe early. Despite all their young talent and Elly De La Cruz looking like he might put together an unprecedented 40-100 season (goodness!), they entered play Thursday night at 18-25 and tied for last place in the NL Central with the cratering Cardinals. How is it happening? They’re getting dragged down by the same thing that got the 2024 Padres: Close losses. The Reds are an absolutely absurd 1-10 in one-run games, and they’ve gotten particularly drilled by them lately: After a 16-13 start, they’ve gone 2-12, with six of those losses coming by one run, including back-to-back walk-offs against the Giants and Diamondbacks on Sunday and Monday.

Manager David Bell may be tearing his hair out, but, to be fair, he has the same advantage that the 2023 Padres had (and squandered): What looks like a very weak NL Wild Card field. This is a season when all you need to do is get to .500, and you’re in the hunt. All the Reds need is just a slight tweak of luck to get them there. Of course, the Padres spent all of 2023 waiting for that tweak, and it never came.

5) The astonishingly bad luck of Reese Olson
A starting pitcher can only control so much on the mound. And Tigers starter Reese Olson, over his last seven outings, has been as good a pitcher as you will find in the Majors. Here are his numbers over that stretch:

42 1/3 IP
38 K
13 BB
29 H
2.38 ERA

That’s fantastic: The strikeout rate’s a little low, sure, but a 2.38 ERA over seven starts, for a team with a good enough offense to be hanging around the Wild Card chase? You expect some good results from that. Well, here’s the thing: The Tigers have lost all seven of those starts.

Five of them have been one-run losses -- two of them 1-0 losses -- and in three of them the Tigers had the lead when he left. We can only assume that in Reese’s next start, he will give up 11 runs and the Tigers will win, 12-11.

Fun Series of the Weekend: Twins at Guardians
The Twins have cooled off a bit since their sausage-fueled win streak (thanks to their regular tormentors, the Yankees), but that run got them back in an AL Central race that’s shaping up to be the most fun in baseball. That makes this weekend’s visit to Cleveland a particularly fascinating one, a potential opportunity to even pass the Guardians if they can win all three games. What may be most exciting? The real chance that Byron Buxton will return from the injured list, just in time for the key division matchup.

You know who may be most excited about these two teams playing? The Royals, who are smooshed in-between them in the AL Central, just 1 1/2 games behind the Guardians, and enjoying a home series against the A’s, a far less formidable opponent than either of these two. The winner of this series may well end up being the Royals.