Tonight's game between the Orioles and the Blue Jays was a tale of two teams. One team scored six runs on five hits, and the other team scored four runs on sixteen hits. The Blue Jays rode three homers to victory, including two by MLB-leading Jose Bautista off Chris Tillman, and the O's scraping out singles and doubles just couldn't compete.
This has been the story in more than one game this season. Although past games have involved a lot of futility with runners in scoring position to explain why the Orioles don't score any runs, that wasn't the case tonight. The O's went 5-16 with RISP, a .313 clip that would have had them with a much better record right now than 61-92 if they duplicated it for the season. Toronto, by comparison, was 0-5 with RISP, but the funny thing about home runs is that they score people from first base every time.
Tillman gave up all three home runs, which accounted for five of the six Blue Jays runs. One positive thing we can say for Tillman this time is that he only walked one batter, and when he was pulled after six innings he'd only thrown 86 pitches. In fact, he had only five baserunners total against him - unfortunately, all of them scored. That's something of an encouraging sign, provided that Tillman can ever find that middle ground between giving up six walks and giving up three home runs.
The O's got 11 hits off Toronto starter Brett Cecil, who was chased after 6.1 innings with only two earned runs given up. They just couldn't nickel and dime the Blue Jays to death tonight, but it was still nice to see 3-5 from Nick Markakis, 3-5 from Ty Wigginton, 3-5 from Nolan Reimold, and 2-4 from Brandon Snyder, the first multi-hit game of the latter's major league career. Six of nine Orioles starters recorded hits, and only Adam Jones never reached base.
The insurance run that the Blue Jays scored in the bottom of the 8th inning had no direct effect on the game's final score, but I'm mentioning it here because I'd like to single out Matt Albers and Mark Hendrickson for sucking at pitching. Albers was brought on for the inning and gave up a hit and two walks, only managing to retire a single batter, and Hendo came on and promptly walked in a run. I'm really tired of seeing these guys. Does the 9th inning play out any differently when it starts 5-3 instead of 6-3? Well, no, probably not, although it was nice of Kevin Gregg to come on and make things interesting for us. But screw Albers and Hendo anyway.
Speaking of Gregg, Jim Palmer mentioned him on the MASN broadcast as a guy the Orioles might think about signing. Uh, Jim, we've already got that pitcher on our roster, and his name is Alfredo Simon, who I also never want to see in an Orioles uniform again.
Tomorrow's game is a 1:07pm start, with Ricky Ricardo Romero starting for Toronto and Jeremy Guthrie going for Baltimore. Guts isn't impressed by your 13 wins, Ricky. You've got some 'splainin' to do.