O’Hearn, Santander, and Westburg knocked in all five runs against the White Sox bullpen.
For the third game in a row, the Orioles beat the Chicago White Sox, the worst team in the American League. This makes sense! How it’s gone down these past three games, though, hasn’t exactly been normal. They nearly blew a six-run lead on Friday and actually blew a four-run lead yesterday. But today they decided to flip the script by falling behind first before staging a late-inning comeback.
For seven innings today, the Orioles were stymied by White Sox starting pitcher Erick Fedde. They couldn’t get a rally going to save their lives against the guy, who is admittedly having a very nice season. But once he exited the game, the Orioles got their bats going. They crushed three home runs in the eighth inning to make up for seven innings of nothingness, and held on for a 5-3 win.
With the Orioles suddenly short on starting pitchers, Brandon Hyde turned to Albert Suárez for the spot start. Suárez had started his Orioles career with three starts but hadn’t gone beyond three innings pitched since the end of April. He also pitched three days ago, though he only threw 11 pitches.
Because of that, it was clear from the start that Suárez wouldn’t be pitching deep into this game. So his four innings pitched today was, I think, the most we could have hoped for from him. And the fact that they were four shutout innings was icing on the cake.
The first inning was Suárez’s best. He got the top of the lineup 1-2-3 with strikeouts of Andrew Vaughn and Gavin Sheets. He worked around a single in the second inning. In the third he issued his first of two walks, then got what looked like it would be a double play ball. It skipped past Gunnar Henderson though to put runners on first and second. But no worry for Albert, who got Vaughn to ground back to him so he could start a double play of his own.
With two outs in the bottom of the fourth, Suárez walked Paul DeJong and I thought maybe his day was over. But he hung in for one more batter and got a fly out to center, completing the inning. He wasn’t efficient with his pitches, throwing 80. But you can’t argue with the results in this case. With Dean Kremer and John Means both on the IL (Means I assume for quite some time), I would be ok with giving Suárez another shot in five days.
Keegan Akin relieved Suárez in the fifth inning and he was not good. He was, thankfully, the only Orioles’ pitcher who wasn’t. The first two batters reached via walk and single, then were bunted up to second and third base. Akin then walked Tommy Pham in a way that looked semi-intentional and got Vaughn to pop out in foul territory. He was so close!
But the next batter, Baltimore’s own Gavin Sheets, launched a ball to right-center field. Ryan O’Hearn chased after it and it bounced away from him off the wall. All three runners came in to score and Sheets ended up on third with a triple.
Akin tried to get in trouble again in the sixth inning. He got two outs but also put on two runners, and was pulled in favor of Dillon Tate. We haven’t seen Tate in a while. He was optioned back to Norfolk about a month ago and called back yesterday.
I wasn’t sure what to expect but he looked outstanding. He retired Martín Maldonado on one pitch to end the sixth then pitched a perfect seventh and eighth inning with four strikeouts. Welcome back, Tate! If he can keep that up it will be huge for the bullpen.
Despite the White Sox’s overall woefulness, Fedde and Garrett Crochet have been formidable starters this year. Fedde entered the game with a 3.10 ERA and a history of dominating the Orioles. In three starts against them while with the Nationals, Fedde allowed just one earned run in 17.1. After today, he has given up one run to the Orioles in 23.2 innings.
In the second inning, Fedde gave a two-out walk to Colton Cowser and Jordan Westburg followed with a single. That was the last inning the Orioles had more than one baserunner until Fedde exited the game with one out in the seventh. After the Westburg hit, the Orioles didn’t have another hit until Kyle Stowers singled in the fifth.
With Fedde approaching 100 pitches in the seventh inning, he walked Anthony Santander and then Westburg got to him again with another single. With that, his day was mercifully over. Relief pitcher Jordan Leasure came on and got out of the inning. He struck out both Kyle Stowers and pinch-hitter Cedric Mullins (hitting for Ramón Urías) to strand both runners. It felt futile at the time, but getting Fedde out proved very helpful as in the very next inning, the dinger parade began.
Leasure stayed in to start the eighth inning for the Sox and then fun began. After getting Henderson on a line out, Leasure walked Adley Rutschman. Ryan O’Hearn worked a long at-bat before homering to right field on the eighth pitch he saw. It was the first offensive excitement of the game for the Birds! It cut the lead to 3-2 and chased Leasure in favor of Michael Kopech.
Things went worse for Kopech than they did for Leasure. Ryan Mountcastle singled and Anthony Santander hit the kind of ball that makes the outfielder barely move. It landed 395 feet later in the right field stands. Suddenly the Orioles were winning, 4-3! But they weren’t finished. Westburg, who already had two hits in the game, joined the fun. He also homered to right field and the Orioles were up by two.
Up by two runs and with the usual suspects for closing unavailable, Hyde turned to Cionel Pérez. He’s had his ups and downs but today was all ups. He got two quick groundouts of Andrew Benintendi and Danny Mendick. Then was a touch of drama when Korey Lee hit a fly ball to right field. Stowers dove for it into the shade, it bounced and was immediately called foul. Lee just kept running though, just in case. The White Sox challenged and the foul call was confirmed. Lee struck out swinging on the very next pitch.
Orioles win! It was their 15th comeback win of the season. A lot of folks might feel like this was another underwhelming win against a bad baseball team. But that opinion is shaded by the weirdness of the games on Thursday and Friday. What happened today was an offense shut down by a good opposing pitcher and a pitching staff that kept things close until that pitcher was removed from the game so that the team could come back. And that’s pretty cool.
Tomorrow they will attempt to get the four-game sweep. Kyle Bradish will face off against Garrett Crochet at 2:10 EDT.