BALTIMORE -- May is a pivotal month on the baseball calendar: a time when hot starts can fade, when means begin to be regressed to and when, conversely, early-season surprises start to prove they are more than just that. So much remains subject to change, but 5 1/2 weeks in, there is a new hierarchy in the American League East, with the Rays and Orioles sporting two of MLB’s three best records.

Few teams have started as well as Tampa Bay has this season, and it’s relatively uncharted territory for Baltimore as well after a long rebuild. Given those circumstances, it’s not unfair to call the matchup at Camden Yards this week the biggest early-season series in the ballpark in at least a half-decade.

It goes toward explaining the Orioles’ disappointment at dropping the first chapter, 3-0, in hard-fought but fruitless fashion Monday night. Shane McClanahan outdueled Kyle Gibson, and the Rays hit two solo homers to send the O’s to their first three-game losing streak of the young season. The loss marked Baltimore’s first in a series opener this year after setting a franchise record by winning its first 11 to begin 2023.

“That’s what makes this game beautiful: going out there competing against the best and seeing where you match up,” said Gibson, who probably deserved better for logging six-plus innings of two-run ball opposite McClanahan. “You look at [the series in] Atlanta -- we scored more runs over the series and played better than them for probably 28 of the 30 innings. And we lost two games.

"Against really good teams, that's how three-game series can go. … When you get two really good teams out there like that tonight, it's the little things that end up making a really close three-run game feel like it wasn't close. But it was a close game.”

It was also the Orioles’ third loss in four games to begin a mettle-testing 22-game stretch against teams with a winning record after they dropped two of three in Atlanta over the weekend. On Monday, they worked McClanahan for eight baserunners in six innings only to watch multiple rallies fizzle, going 0-for-6 with runners in scoring position. The O's are in the midst of a 2-for-29 rut in that department in their past three games.

“Everybody's going to have times where they go a few games without getting hits [with runners in scoring position],” manager Brandon Hyde said. “That's just the way it is.”

The O’s also know they will get many more opportunities against their division rivals, whom they’ve struggled against for years. Baltimore went 12-36 against Tampa Bay during the darker years of its rebuild, from 2019-21, before bridging the gap some (9-10) but still dropping the season series to the Rays last year. Twelve more matchups remain between the clubs in ‘23 -- and both teams seem confident they will come with higher stakes throughout the rest of the season.

“The Orioles are playing great baseball right now,” McClanahan said. “They’re a fun team to watch. They’re special. They’ve got a lot of really young talent, and it was on display tonight: taking good pitches, fighting, the defensive plays. That’s a fun team to play. You always want to be the best, but you’ve got to play the best.”

Said Gibson: “We know that we've been playing really good baseball. This isn't a three-game losing streak where we've shot ourselves in the foot and we haven't played well. We've given away two of the three games or all three. We've been in all three of them. We've been one swing away from winning each game. So we feel really good about where we're at. We're playing really good baseball, and if we keep doing this over the long stretch, we're going to be right where we want to be at the end."