Orioles beat White Sox, 7-5; Miguel Gonzalez takes loss

On Friday night, the Orioles went to Chicago to take on the White Sox and familiar face Miguel Gonzalez. How’d they do against their former teammate? Everything you need to know about Friday night’s battle is below.

The recap

Despite failing to capitalize on two first inning singles, the Orioles struck first in the top of the second inning via the red-hot bat of Pedro Alvarez. El Toro notched his 17th home run of the year on a solo shot to center field, giving the Birds an early 1-0 lead.

Yovani Gallardo wasn’t perfect early, but a little bit of luck did him quite well. He stranded a runner on third after a throwing error by Matt Wieters in the first, and induced a 6-4-3 double play in the second to keep Chicago off the board.

After two, it was 1-0 O’s.

In the third, Manny Machado greeted Gonzalez with a great big "nice to see you". With runners on the corners, he lined a double into right-center, scoring both J.J. Hardy and Hyun-Soo Kim.

And after Mark Trumbo worked an infield single, Machado crossed the dish on a throwing error. Just like that, Gallardo was given quite the cushion with a 4-0 Orioles lead.

Unfortunately, the right-hander’s life on the edge ended up collapsing in the 4th inning. He caught a bit too much of the plate to both Jose Abreu (solo HR) and Avisail Garcia (RBI double), slipping after three scoreless innings.

Gallardo would end up stranding a pair of runners, but he upped the pitch count to 67 after four full innings... not his sharpest night, but as the optimists would say, it was "scrappy".

After four, 4-2 good guys.

Both offenses calmed down after the fourth, trading scoreless frames for the next couple of innings. The Orioles rattled the cage of Gonzalez quite a few times in the middle innings, but MiGo fought through to complete six innings of work.

His final line: 6 IP, 10 H, 4 R (3 ER), 0 BB, K.

Gallardo, too, battled through six full before Buck Showalter decided to keep him on the bench at the start of the seventh. His final line: 6 IP, 7 H, 2 ER, 1 BB, 3 K.

The battle of the bullpens began with the White Sox trotting lefty Dan Jennings to begin the seventh. He worked a perfect frame and was matched by that pretty good 7th inning man on the Orioles side.

Brad Brach walked Carlos Sanchez to lead off the inning, but returned to form with a flyout-strikeout-flyout sequence to wrap up his scoreless outing.

In the top of the eighth against Chi Sox reliever Tommy Kahnle, the Orioles offense again found their groove. Alvarez launched another home run (yes, he’s officially on fire), while the final third of the lineup all notched hits that led to two added runs.

Winters singled and Jonathan Schoop doubled, while Hardy lined an RBI single to center. Adam Jones earned the other RBI on a sac fly.

Darren O'Day entered in the eighth, but the results were ugly. He surrendered two hits and a pair of walks that led to two runs, cutting the lead to 7-4.

This led Showalter to give Logan Ondrusek the reins for the final two outs. He allowed one of the inherited runners to score, but a base-running snafu ultimately ran Chicago out of the inning. After a ground out, the Sox had two runners at third base which, in general, is not a good thing.

So, the lead was cut to 7-5, but it gave Zach Britton the opportunity to grab yet another save - and you didn't have any doubts that he'd do just that, did you?

Britton entered, did his thing and walked off.

Strikeout, strikeout, strikeout.

Yeah, he's great.

With the win, the O’s jump to 62-46 on the year.

Other Notes

• Manny Machado notched three hits, raising his season average to .305.
• Adam Jones also put up three hits in his leadoff role, three singles off of Gonzalez.
• The Birds managed 16 hits in total - 12 of them were singles.