Word. People keep saying the Yankees this, Yankees that. I hate the Yankees, but if they don't lead the division by 5 at the end of June, I'd be shocked.
I would. The Yankees are 9-14 against their own division, 3-0 against the Central (swept the Tigers), and 12-6 against the West. That has the stench of a team that performs well against weak competition. The Orioles meanwhile are 16-6 against the East. And of course the Orioles are 5-1 against the Yankees. No one is saying the Orioles will beat the Yankees for sure. But they are a team to be taken seriously.
I'm not taking into consideration games from April when the Yankees were losing to everybody. Right now, they have some really light teams on their schedule coming up (Brewers 4, Royals 3, Pirates 3), with the way their offense is hitting, I would not doubt they could win 9 of the next 14, easily. I hope I'm wrong, but I've seen it too many times to be optimistic about the Orioles maintaining this flimsy 3 1/2 (4 in the loss) game lead.