Jackson Holliday’s pinch hit double cleared the bases and gave the Orioles all of their runs.
After the Orioles beat the Astros on Friday on the back of Anthony Santander’s late-inning grand slam, one question was on my mind: Was this the sign that the team was about to emerge from 2.5 months of playing .500 baseball? For the first half of Saturday afternoon’s game against Houston, the answer seemed to be no. Then, just as suddenly as on Friday night, the O’s loaded the bases in the sixth inning and Jackson Holliday cleared them to fuel a 3-2 victory.
The game was well on the way to being a hard luck loss for starting pitcher Albert Suárez, now the ERA leader for the Orioles starting rotation. Suárez’s outing was bookended by home runs. He gave up a dinger to the first batter he saw, Jose Altuve, putting the O’s in a 1-0 hole. Suárez gave up a bomb to the last batter he saw as well, a two-out sixth inning shot by Astros shortstop Jeremy Peña. Solo home runs can only hurt so much and Suárez left with a 2-0 deficit.
The Orioles offense was never going to have an easy task in facing Houston’s starting pitcher Framber Valdez. The 30-year-old lefty is on a run of being a very good pitcher going back to the 2020 season. His 125 ERA+ that he brought into the game is better than anyone in the O’s rotation. What’s more, the O’s lineup was without one of its reliable lefty mashers in Ryan Mountcastle, who’s still battling a sore wrist that he suffered on Thursday night.
One early chance was promptly wasted. The bottom of the first saw Austin Slater reach by an error. Adley Rutschman followed with a single to put two men on with none out, officially an interesting scoring chance. The chance didn’t last long. Gunnar Henderson struck out and then last night’s hero, Santander, grounded into an inning-ending double play.
This turned out to be the only inning of the first five in which the Orioles had multiple baserunners against Valdez. In the second through the fifth, it was an all-too-familiar sad state of affairs, with the offense completely failing to support what was a pretty good start by their starter against a solid team like Houston.
The sixth inning changed the tale. Unlike Friday night’s theatrics, the Orioles did not manage to load the bases with no one out. The inning started with Rutschman grounding out. Henderson collected a single to build the idea of a rally, but Santander struck out right afterwards. If anything was going to happen, it would have to happen with two outs. And it did.
Eloy Jiménez kept the line moving by poking the first pitch that he saw into the opposite field for the inning’s second single. With Valdez’s pitch count already up over 100, the Astros tried to leave him in to face one more batter: Lefty-hitting Colton Cowser. The decision was strategically sound.
Cowser rolled a ground ball to the right side, fielded by first baseman Jon Singleton several steps behind the bag. However, Valdez didn’t get to first base in time to cover, and the slowly-developing chopper afforded Cowser a chance to use his speed to get down the line. Singleton was not able to beat a sliding Cowser to touching the first base bag, so instead of getting out of the inning, Valdez got the hook with the bases loaded and two out.
Houston summoned former Oriole Tayler Scott, who if you have any memory of his eight games and 18.69 ERA from the 2019 season you are probably surprised to know he’s still in MLB and in fact pitching great for the Astros five years later. Due up to face Scott was the day’s starting third baseman, Emmanuel Rivera, current leader of the Most Anonymous Oriole competition. Scott throws right-handed and Rivera bats right-handed.
Not so fast, Houston. You forgot about our trap card. In this case, the counter-move was both blindingly obvious and tremendously risky: The Orioles pinch-hit the bench’s only available lefty, Jackson Holliday. The O’s had given the 20-year-old rookie the day off to start out, probably because he was 0 for his last 20. It is, to put it mildly, asking a lot of a young player to bring him in cold off the bench when he is carrying that long of a hitless streak.
Scott’s first pitch was a splitter in the low part of the zone, close to the middle of the plate. Holliday was ready to fire and he smashed a line drive into the outfield, splitting the center-right gap.
As soon as the ball hit the outfield grass, there was no doubting the game would be tied at a minimum. With Cowser running, there was a good chance of taking the lead. The throw in from the outfield short-hopped the cutoff man and there was never a throw home. Henderson scored. Jiménez scored. Cowser scored. The Orioles had suddenly stormed back to take a 3-2 lead.
The thing about the Orioles taking a lead in the bottom of the sixth inning is that there are still three innings of bullpen action to sweat before a victory. Some games, there’s a lot of sweat. This one, not so much. Although Keegan Akin allowed an infield single in the seventh before being replaced by Yennier Cano, and Cano gave up a single fielded deep in the hole by Henderson in the eighth, it didn’t hurt the O’s any. Cano struck out three of the five batters he faced. The save rule isn’t set up to acknowledge this, but Cano nailed down the highest-leverage situation.
For the ninth, Seranthony Domínguez. The ex-Phillie rather infamously was on the losing end of two different games earlier this week as the Mets blasted him for walkoff homers. Houston had no such magic on Saturday afternoon. Domínguez retired the side in order. The Orioles were once again in the win column after a dramatic late rally.
Elsewhere on Saturday afternoon, the Yankees lost at home to the Rockies. Yes, really! This brings the Orioles back within a half-game in the AL East. Additionally, the Red Sox suffered a setback at the hands of the Diamondbacks. That Boston loss plus the Orioles win means that the O’s improved their “any postseason spot at all” cushion to 7.5 games with 31 games to play.
The Orioles are guaranteed at least a split of this four-game set against the Astros. They’ll try to win it outright in the finale on Sunday. This is the Sunday Night Baseball game for the week, so if you want to tune in, remember that it starts at 7:10 and it’s only going to be found on the ESPN broadcast. Dean Kremer is scheduled to make the start for the O’s, with Yusei Kikuchi pitching for Houston.