Sunday Bird Droppings: The Orioles will be Kyle Bradish’s next opponent.

Nothing quite like an Orioles win to make things feel better after a stupid loss. The team was able to deliver this on Saturday afternoon, evening up the series with Oakland by dropping a 7-0 victory. The game featured home runs by Gunnar Henderson, Ryan Mountcastle, and Adley Rutschman, and saw Cole Irvin toss seven shutout innings against his former team. Check out John Beers’s recap of the game for more of the lovely totals.

For a second day in a row, the Yankees matched the Orioles result. They put a real beating on the Brewers, dropping 19 hits and 15 runs in a blowout that saw both Aaron Judge and Giancarlo Stanton homer. Not fun for Birdland if those guys stay healthy and get hot. The O’s and Yankees remain tied atop the AL East in the games back column, but if you want to get technical, and since it means the Orioles are in first place you certainly should want that, the Orioles actually lead by percentage points. Both teams are three games clear of the Red Sox and five games clear of the Rays and Jays.

There was some news before the Orioles got going with yesterday’s victory. Manager Brandon Hyde told reporters that the next start Kyle Bradish will make is going to be with the big league team. Bradish had a successful rehab outing on Friday and reached the five inning, 80(ish) pitch threshold that had been what the team was looking to see from him. His rehab will be over after just three starts, two of which were pretty good.

The squeeze is officially coming. If Bradish’s next start is on regular rest, he would start on Wednesday. If the Orioles don’t want to disrupt any of the next three guys from their own regular rest, Bradish could slot in on Thursday afternoon instead. They’ll also have to decide what to do about John Means within the next few days; Means has his final rehab outing today and would be on regular rest on Friday. There was some bad luck for Means in his last start. I’d like to see him get good results at least once before he has to be activated.

Irvin made a heck of a case for himself to not get booted from the rotation with the way he pitched on Saturday afternoon. Yeah, that was against a sad Athletics lineup, but he got better results than Corbin Burnes did, and was able to pitch deeper into the game, too. Irvin’s ERA of 3.49 is the second-best of the O’s Opening Day rotation.

Albert Suárez will look to do similar for himself as he starts the 1:35 finale today. It’s no guarantee that Means will jump into the rotation until the Orioles confirm this, although it would surprise me if they don’t.