Orioles get flurry of late-inning runs to beat Red Sox, 11-5

Whether the Orioles win or lose, spring training games don't matter. The outcome, other than players not getting hurt, is unimportant. Still, any day where the Orioles beat the Red Sox is a good day, even if there will be little bearing on outcomes in the regular season. The game was neither on TV nor radio, but we take the word of the Internet that the Orioles won, 11-5.

This was the latest spring start for Brian Matusz, who last started a regular season game in 2012. The odds that the Orioles have plans to use him in the regular season rotation are small. Is he being stretched out for long relief? Auditioned to other teams as part of the trade rumors that are on steady low heat this spring training? If it's the latter, he had a good audition today, at least as far as results are concerned. Matusz pitched four innings, giving up no runs on two hits.

This was the Sox A-list lineup in their spring home, too. The only missing regular was the destroyer of telephones. Four innings are only four innings, but it was something to hang his hat on. Will that carry over into the regular season? It would be nice if it did.

As with most spring games, much of what happened will have little bearing on the regular season. Not many regular season games are likely to have Steve Johnson matched up against Rusney Castillo with two men on base. Castillo hit a three-run home run that briefly gave the Sox a 5-3 lead over the Orioles as part of a four-run seventh inning.

The O's quickly countered with a six-run eighth. This also does not matter, because how many regular season innings are going to hinge on the performance of Mitchell Boggs and Zeke Spruill? Probably not very many. For today it's fun that they were abused.

If you look in the box score, you will notice that the Orioles committed three errors today. That's bad! The errors were committed by Jimmy Paredes, Jayson Nix, and Dariel Alvarez. So it's not like there will be a game like that in the regular season. It could be that none of those three guys will play even one inning in the field for the Orioles this season.

The Orioles poured on 14 hits through the course of the game. Paredes and Steve Clevenger had multi-hit games as starting players. Off the bench, Nolan Reimold and Jonathan Schoop both had a pair of hits as well.

In relief for the O's, Chaz Roe tossed a scoreless inning, Tim Berry gave up two runs (one earned) in one-plus inning, Johnson gave up three runs on two hits and two walks in two innings, and Wesley Wright two innings of scoreless ball to close the door on the Sox.

Next up will be a road game against the Twins on Saturday afternoon at the standard spring start time of 1:05. The game will be on radio only in Baltimore, airing on 105.7 FM. If you have MLB.tv or live in Twins broadcast territory, you'll be able to watch the Twins broadcast of the game.