You can’t blame Baltimore Orioles’ starter Corbin Burnes for tonight’s game. Burnes took the L, but pitched to a quality start. If you don’t put up any runs you can’t win. It’s that simple. Burnes’ lone: 6.1 IP, 6 H, 3 R, 3 BB, 6 K.
Burnes gave up an RBI-single in the second, giving Washington a 1-0 lead. However Washington starter Williams stymied the Orioles’ high powered offense. Everytime something on base, he would stay there.
RBI-so goes from Rosario and Lipscomb would extend Washington’s lead in the last of the seventh. And their bullpen closed down the Orioles down the stretch. Did they leave their bats in Cincinnati? Tough to say. But whatever they did tonight didn’t work – needless to say.
The O’s did show some fire in the ninth inning, however. Perhaps the wrong kind of fire though. Ryan O’Hearn was rung up on a close pitch in the ninth inning, and was ejected by home plate umpire Alex Tosi. It was all but a moot issue at that point, as was the fact that manager Brandon Hyde was ejected in trying to protect O’Hearn, who gave one heck of a quote after the game (quote courtesy of Roch Kubatko, MASNsports):
I just lost my cool. There were a few strikes called on me that I really didn’t like going back to the first inning, going back to the first pitch, actually. And then I sat in the dugout and watched it happen to our guys all night. (Colton) Cowser had a really bad one 3-2. Multiple. And it’s hard to tell as players because we don’t get the K zone anymore on the iPads, but it got to the point where it was just bad. He was calling balls outside the K zone strikes and I got pissed off and decided to say something about it. First career ejection, I’m not proud of it, but it is what it is.
If you look at it, where the pitches came in, we’ll just take that at-bat for an example, the pitch before it he called a ball was less inside. It was more toward the plate than that one. So when I see where a pitch is and I go, ‘OK, that’s ball there,’ and then he throws one a little bit further inside and he bangs me on that one, that’s pretty irritating.
That’s saying a lot. My personal opinion is that O’Hearn had a point. The strike zone did seem to move around slightly. But you rarely hear players get that candid about umpiring, as the league office is always listening. Don’t be surprised to see O’Hearn get fined for those comments.
The series concludes tomorrow at Nationals Park. Kyle Bradish gets the start for the O’s, and he’ll be opposed by Washington’s Mitchell Parker. Game time is set for 6:45 PM.
Birdland Crush 