The Baltimore Orioles opened up their series against the Oakland Athletics with a 9-4 win on Friday night, extending one of the wildest streaks in baseball in the process.
The Orioles have now gone 79 consecutive series of two-plus games without getting swept, which is the fourth-longest streak in MLB since 1900, per MLB.com's Sarah Langs. The longest such streak belongs to the St. Louis Cardinals, who avoided getting swept in 125 consecutive series from 1942 to 1944.
Until the Orioles came around, no team had even strung together 73 sweepless series in a row since the end of World War II, with the San Diego Padres and Atlanta Braves getting stuck at 72 in 1999 and 2005, respectively.
Baltimore's secret sauce might just be catcher Adley Rutschman, who made his major league debut right as the streak was getting underway in May 2022.
Rutschman joined the Orioles after they avoided a four-game sweep at the hands of the New York Yankees. In the 78 series Baltimore has played since Rutschman debuted, not a single one has ended with them getting swept.
According to Langs, that is the second-longest streak to start a career since Whitey Kurowski from 1941 to 1944. Kurowski was the Cardinals' third baseman through their record-breaking sweepless streak, and he went on to make five All-Star Games and win three World Series in his career.
Rutschman is batting .263 with 29 home runs, 56 doubles, 100 RBI, an .801 OPS and an 8.0 WAR just 230 games into his MLB career. The Orioles are 134-96 when Rutschman plays, which is quite the departure for a team that posted four last-place finishes in the five years before he arrived.
If the Orioles can ride this streak through the end of the regular season, they could enter 2024 with 91 series in a row without getting swept, which would rank third all-time. That would put Baltimore on pace to tie the Cardinals' record in late July of next year, while Rutschman can match Kurowski's record in early June.
Game two of the Orioles' series against the Athletics is scheduled to get underway at 9:07 p.m. ET on Saturday night. A win would help the O's extend their 2.0-game lead over the Tampa Bay Rays for first place in the AL East.
Baltimore's next chance to extend the streak of sweepless series is when Rutschman and the rest of the team host the Toronto Blue Jays at Camden Yards from Tuesday to Thursday.
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