ANAHEIM — For part of the afternoon, Brandon Hyde became a Boston Red Sox fan.

Later this week, the Orioles will be at Fenway Park trying to win against Boston. And most of the time, the fellow American League East club is nothing more than an adversary. Yet on Labor Day, the Baltimore manager rooted for the Red Sox because rooting for the Red Sox meant rooting against the Tampa Bay Rays.

It’s September, and the Orioles are in a race toward the postseason. Peeking at the television screen or the out-of-town scoreboard becomes natural, even if it’s not something Baltimore has experienced during the recent rebuilding years. Hyde, at least, openly admits it.

“I’m maybe a little more guilty than [the players] are, I think,” Hyde said Monday afternoon before clarifying that glancing at what the Rays are doing doesn’t change Baltimore’s nightly outlook: “Can’t really worry about anyone else, even though I do watch.”

The best type of scoreboard watching is in their own park — that is, focusing on the game at hand. The Orioles have done that all year. They opened their series against the Los Angeles Angels on Monday with a 6-3 victory, and with Tampa Bay’s earlier loss to Boston, Baltimore’s lead in the American League East extends to a season-high 3.5 games.

At this point in the year, the Orioles won’t need to scoreboard watch elsewhere so long as they take care of their own business.

Baltimore is in the driver’s seat with 25 games remaining to earn its first playoff berth since 2016. The Orioles are 35 games over .500 (86-51), their best record in September since 1997, when Baltimore found itself 37 games up.

“This is my first time being in something like this, so I’m just trying to — it’s going to be cliche, but I’m just trying to do as much as I can to take it one game at a time, one pitch at a time,” rookie infielder Jordan Westburg said. “It can be hard. MLB Network’s on every night in the clubhouse, so you see the standings, you see what other teams are doing. I’m sure all of us feel a little bit of pressure at some point. But we’re doing our best to take it one game at a time. I think it’s even more to say, maybe, one pitch at a time, you know? Really not looking into the future or reading too much into the future at all.”

The Orioles have done this by maintaining that level-headed approach to the season. They displayed it over the weekend when, after dropping the series opener, their offense erupted in a single inning to spur two consecutive wins.

And Monday, after one run crossed against right-hander Grayson Rodriguez in the second inning, Baltimore’s offense compiled another bounce-back inning to make up ground. It began with Jorge Mateo’s single, and he scored on Austin Hays’ double. Three more hits in the frame brought home two more runs, and the Orioles captured a lead they wouldn’t lose.

Rodriguez faced plenty of traffic against him — he allowed seven hits and two walks — but two well-timed double plays and seven strikeouts powered Rodriguez through six innings. After Randal Gricuck hit a home run off Rodriguez in the fourth, the rookie found a groove that looked more akin to his other performances since returning from Triple-A Norfolk in July.

“Got a little mad. Not gonna lie,” Rodriguez said of his post-homer results. “Just kind of woke me up a bit. Little lethargic there at first. Didn’t really feel like myself. Then we really sharpened some things up there shortly after that.”

The 23-year-old struck out four of the final six batters he faced — two with his slider, one with a fastball and another with his changeup. In doing so, he secured his fifth consecutive quality start and rebounded from an earlier outing against Los Angeles in which he allowed eight runs.

“He’s a dog up there,” Westburg said. “Even when he has a few innings there when I would say he didn’t feel himself, he’s able to compete, come back out the next inning, make those adjustments and attack hitters. I think that’s what he did for us tonight. He was just a bulldog for us for six innings.”

After Rodriguez departed, Gunnar Henderson lined a 107.8-mph three-run homer to right field. The blast, his 23rd of the year, only furthered the young Orioles star’s case for the American League Rookie of the Year award. And it gave Baltimore the breathing room to withstand Brandon Drury’s solo shot off left-hander DL Hall in the eighth.

With the win, Hyde achieved the 300th victory of his managerial career. He quipped that it “took me long enough,” but “these last two years have been a lot of fun, just kind of turning the corner and being able to compete with the good major league teams.”

So he found himself with an eye on what the Red Sox were doing to the Rays early in the afternoon. But come the evening, the Orioles did what the Orioles need to do: win.

If they keep this up, there’s no other scoreboard watching required.

“We keep an eye on it, but we’re just going to go out there and try to win each game,” Henderson said. “Because if you win the game, that’s the best-case scenario.”

andy.kostka@thebaltimorebanner.com