Cade Povich showed flashes of promise but struggled with control in his debut, while the O’s offense didn’t come to life until it was too late to matter.
The Orioles dropped their second in a row in Toronto, settling for a series split against the Blue Jays with a 6-5 defeat. Starting pitching was the difference, as the Birds’ debutant struggled while the Jays’ veteran shoved, putting the O’s in a hole that even a pair of two-run homers in the eighth and ninth couldn’t dig them out of.
While much of this game ended up being forgettable, it’s a day that Cade Povich and his family will always remember. The Orioles’ touted pitching prospect made his MLB debut with his parents and other loved ones in the Rogers Centre crowd, and he couldn’t have gotten off to a better start. The very first batter Povich faced ended his at-bat with a Sword (Pitching Ninja’s term for an awkward half-swing that makes the hitter look silly) as the lefty fooled Davis Schneider for his inaugural big league strikeout. He then induced harmless flyouts from Danny Jansen and Vladimir Guerrero Jr. to complete a perfect first inning in the majors.
For good measure, he tossed a scoreless second, too, with a two-out walk his only blemish. OK, Cade, I see you. MASN analyst Brad Brach compared Povich’s arm action and delivery to that of Braves All-Star southpaw Max Fried (a similarity that, apparently, has previously been noted by Povich’s minor league teammates, who sometimes call him “Max”).
It ain’t so easy to pitch like Max Fried, though, especially if you don’t throw strikes consistently. That’s a lesson that Povich learned the hard way in the third. He had trouble landing his offspeed pitches for strikes and ended up walking both Ernie Clement and Jansen on five pitches each. Not a great idea when the next guy up is Guerrero. Sure enough, Povich, after throwing a first-pitch ball, tried to sneak a cutter on the outside edge and Guerrero hammered it the opposite way, lofting a three-run homer to right field. In an instant, the Birds were down, 3-0.
Povich, for what it’s worth, didn’t unravel after the dagger of a dinger. He ended up pitching into the sixth inning, though he suffered some rotten luck in the fourth when back-to-back bloops to right field — the first with a hit probability of .080, the second at .120 — both fell between O’s fielders for cheapie hits, plating Toronto’s fourth run. At least one of those pop-ups, and probably both, should have been caught, but there seemed to be miscommunication between Orioles defenders. It was that kind of a day.
In the sixth inning, Povich retired the first batter but seemed to run out of gas, giving up a single to Justin Turner and a walk to Daulton Varsho. At exactly 100 pitches (58 strikes), Povich’s debut was finished. All in all, he very much lived up to his minor league reputation as a guy with quality stuff who sometimes struggles to command it. Holding a major league lineup to five hits — two of which were absolute flukes — in 5.1 innings is solid work, but the four walks show there’s still work to be done.
Of course, Dillon Tate did Povich absolutely no favors by allowing both of his inherited runners to score on a two-run single by Clement, whose strategy of using Gunnar Henderson’s walkup music helped him capture some Gunnar magic. That charged a total of six runs to Povich’s line. I’d say Cade pitched a little bit better than the box score line indicates, but not great by any stretch. We’ll see if the Orioles give him another start or if he’ll be headed back to Triple-A.
As it turns out, Povich would’ve needed to be practically perfect to have any chance of winning, considering the O’s offense tallied a grand total of one run while he was in the game. Blue Jays lefty Yusei Kikuchi utterly dominated them, twirling six strong innings and striking out six while surrendering just four baserunners. Only Adley Rutschman was able to solve Kikuchi, powering a sixth-inning home run that only slightly chipped away the deficit.
It wasn’t until the Blue Jays’ bullpen got involved that the Orioles showed signs of life at the plate. Facing former O’s farmhand Zach Pop in the eighth, Rutschman crushed his second dinger of the day, this one batting left-handed, to whittle the Jays’ lead to 6-3. This Adley kid is pretty good. Did you know?
And in the ninth, with a man aboard and the O’s down to their last strike, pinch-hitter Ryan O’Hearn blasted a two-run homer against previously untouchable Jays reliever Yimi García, suddenly making it a one-run game. Hey now, things just got interesting! …And, in the time it took me to type that sentence, they immediately stopped being interesting. Pinch-hitter Kyle Stowers struck out, and that’s the ballgame. There will be no late-inning Orioles Magic on this day.
At 39-22, the Orioles now sit four games back of the Yankees, who have won seven in a row. Tonight New York hosts the Twins, who have not won a game against the Yanks in approximately three decades, so that AL East deficit could grow even further by day’s end. It’s not ideal.