The Orioles are running out of starting pitchers.
Kyle Bradish was shutdown for the season recently, which only made sense. Brandon Young is running on fumes and lacking command deeper in a season than he’s ever gone before, and innings-eater Shane Baz had to leave Tuesday’s game in the fifth inning after taking a screaming line drive off his elbow (X-rays negative), clearly in distress. The Orioles had him try a warm up pitch, anyway, which sailed high to the backstop at maybe 70 mph, before pulling him.
It’s been that kind of an eight-year rebuild going nowhere under Mike Elias, folks. But at least this game got fun in the 9th inning and continued through extras as the O’s won, 7-5.
Orioles slugger Pete Alonso gave the Mets fans – yeah the Mets fans – what they wanted with one out in the ninth, blasting career homer No. 300 of Kodai Senga (10th fastest to reach it), and then getting a curtail call from the opposing fans, while the game was still going on. And they chanted his name (he is the Mets all-time HR leader) and they chanted for their GM to be fired (shoulda been happening at Camden Yards at least two years ago).
“I’m more stoked that we won the game,” Alonso said of his homer on the MASN broadcast after the game. “We’re in a tight Wild Card race here with not a lot of games to go. There’s a lot of tight margins, and getting that game back … We’re playing for October right now.”
Manager Craig Albernaz said: “Haven’t really seen a curtain call for a guy wearing grey pants.” Odd, indeed. It only got stranger from there.
In the 11th inning Coby Mayo blasted a ball to dead center in an 0-2 count with two outs, and scored easily for an inside-the-park, three-run homer after the ball caromed off the wall while centerfielder AJ Ewing fell back awkwardly. Mayo now has 24 homers (second to Alonso on the team), 63 driven in (also second), and has raised his OPS to .759.
The Orioles struck out 17 times and walked just once, and won the ballgame.
Given how late in this season we are, and how hard that ball struck Baz, it’s fair to wonder if this is it. He has been a patently mediocre MLB starter; Elias gave away what became three of the mighty Rays top 10 prospects for him. Baz has regressed after a strong stretch of starts, he’s been doomed by no run support, and if this is it, Baz finishes with a 4.11 ERA (and basically an ERA+ of 100, the definition of a league-average starter) over 173 innings.
Baz doesn’t get as much swing-and-miss as you would think or hope and Tuesday was rough for him even before the liner. He gave up seven hits and walked two more and struck out just two. One run scored on a sac fly in the first – Baz was not sharp early -Juan Soto’s single in the second and rookie Carson Benge’s homer in the third.
Albernaz said Baz was sore – a ball coming 108 mph right at you will do it – but offered not much else beyond the X-ray results.
The bullpen managed to navigate the rest of the way, Josh Walker had an 18th-straight outing in which he was not scored on, rookie Luis De Leon looked sharp over innings, and it got them to the ridiculous ending.
“The bullpen did an unbelievable job when Baz went own,” Alonso said.
The Orioles (74-78) couldn’t do much against veteran Sean Manaea, who has been quite bad this season. Christian Encarnacion-Strand and Jackson homered in the second. Alonso came up in the ninth and added a third solo homer, a laser to left field that was never in doubt.
Baltimore is three games off the pace for the final playoff spot in the ridiculously-suspect American League with just 10 games to play.
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