The O’s cooled off the red-hot Royals with a crisply played shutout on a practically perfect night at Camden Yards.
Dare I say it? New month, new Orioles.
The O’s got their May schedule started on the right foot with an impressive 3-0 victory over the Royals in a crisp two-hour, three-minute affair. Dean Kremer shook off his season-long struggles with one of the most dominant outings of his career, tossing seven scoreless innings to lower his season ERA by more than 130 points. And a pair of former Royals burned their ex-team, with Ryan O’Hearn’s two-run homer and Emmanuel Rivera’s RBI single providing all three runs of the game during a seventh-inning O’s rally.
On Colton Cowser Star Wars Bobblehead Night at Camden Yards, the first leg of the Orioles’ weekend-long Star Wars celebration, the crowd of 26,364 got to see the version of the O’s that we’ve been hoping to see all year. Great pitching. Timely hitting. Legitimate excitement and enthusiasm from the Orioles’ dugout. And all of it in less time than a screening of The Empire Strikes Back. It was one heck of a night.
The game’s brisk pace can be attributed to the superb performances by the game’s two starting pitchers, Dean Kremer and Michael Wacha. We’ll start with Wacha, the veteran Royals right-hander, who had some early traffic on the bases that the O’s couldn’t take advantage of. They ended each of the first two innings with the dreaded GIDP, including Ramón Laureano’s ill-timed double play with two on in the second.
Wacha then shifted into cruise control, retiring 12 of the 13 batters he faced from the third inning through the sixth. He was much tougher on the Orioles than the two Yankees starting pitchers they bashed earlier this week, Will Warren and Carlos Carrasco. Maybe the Orioles just don’t do well against pitchers with non-alliterative names.
But Kremer was every bit up to the task of outdueling Wacha. It’s no secret that Dean has had a rough go of things this year, entering the night with a 7.04 ERA and zero quality starts in six games. He desperately needed a good outing, and he delivered a great one.
Kremer set the tone for his outing with a perfect first inning, including a strikeout of Bobby Witt Jr. In the second, Michael Massey doubled with one out, but Kremer stranded him by retiring the next two. The Royals didn’t get their next baserunner until two outs in the fourth when Maikel Garcia walked, but again, Kremer finished the inning without incident.
Two more scoreless innings later, Kremer had officially completed six full frames for the first time this season. And he didn’t stop there. He came back for the seventh and mowed down the Royals again, capped by a nifty play by shortstop Gunnar Henderson to spear a hot shot on the second base side of the infield.
Seven innings. Four baserunners. ZERO runs. And all in just 82 pitches. All I had hoped for was a competent outing from Kremer, and he went far and beyond with one of the best starts by an O’s pitcher this year. Well done, Dean.
As the scoreless duel continued, it was clear that the first pitcher to make a mistake was the one who was going to lose. And it was Wacha who made the first mistake — actually, a few of them — in the bottom of the seventh. Adley Rutschman started the frame with his first hit of the game, ripping a sharp double into the right-field corner. That brought up the former Royal Ryan O’Hearn, looking to at least pull a ball to the right side to advance the runner.
He did much, much better than that. O’Hearn got hold of a fat fastball and crushed it 391 feet into the Orioles’ center field bullpen. Boom! We are scoreless no more. The Camden Yards crowd went wild as Star Wars-clad fans everywhere erupted in emotion. The Princess Leias cheered. The Chewbaccas roared. The Jabba the Hutts let out a slow, deep chuckle.
O’Hearn (and Rutschman) took a celebratory sip from the Hydration Station. No word on whether O’Hearn unleashed another “SMFB!,” which I will pretend stands for Somebody’s Making Fudge Brownies.
The O’s continued to rock-a Wacha, who appeared to have run out of gas after his superb first six innings. Ryan Mountcastle followed O’Hearn with a drive to deep left that wasn’t far from going out, instead banging off the wall for a double. Two batters later, Ramón Laureano worked an eight-pitch walk, and that was the end of Wacha’s night. Good on the Orioles offense for finally wearing him down.
The O’s rudely greeted reliever Steven Cruz with some more well-struck hits, with Heston Kjerstad roping a single to load the bases and ex-Royal Emmanuel Rivera lacing an RBI single to right. Big hit by Rivera, who was a last-minute addition to the lineup after Ramón Urías was scratched with right hamstring tightness. Cedric Mullins by all rights should have extended the lead even further, but his blistering laser down the right-field line was speared by first baseman Vinnie Pasquantino, who stepped on the bag for the inning-ending double play. That’s just rotten luck. Cedric couldn’t have hit that ball any harder.
Still, the 3-0 lead proved to be plenty. Although Kremer probably would’ve had enough in the tank to keep pitching, Brandon Hyde decided not to take any chances and turned to his usual setup/closer duo to preserve the lead. Yennier Cano tossed a scoreless eighth, punctuated by a strikeout of Witt Jr., who went 0-for-4 to snap his 22-game hitting streak. And in the ninth, Félix Bautista continued his recent stretch of dominance, setting down all three batters he faced on two groundouts and a K.
And that’ll do it. Orioles win! It was their first shutout since last Sept. 6, and just the second time this year that they’ve won two consecutive games. Finally, it feels like the O’s are gaining some traction.