Same as it ever was, O’s are off to a better start than pundits

The Orioles have sailed through t heir f rontloaded divisional schedule to build one of the best records in the major leagues, which is heady stuff for a team that still can’t get an ounce of respect from the socalled experts who handicap major league baseball.

Nobody around here needs to be reminded that the Buck Showalter Orioles have never played very well on paper. They’ve been picked to finish below .500 by the analytics crowd for the past five years and have won the most regular-season games in the American League over that period, so it only makes sense that this will be the year they finally regress to the mean – or well below it. Right? There’s certainly plenty of time for them to tumble down the standings. They’ve barely played a 10th of the schedule and they aren’t exactly running away from the pack in the American League East, but their