If you're surprised by the first-place O's, you shouldn't be

This weekend, the Orioles go up against Buck Showalter, who managed them the last time they mattered this much in baseball and thought they could make a run at not just the postseason, but the World Series. It was in 2014 that the Orioles made it to the American League Championship Series before being swept by the Royals. Now, all this time later, they are as much a championship contender as anybody in the sport. They’re just the new kids on the block.

They played the Yankees last weekend and took two out of three. They just played the Blue Jays in Toronto and took three out of four with them. By the end of this weekend, the rest of the regular season will be a 50-game sprint, and the Orioles still have the second-best record in the sport -- just 3 1/2 games behind the Braves, who are routinely described as the very best team in the game.

The Rays started out 13-0 and 30-9, and the Orioles stayed with them and finally passed them. If the Orioles sweep the Mets, who just got swept by the Royals, they will get to 70 wins. This is how the Astros looked when the Astros got good again, after their own teardown that included one 100-loss season after another. You could see Houston was going to be a top team for a long time. The Orioles are about to be a top team for a long time -- and clearly think this is their time.

It’s the Orioles who have come all the way back from being at the bottom of the league. Five years ago, when the Red Sox were World Series champs again, they won 108 games in the regular season. The Orioles lost 115 games. Two years ago, they lost 110. This year, they could end up winning 100 unless they start to fade. Except ask yourself this:

What have they done all season, as they’ve taken all comers, to indicate that they’re about to fade?

This week, they made a trade with the Cardinals for Jack Flaherty, who pitched so well on Thursday afternoon in Toronto in his first Orioles start that he made you think he can be their ace the rest of the way: six innings, four hits, one run and eight strikeouts. He had his first win in a Baltimore uniform, and the Orioles won again. When it was over, Flaherty told the media what a “whirlwind” the past couple of days had been since the Trade Deadline:

“Like I told [my new teammates], I’ll start to actually talk to you guys and learn your guys’ names.”

It is what everybody outside Baltimore has been doing this season: learning these names. Now the Orioles add another young guy -- the 27-year old Flaherty -- to the young guys they already have, starting right at the top of manager Brandon Hyde’s batting order. Hyde has his 25-year-old catcher, Adley Rutschman (14 homers, 50 RBIs, .275 average), leading off these days. Behind him, he has his 22-year-old shortstop, Gunnar Henderson, who has 18 homers of his own and 49 RBIs.

The two oldest position players who started for the Orioles in Toronto on Tuesday were right fielder Ryan O'Hearn and second baseman Adam Frazier. Frazier is 31. O’Hearn didn’t turn 30 until last week.

I asked Don Mattingly, now the bench coach in Toronto and who was the NL Manager of the Year with the Marlins three years ago, to talk about what he’d seen from the Orioles over the four-game series that had just concluded.

“Power pitching,” Mattingly said. “Versatile lineup. They’re a tough club that plays with attitude. And they are real.”

They come into the weekend at 67-42, still two games ahead of the Rays, still sitting on top of a division whose last-place team -- the Yankees -- is 57-52. The Blue Jays had a big chance this past week to make a big move on the Orioles, with that series at home. You saw what happened. The Blue Jays got rolled. In the series finale, Flaherty pitched the way he pitched and Austin Hays had four hits and a couple of RBIs, and Danny Coulombe, Yennier Cano and Mike Baumann came out of the bullpen to throw three shutout innings.

Last Sunday night, Baumann, Cano and Coulombe combined with Dean Kremer and Shintaro Fujinami to strike out 18 New York Yankees after the two teams had split the first two games of that series, and the Bombers were looking to get out of Baltimore by taking two of three.

Those are names that Flaherty is about to learn, along with Rutschman, Henderson, Hays, Ryan Mountcastle and Anthony Santander and all the rest. Two years after losing 110, the Orioles are still on top of baseball’s best division in the first week of August. Even after the Rays did have that 30-9 start, the Orioles were just four games behind them, and hardly blinded by the light.

The Orioles are back. So, too, is a great baseball city. Like old times in Baltimore, for the new kids on the block. Looking to knock everybody’s block off.