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Daniel Cabrera pitched 6 shut out innings and Nick Markakis and Melvin Mora each homered as the O's scored 9 runs for the 2nd consecutive night against the Texas Rangers.
We give Melvin a hard time around here, but he's gotten his average up to .260 and he leads the team in RBIs with 74. His OPS+ is up to 98 which isn't great, but it's certainly better than I would have predicted.
The game started out in classic Danny style. Two hits to lead off the game and he'd gone 3 balls on Hamilton when they decided to just throw the 4th ball intentionally. That put the bases loaded with 1 out, but Danny manned up and got out of the inning allowing no runs. After that Danny coasted through innings 2-5, allowing just 1hit to Marlon Byrd in the 4th inning and zero walks. He got into trouble in the 6th when it became apparent he was simply out of gas. He allowed a hit, gave up two walks, and threw one wild pitch. But he got out of it with no runs and finished the game with 102 pitches. Rocky Cherry, Alberto Castillo, and Fernando Cabrera pitched an inning apiece with only Cabrera giving up one hit .
As for offense, every Oriole starter had at least one hit, led by Juan Castro with 3. Yup. In addition to Nicky's and Melvin's HRs, Brian Bob hit his world leading 42nd double and scored three runs.
Tomorrow rookie phenom Chris Waters pitches for the Orioles, so the sweep is as good as ours.
Injury update: Per Roch, Juan Castro left the game with a mild groin strain. He was replaced in the game by Alex Cintron, who, let's face it, should probably be playing out there anyway. In the What's New? category, Hayden Penn is injured again. He couldn't make his first ML start of the year last week due to his leg by impaled by a bat shard. He was then due to come up to the big club to face Cleveland next week, but has been diagnosed with mild shoulder tendinitis and will miss that start as well. Can this kid catch a break sometime?