Two days ago, it looked like the Baltimore Orioles might be toast. At a minimum, they were a lonely piece of wheat bread sitting next to a tiny oven with a tub of margarine, a side of bacon, and a glass of orange juice nearby.

After a 5-1 loss on Tuesday to the Toronto Blue Jays in the opener of their most important series of the season, the O’s were just a game up on the Detroit Tigers for the second AL wild card spot. Eight innings into Wednesday’s contest, Baltimore was down 2-1, Detroit was up 6-3 in a rain delay, and it looked like a foregone conclusion that the Birds and Bengals would be knotted up by night’s end. And if that happened, then the odds of Baltimore rolling over in the finale, not to mention their season-ending series against the Yankees, were roughly equivalent to the odds of September having 30 days.

Then something funny happened. Actually, a few funny things happened.

With one out and nobody on and facing Toronto closer Roberto Osuna, Jonathan Schoop singled – the same Jonathan Schoop who entered Tuesday 0-for-autumn, and was hitting just .149 in September. Then Hyun Soo Kim proceeded to foul off 913 pitches (give or take) before sending the 914th one over the right field wall – the same Hyun Soo Kim who went 0-for-spring (almost) and would’ve started the season in the minors if the Orioles had their way, but who has become the team’s best (only?) pure contact hitter and consequently a fan fave. But wait, there’s more.

On Thursday, fresh off their Kim-back victory in game two, they beat Toronto 4-0 in the finale. Instead of rolling over, they steamrolled. And they did so behind six-plus innings of one-hit ball from Ubaldo Jimenez – the same Ubaldo Jimenez who spent the first half of the season being Public Enemy No. 1 in Charm City, not to mention the worst pitcher in baseball, but who has miraculously morphed into Baltimore’s most dependable starter down the stretch.

So yeah, it has been a crazy couple of days.

Just how bananas have the Birds gone? On Wednesday, they won for the second time in a week when trailing after eight innings, something they’d done just twice all season before that. On Thursday, they did something they hadn’t done in two years: They blanked the Blue Jays. And they did it without hitting a home run, the first time in nearly two months they won a game in which they didn’t go deep (they’d lost 10 straight when going homerless). Instead, they played small ball. Like, real-deal, we-actually-meant-to-do-it small ball (as opposed to those games where they failed to go deep but still managed to win, and so we called it “small ball” even though it really wasn’t).

How small? Manny Machado hit a sacrifice fly, which might not seem like a big deal to normal baseball fans, but to anyone who has been watching the Orioles lately, it’s a minor miracle. Adam Jones moved a runner over by hitting a ground ball to the right side, which falls squarely into major miracle territory. Michael Bourn stole a key base in the late innings, just like he did on Wednesday, becoming the first O’s player this season to record steals in back-to-back games and increasing Baltimore’s SB total on the year by 12 percent (from 17 to 19, by far the fewest in MLB).

Just like that, the SmallBalltimore Orioles have pulled dead even with Toronto and turned the wild-card race on its head. As they get set to kick off their three-game set against the Yankees in the Bronx, it feels like the balance of power has shifted. Suddenly, after a deep midsummer slumber, Buck Showalter’s club appears to have awoken at exactly the right time, winning five of its past six and doing all the little things – which could pay big dividends.

Forget about fending off the Tigers, who are in Atlanta to face an unrecognizable Braves squad that’s won 10 of 11 and will reportedly be wearing special-edition alternate unis with the word “Spoilers” embroidered on the front. At this point, denying Detroit is small potatoes. The titantic tubers? That would be overtaking the Jays -- who, by the way, travel to Boston to take on a Red Sox team that still has home field advantage to play for -- and hosting the AL wild-card game (paging all fans, all Orioles fans: Please report to the white courtesy phone at the corner of Camden and Eutaw), an idea that seemed absurd as recently as 48 hours ago. The only thing even more absurd would be if Jimenez were the starting pitcher in said wild-card game.

Whether both absurdities become realities remains to be seen. For now, we know this much: Instead of being toast, there’s a good chance that at some point this weekend, the Orioles will be toasting.