The O’s continued the league-wide pummeling of one of the worst teams in baseball history, pounding out 13 runs on 18 hits to turn an early deficit into a laugher.
This just in: the Chicago White Sox are really, really bad. And the Orioles, acting accordingly, broke through for a decisive 13-3 blowout in the Labor Day matinee to begin a three-game series.
The White Sox arrived in Baltimore with an unfathomable 31-107 record and .225 winning percentage, which, if it holds up for the rest of the year, would be the worst in modern baseball history (since 1900). They are epically, breathtakingly, astoundingly bad.
And yet, despite the final score, there was a brief stretch of time in today’s game where it looked like the O’s might actually blow this. Corbin Burnes’s first outing of September did not begin any better than his miserable month of August, as the White Sox rallied for two quick runs in the top of the first. In fairness to Burnes, some bad luck and bad defense contributed to his early troubles. Nicky Lopez led off with a duck snort single to shallow right center. Burnes then tried to pick him off and Ryan O’Hearn muffed the catch, advancing Lopez to second.
Corey Julks followed with another bloop single to center, and though Lopez held at third, nobody cut off Cedric Mullins’ throw to the plate and Julks took second base. Oof. Which of these is the 107-loss team again? Both runners soon scored on an Andrew Benintendi sac fly and Gavin Sheets RBI single.
Four batters into the game, the White Sox had a 2-0 advantage. It was only the second time in their last eight games that the White Sox had scored multiple runs in an inning, and the first time they had a lead in any game since Aug. 28. My friends, let me tell you, Orioles Twitter was in full meltdown mode, already anticipating a humiliating O’s loss. It’s almost as social media is filled with angry, reactionary pessimists! Did you know?
Gunnar Henderson temporarily made everyone feel better, crushing a leadoff homer off Chris Flexen in the bottom of the first to make it 2-1, but then the vibes turned sour again when the Orioles put two in scoring position with nobody out and failed to score. Squandering scoring opportunities would become a common theme for the Birds in the first few innings of this game, as they started 2-for-11 with RISP, but worry not: they more than made up for it later.
The O’s put a ton of traffic on the bases against Flexen, and they started the third inning with a single, walk, and Anthony Santander RBI knock to tie the score. Flexen struck out the next two, but it was Austin Slater — making just his second start against a RHP as an Oriole — who delivered the clutch hit, roping a single to left to bring home the go-ahead run.
Three runs of support was all that Burnes would need, as he held the White Sox off the scoreboard after that first inning. That required some nifty escapes to strand a few runners. In the second, with a runner at third and one down, he blew away Jacob Amaya and Lopez on strikeouts, and with runners at the corners in the third, he induced an inning-ending double play from Korey Lee. Another twin killing knocked out a leadoff runner in the fourth, and Burnes pitched his only clean inning with a three-groundout top of the fifth.
At 89 pitches, Burnes was finished after five, giving up two runs (one earned) and six hits, fanning four. To my admittedly untrained eye, Burnes still didn’t look like the dominant ace that we saw from April through July. He was missing some spots, his stuff was decent but not great, and — let’s be frank — if he’d been facing a lineup other than the White Sox, hitters would have made him pay for his mistakes. But for this afternoon, I’ll consider this a step in the right direction for Corbin.
After Burnes left the game, the Orioles offense removed all doubt from the outcome against an atrocious White Sox bullpen. In the fifth inning, for the fourth time in the game, the O’s put the first two batters on base. Jackson Holliday then bounced a comebacker to the pitcher, lefty Fraser Ellard. Ellard hesitated, then tried to throw to second, only to pull the fielder off the bag (initially ruled an out, but correctly overturned on replay).
With the bases loaded, the O’s capitalized. Henderson lined a sac fly to left off Ellard, and the slumping Adley Rutschman had one of his hardest-hit balls in a while, smoking an RBI single to right off Chad Kuhl to extend the lead to 5-2.
The sixth inning was when the fun really began. The Orioles sent 12 batters to the plate, collected six hits and three walks, and scored six times, their most prolific offensive inning since…I don’t know when, and am too lazy to look it up. (It me, a professional writer.) Kuhl began the inning with back-to-back walks, and Mullins roped an RBI double to the gap in right-center, followed by another Slater single, plating two more. Quite the game for Austin Slater, who went 3-for-4 with three runs batted in. He’s now batting .295 with the Orioles after posting a .185 mark with the Giants and Reds earlier this year.
The White Sox replaced Kuhl with Touki Toussaint, which accomplished nothing. The Orioles continued to blister the ball all over the field. A Holliday single put two on for Emmanuel Rivera, who brought them both home with a triple to the wall. Henderson then tallied his third RBI of the game with a run-scoring groundout, capping the six-run outburst that turned the game into a 11-2 laugher.
For good measure, Mullins added a two-run homer off Toussaint in the eighth, officially giving the Orioles their highest run total since June 20, when they tallied 17 against the Yankees. And in addition to their 13 runs, the Orioles also stranded 16 men on base today. Imagine how much more damage they could have done! Every Oriole in the starting lineup had at least one hit, and seven of them had multi-hit games.
This is the kind of offensive explosion we’ve been waiting to see from this O’s team for a while. And yes, it came against a White Sox pitching staff that is barely Triple-A caliber. But they all count the same, and hopefully the O’s hitters got into some good habits that they can carry forward for the rest of the season.
With the game well in hand, Cole Irvin took care of the final three innings, allowing one run, to notch his first save since his rookie year of 2019. With that, the Orioles extended Chicago’s losing streak to 11 in a row and handed them their 108th loss, while pushing themselves into a temporary tie atop the AL East, pending the outcome of tonight’s Yankees game in Arlington. This was fun!