We know who the perennial powers are in baseball over the past several years. The Braves are about to have won six division titles in a row, have the best record this year and are looking to win their second World Series in the past three years. The Astros seem to go to the League Championship Series every year and have played in the World Series four times since 2017, winning two of them. The Dodgers? They win their division every year, and they’ve played in three World Series since 2017, and won one in '20.

The Yankees may be fighting to get past the Red Sox and out of last place this season, but the last time they missed the postseason was 2016. And the Red Sox have still won four World Series in this century.

The Orioles? They are in the midst of a breakout season and seem poised to join that list of perennial contenders.

Two years ago at this time, the O’s were in the midst of losing 100 games for the third time in four years and the only time they didn’t in that stretch was in the COVID-shortened season of 2020. The last time the Orioles made it to the ALCS, in 2014, sometimes seemed like a memory almost as distant as Cal Ripken Jr. breaking Lou Gehrig’s record.

But now, with powerhouses like the Braves, Astros and Dodgers still very much back in play to make big October runs, it is the Orioles who have become as big a story as any team in baseball so far this season. It is the Orioles who have the second-best record in the sport, just three games behind the Braves. It is the Orioles who continue to play like a bunch of kids who have taken over the principal’s office.

Here is one way of looking at how far the Orioles have come:

At the All-Star break of 2022, they were 17 games behind the Yankees. Coming out of this weekend, the Orioles are now 19 1/2 games ahead of them in the AL East. After taking two of three from the Red Sox at Fenway Park this past weekend, the Orioles are 17 1/2 games ahead of them, which means a combined 37 games better than the Sox and Yankees.

With 20 games to play the Orioles continue to hold off a Rays team that started out 13-0. If the Yankees being in last place this late in the season is a great big baseball surprise, the Orioles being in first place in September, ahead of the Rays and the Blue Jays and everybody, is just as much of one.

“The Orioles have been progressing since 2021 in September,” Red Sox manager Alex Cora said the other day. “They were swinging before, swinging a lot. Now their chase rate is down. They put the ball in play, they play good defense. There’s a reason why they’re the best team in the American League.”

Now the only chase rate is for the teams chasing them in the East. The Orioles have made this kind of move to the top of their division that we kept expecting the Blue Jays to finally make. They are young, talented, don’t act at all surprised that they are where they are and they continue to have a blast. In addition to everything else, the man in charge in Baltimore is Brandon Hyde, who is probably going to win Manager of the Year in his league going away.

The Orioles don’t have the kind of loaded batting order that the Braves have. It doesn’t change the fact that they are having as much of a moment in the American League as the Braves are in the National League. They had just ripped off seven straight wins before the Red Sox clipped them on Sunday. They have already won seven more games than they did a year ago.

“Our team has come together,” Hyde said before the start of the Red Sox series. “Now hopefully we can finish strong.”

The Orioles have done nothing to this point, even with the constant questions about their pitching staff, to make you seriously doubt that they won’t finish strong. They’re the ones set up to be perennial winners going forward, whatever happens to them once they make it back to October.

Sports are still at their very best when they surprise us. The Orioles have surprised everybody except themselves. We knew they were going to be good. We had no idea they were going to be this good. We knew they were coming on when they were coming on after last season. We just didn’t know they were going to come on this hard or this fast.

But another beauty of sports is that there is never any kind of timetable for moments like this. Orioles fans have waited a long time, through a lot of losing, to have what all fans want, which is a team with a chance. The Orioles have given their fans that kind of chance.

“If you don’t have good dreams,” Mickey Rourke’s character says in the great Baltimore movie “Diner,” “all you’ve got is nightmares.”

The Orioles had their nightmare seasons when they kept losing 100. Now comes the dream, ahead of schedule. If they only play .500 ball the rest of the way, they win 100 this time.