The Orioles starter allowed five runs for the first time since April and the hitters went 1-for-9 with runners in scoring position.
This was my theory entering tonight: Earlier this week, Adley Rutschman went 7-for-13 with two home runs in his hometown ballpark of Seattle, so by that logic, Dean Kremer, who grew up less than an hour away from Sacramento, in Stockton, CA, would look like an ace and Dylan Carlson, raised in a Sacramento suburb and having played in Sutter Health Park as a member of St. Louis’s Memphis Redbirds in ‘18-19, would be Babe Ruth.
The verdict on my theory/the hometown heroes: alas, mixed. Carlson was great. The utility outfield signing is making himself hard to bench. He homered in his first trip to the plate to give Baltimore an early 2-0 lead and also walked twice. But as for (an unusually bearded) Kremer, not so good. The A’s scored five runs on him in 5 1/3 innings, the most he’s allowed since April. Even so, the Orioles having scored four runs against Athletics junkballer J.P. Sears, this felt like a winnable game. But despite several chances to crack open the game, the score stayed stubbornly stuck at 5-4. So for you East Coasters, not a bad one to have slept through, after all.
Here’s how it went down. The Orioles had raced out to a 3-0 lead thanks to Carlson’s blast and a Jackson Holliday double + Ramón Urías sac fly, but a bad third inning by Kremer turned the lead into a 4-3 deficit. The righthander surrendered a leadoff walk to Luis Urías, a one-out single, then a two-run double on a ball deep to center that Colton Cowser, running back toward the fence, couldn’t quite make a play on. Still the A’s weren’t done: Jacob Wilson, a .483 hitter last week, saw the kitchen sink from Kremer, but beat him with a great piece of hitting, making it 3-3. Another run came home on a Brent Rooker double and a groundout.
What the heck…? I mean, the A’s hung a twelve-spot on Minnesota last night, but they’re not the Yankees. The culprit, to my eye, was Kremer’s two-seam fastball (the sinker). Failing to land it led to the leadoff walk, then he stuck with the pitch and left it up in the zone for the single and the double.
After getting through the fourth blemish-free, Kremer allowed three straight singles in the fifth to leadoff man Lawrence Butler, the red-hot Wilson and Rooker, which made it a 5-4 game. Two of those singles came on—shocker—balls left up in the zone. I’m not a hitting coach but I would discourage throwing those.
Kremer tried to grit out a sixth inning, but after he allowed a one-out single, interim manager Tony Mansolino decided he’d seen enough. That gave the Orioles bullpen the tough assignment of keeping a 5-4 game just that. It got dicey for a moment there: in relief of Kremer, Yennier Cano allowed an infield single and a fielding error to load the bases with two outs. Mansolino brought in Keegan Akin for one pressure-filled lefty-lefty at-bat against Lawrence Butler, who battled and battled, seeing ten pitches before Akin finally finished him off! (In fairness Gregory Soto also pitched a fine eighth.) Good job tonight, O’s bullpen.
Many times this year when Orioles pitching is bad, the bats have fallen silent. I guess the bats have to get credit for four early, explosive runs—most of the credit goes to Dylan Carlson (1-for-2, HR, 2 RBI, 2 BB) and Jackson Holliday (3-for-4, 2B, HR), who’d both be prime MBP candidates if the rest of the team had actually hit, too. After Carlson’s two-run bomb, Holliday helped create a third run, doubling on a soft sweeper and scoring on an Urías sac fly. He came through again with this blast to tie the game at four, and also singled to lead off the seventh. (Trying to stuff those All-Star ballot boxes, are we, young man?)
But the rest of the game was just watching the Birds get chances to score a fifth run of their own and failing to do so. It’s hard to win when the hitters go 1-for-9 with runners in scoring position. A great chance was snatched away, literally, when Carlson and Coby Mayo walked back-to-back in the fourth inning before the Athletics’ Denzel Clarke stole two RBIs from Jorge Mateo with one of the most jawdropping catches you’ll see.
J.P. Sears was out after five innings, and it was too bad, because the longer the lefty pitched, the more the Orioles were figuring him and his 80-mph junkballs out. But with the A’s starter gone, an offensive lull set in, and several good scoring chances fizzled away. The Birds had a one out, second-and-third scoring opportunity in the sixth before Carlson and Mateo struck out. Holliday led off the seventh with a single before Adley hit into a double play.
We were into the eighth inning, and the Orioles got truly their best scoring chance of the night. But by now, you know exactly how that went. . . With one out, Cowser doubled to right, pinch-hitter Gunnar Henderson walked, and so did Dylan Carlson. With the bases juiced, the A’s decided to stop playing around with relievers named things like Grant Holman, Tyler Ferguson and T.J. MacFarland (hey old friend!). They brought in Mason Miller, their 103-mph-heat throwing All Star closer, and from that point on, this game was over.
It was a beatdown, friends: Miller got a five-out save and made it look easy. Pinch-hitter Heston Kjerstad struck out on three straight sliders. With two outs, Holliday had a chance to play the hero, but what is anyone going to do with this pitch? More Miller in the ninth, more carnage. Rutschman struck out on a slider-fastball-slider combo. Laureano walked. O’Hearn flew out. Urías hit a dribbler, and this one was over.
Look, Mason Miller is Mason Miller. The problem was those early/middle innings. Dean Kremer needs a bounceback outing next time, and O’s hitters need some better luck and some better at-bats when they face a pack of no-name relievers.