Baltimore Orioles’ pitching knocked around in series finale

David Hess‘ outing for the Baltimore Orioles this afternoon looked and felt vastly different than his previous outing. Hess, as you’ll remember, was lifted in the seventh inning on Tuesday evening while throwing a no-hitter. While I do feel that Hess was squeezed a bit from the beginning by the home plate umpire, this outing most certainly doesn’t compare. Hess’ line: 5.0 IP, 5 H, 4 R, 2 BB, 2 K.

However we also need to be fair to Hess. New York starter German refused to allow the Orioles to do anything offensively. He took a no-hitter into the sixth inning before it was broken up. He pitched an outstanding game. The Orioles were unable to provide an answer for what he was throwing.

New York got on the board in the second inning on solo homers by Torres and Frazier. Before his big homer last night, Frazier’s last major leaguer homer cam in 2017. Hit hit two this series.

Sanchez would smack a two-run home run in the third, doubling New York’s lead. Frazier would come back up again in the sixth, and added insult to injury. As if his homer wasn’t enough, he provided an RBI-single in the sixth. When the smoke cleared in the sixth and seventh innings; New York held a 9-0 lead.

While the Orioles couldn’t put anything scores against German, they did chase him in the seventh inning. And that allowed them to at least put a few runners on. And just like that, they were able to load the bases in the last of the seventh. If nothing else, this game tells you that good pitching will generally win out, regardless of how good or bad the hitting is.

Jonathan Villar was able to score from third (with the bases loaded in the last of the seventh) on a pass ball to get the Birds on the board. Trey Mancini would score on a subsequent wild pitch. So while in a big time losing effort today, the O’s put two runs across without a hit to drive the runs in.

Later in that seventh inning Hanser Alberto‘s RBI-single would cut the lead to 9-3. But apparently New York wasn’t done yet. Sanchez smacked a two-run homer in the eighth, to run things to 11-3. It wasn’t just Sanchez’s third homer of the game, it was his third two-run homer of the game.

Frazier decided to add a two-run shot of his own in the ninth inning, which prompted the Orioles to use Hanser Alberto as a pitcher. Not ideal under any circumstances. After Alberto hit the first batter, Romine followed up with yet another two-run homer.

I wouldn’t have used Alberto as a pitcher. In fairness to Brandon Hyde, it didn’t affect the outcome of the game. But would a real reliever have surrendered another homer in that situation? We don.’the know. But losing 15-3 only hurts the team’s confidence: again however, it’s only one of 162.

New York smacked seven homers in this game. All but one of their runs came off the long ball. So on one hand you could argue that the O’s forced NY to become one dimensional and use the long ball exclusively to beat them. The bad news is that NY did just that.

For a young rebuilding team, games like this are going to happen. So are series’ like this. You never want to get swept, but getting swept at home by a division rival is really no fun. But keep in mind that if the Orioles’ top brass does it’s job in the coming years during the rebuild, one day the numbers in this series might be flipped.

The Orioles open up a four-game series with Oakland tomorrow night. Andrew Cashner gets the start for the Birds, and he’ll be opposed by Oakland’s Marco Estrada. Game time is set for just after 7 PM.