Orioles blast off on Rangers for a second consecutive win, 8-4

Grayson Rodriguez racked up his AL-leading twelfth win, and the Birds were all over Rangers pitching, which failed to record a three-up, three-down inning all night.

Despite the heaps of talent that faced off on the mound, Saturday night’s three-hour, fifteen-minute slog was far from a pitcher’s duel. The two starters—future Hall of Famer Max Scherzer and Orioles youngster Grayson Rodriguez—labored through two ugly innings on 50-plus pitches apiece, and the staffs combined to allow 18 hits, 14 walks, 3 hit-by-pitches and one balk. Texas pitching was particularly shoddy, failing to record a single three-up, three-down inning all night.

The difference was that while Grayson Rodriguez steadied himself in time to deliver six quality innings, Max Scherzer was bounced after two, his shortest outing in three years, and the Texas bullpen had no magic formula to stop Orioles bats, which scored a decisive eight runs on 12 hits (three of them homers) and nine walks to earn a convincing series win in Arlington.

The 39-year-old Scherzer missed the first two months of this season recovering from back surgery, at one point during his rehab losing feeling in his hand due to nerve impingement. So it’s cool that he’s out there, period. But tonight he was definitely working with a diminished arsenal: his four-seam fastball, which has averaged 94-95 mph the last few seasons, came in at 91 mph today, and his control was off.

The O’s had traffic on the base paths all night, including off of Scherzer. They left two stranded in the first inning, but an aggressive approach led to four runs off the future Hall of Famer in the second. Jordan Westburg hit a first-pitch single, Colton Cowser took an easy walk, and Cedric Mullins dropped a bunt. The speedster might even have legged it out, but it didn’t matter because Scherzer air-mailed the throw to first, allowing Westburg to score. No. 9 hitter Ramón Urías, continuing to show his weird opposite splits, singled noisily off the righty to bring home two more runs. It was 3-0 Orioles, and the Texas crowd was quiet. With two outs, Santander made it 4-0, drilling a curveball for an RBI single to right field.

By that point, Scherzer seemed exhausted. Not so much that I thought he’d be removed from the game, but he was clearly out of sorts tonight. So the Rangers were forced to turn to the bullpen in the third inning. Far from ideal, and for that matter, right hander José Ureña didn’t seem to be fooling Orioles hitters, either, but back to that in a second.

Let’s talk about Grayson Rodriguez. Until today, the unfortunate truth was that the Texas native had never pitched well against his hometown team: last season, he allowed 11 runs in 8.1 innings against them, along with one postseason start we’ll pass over without comment.

But it’s easier to pound the strike zone with a four-run cushion. Gifted a lead, would Rodriguez settle in?

He would, but it was a little like watching someone learn to ride a bike: they put one foot up on the pedal, then the other, then there’s a wobble to one side, then the other, and it looks terrible for a second before finally they get rolling in a straight line.

Rodriguez’s first and second innings boded very ill, but he got stronger and stronger as the game went on, and surprisingly after that beginning, he racked up his ninth quality start of the year and AL-best 12^th win.

To recap the shaky part: it took Rodriguez 25 pitches, including a game-leading-off walk to Marcus Semien and a clearly-undeserved strikeout looking of Corey Seager (just saying, here’s the pitch) to get through the first. To the youngster’s credit, he was trying to establish his secondary pitches early. Which is cool, but you still have to land them…

Rodriguez would fail to deliver a shutdown second after being staked a four-run lead, despite facing the bottom of the Texas order. He hung a pair of offspeed pitches to put men on second and third, then threw a fastball too many to backup catcher Andrew Knizner, who cut the lead to 4-2 with a single.

It felt like this could turn into a real ugly outing, but at this point Rodriguez turned a corner, whereas Texas pitching, now down their starter, could not shut off the spigot against the O’s offense.

Baltimore hung a fifth run on the scoreboard off right hander José Ureña. The first two hitters in the third inning—Westburg and Cowser—smoked line drives at 102 miles an hour, albeit into outfielders’ gloves. The third—Cedric Mullins—wouldn’t be denied, stroking a 409-foot highlight-reel blast into the stands. 5-2 Orioles.

Come the fourth inning, Rodriguez got a pickup from his defense. He challenged Adolis García with a first-pitch curveball, and if we’re being honest, García won this challenge, smoking a ball deep into the left-field corner. But a sprinting Colton Cowser covered 57 feet of ground, hauling in the ball on the run to rob García of sure extra bases, much to the dismay of García.

After this point, Rodriguez was totally in the zone, the only shame being that his 50-something pitches in the first two innings meant he’d have to leave prematurely. He retired 13 of his last 14 hitters faced, which included striking out the side swinging in the sixth to give him eight K’s on the night. It’s the first time he’s pitched well in front of his family and friends in Texas, and I can’t imagine how nice that must feel.

The Orioles offense, meanwhile, kept up a relentless attack. Two stone-cold assassins at the bottom of the order were Ramón Urías, 3-for-4 with a walk and two RBIs, and Jordan Westburg, 3-for-5 with 2 RBIs, including a two-run bomb off Texas left hander Jacob Latz to make it 7-2 in the sixth inning. The ball traveled a low-key 424 feet, but then again, it seems like everything Westburg does is low-key.

An eighth run came home in a heartwarming sort of way when Ryan O’Hearn, who’d suffered a gruesomely painful hit knee the inning before (and already been hit once before that) worked a 3-2 count off the Texas closer, then took him the other way to put an exclamation point on the evening.

Some mild drama of the bad sort ensued, courtesy of the back of the bullpen, after Rodriguez had hit the showers and Jacob Webb turned in a scoreless seventh. Lefty Cionel Pérez lost the strike zone in the eighth, walking two before recovering for a flyball out ahead of Yennier Cano, who allowed a run-scoring double and barely got out of the inning. Craig Kimbrel surrendered a leadoff single in the ninth, plus a walk and a balk. Well, good enough.

Not a lot of pretty pitching tonight, save for Grayson Rodriguez’s fifth and sixth innings, but the Orioles offense spoke noisily once again, and now has scored 17 runs off the defending World Champions in two games this series. They go for the sweep tomorrow with Dean Kremer on the mound against Andrew Heaney.