Charlie Morton whiffs ten Angels in a rain-shortened gem, O’s win 2-0

Two hours of rain delays made for a weird game, but the on-field product was excellent.

Darn rain! Friday night’s Orioles-Angels game started an hour late, thanks to a rain delay that Apple TV meteorologists sportscasters Wayne Randazzo and Dontrelle Willis insisted wasn’t necessary (way to dump on the Oriole Park grounds crew, very classy). Then after a brisk five innings, there was a second rain delay, this one also lasting an hour.

Two hours of thumb-twiddling between innings is bad enough, but the worst thing about the weather was that—you won’t believe me, but it’s true—it broke up a Charlie Morton gem I was desperate to keep watching. I mean it!! The 41-year-old veteran blazed through five innings on just 78 pitches (57 for strikes), struck out ten hitters and got 16 whiffs. Here’s the Baltimore Sun’s Matt Weyrich to give context on tonight’s start:

What was working for Morton? Everything. He got five whiffs with his four-seam fastball, hitting 96 mph, and six with his curveball. His command was impressive. Like all national broadcasts, the Apple TV team came off as colorless and not very knowledgeable of the Orioles (despite being loaded with random factoids, of course: did YOU know that Dylan Carlson’s June .577 SLG is his highest in any month since 2020? Or something like that). But Dontrelle Willis was dead right when he pointed out that Morton was having success by pounding the inside third of the plate. There were lots of funny swings. Enjoy this montage of them.

Morton clearly could have gone deeper in the game, but down came the rain, and washed the starter out. (I’m kind of proud of that one.) Four more K’s would have tied Morton’s career high. The way he looked tonight, he could have gotten there.

Now for the offense. The Orioles are barely above the Mendoza line this season with runners in scoring position. Against the tall Los Angeles righty Jack Kochanowicz, I don’t think the hitters’ approach was amazing. The big righthander mostly kept balls out of the middle of the zone, but you know, so do a lot of good pitchers, and most of the contact was weak. It wasn’t until the bottom of the fourth that the Orioles had their second hit and that, an Adley Rutschman tapper, was erased by Gunnar Henderson’s GIDP.

This team still needs to figure out why, at the plate, it seems to be so much less than the sum of its parts. But that’s a conversation for another day. If you’re not going to advance runners, hit home runs, instead. Kochanowicz left two balls up in the zone, and they were crushed.

Here’s the first, a 405-foot tank by Ryan O’Hearn to make it 1-0, Orioles. The lefty first baseman just stood and admired the ball as it sailed onto Eutaw Street, but how can you blame him? It was an absolute beauty.

And here is Ramón Laureano, swatting a Kochanowicz meatball to make it 2-0, Orioles.

With one out in the fifth, the rain started coming down in sheets, and out came the tarp again. We picked up, an hour later, with two new pitchers, and a brand-new ballgame, sort of.

For the Orioles, the RISP woes didn’t change. They stranded Ramón Urías at second in the reprieved fifth. They squandered three walks and a single in the sixth, which sounds hard to do. And they failed to score O’Hearn in the eighth after he hit a two-out double. All was forgiven, I guess, because the pitching was so excellent.

Since late May, the Orioles’ bullpen has a 2.26 ERA, third-best in all of MLB, and that trend continued tonight with four shutdown innings. Yennier Cano allowed two hits, but no runs. Gregory Soto held the line and didn’t walk anybody! Bryan Baker pitched a decisive eighth, punctuated by two big K’s. And Félix Bautista looked like himself, with three fastballs at 99+ mph, including this game-ending one.

Entering tonight’s game, I thought the Orioles had two main items of business: one, figure out if Charlie Morton is still good, and two, revive the offense. While it wasn’t like Baltimore started hitting with RISP or anything, we got a pretty decisive answer from Charlie Morton. Barring the scraggly old man beard, he looked pretty ageless tonight. If you didn’t watch tonight’s game, catch the highlights, please. Morton put on a clinic.

Great starting pitching and a lockdown bullpen: it was a winning formula tonight. Add some timely hitting and this would be a pretty darn watchable team.