As people have noticed, there has been more and more talk about trades and whether the O's will break down the team by the deadline.  But here is some food for thought looking at the going forward schedule.  Please note that these comparisons excludes the results from last night, and are vs. the Yanks, Red Sox, and Rays.

- Baltimore has the most home games left at 47.5 (0.5 related to finishing the ChiSox game) out of 88 remaining.  Boston comes in at 43, NY at 42 and TB at 38.

- Excluding games against each other (within this grouping of teams), the O's have the following break-out of games against:

• Tier 1 Teams (41 wins or more): 16 games, 9 at home
• Tier 2 Teams (36 to 40 wins): 29 games, 20 at home
• Tier 3 Teams (35 wins or less):  18 games, 8 at home

You can argue whether the Tier cutoffs are appropriate or not as it is just a proxy - however we do have a pretty good home skew, particularly vs. teams we have a legitimate shot at taking 2 of 3 or potentially sweeping.  As for the other teams, NY looks to have the roughest road with 17 Tier 1 games (11 home), 33 Tier 2 games (12 home), and 6 Tier 3 games (3 home)

-  For games between these 4 teams, the O's have the 2nd least number remaining at 25, with Boston @ 31, NY @ 30, and TB @ 24.  However, in this category Baltimore has a negative home skew with 15 of the 25 Away.. and again NY has a rough road with 13 games against BOS.

This last point is the tough part against the O's, but if we do manage to skate through winning 1/2 of those games, there looks to be a way to get to 87 wins playing the way they have been playing.  So based on all of the above here is where these 4 teams are tracking in my opinion:

BOS - 98 wins
TAM - 97 wins
BAL - 87 wins
NYY - 82 wins

Possibly an exercise of futility, but if we can scratch out a couple hot streaks it could get interesting.

Article on Yahoo this morning.  I'm surprised B-Rob didn't call him back and leave a nice voicemail.  Only 11 more days till opening day!

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Have people seen the over/under games that vegas has put on the O's?  Seems ridiculously low at 64.5 wins, particularly considering the following:

lowest in MLB (next highest are the Marlins @ 69)

next highest in AL are the Royals and A's tied at 73.5

in the past 6 years, only 13 teams have been below 64.5

I know we are in rebuilding mode, but I think this is really absurd, in fact I will slam my fist on the table and venture to say that taking the over is the sports wager of the century.  Although my (yankee fan) colleague disagrees with me - despite the fact that I told him years ago that the Yankees wouldn't win a championship with Mussina on the team.. guy just an overwhelming karma of "pretty good - can't finish" that surrounds all who are around him.