Orioles can’t prevent sweep in 10-4 loss to Rangers

Asher Wojciechowski started the game. Gabriel Ynoa then came on. A whole slew of pitchers took their turns after them.

The Orioles could have just set up a batting tee at home plate and saved everyone the trouble.

The Rangers made Oriole Park at Camden Yards their own personal batting cage, racking up 20 hits and burying the Orioles early in a 10-4 victory.

It didn’t matter who the Orioles sent to the mound - the Rangers swung the bats like they knew what was coming. Texas scored in six of the first seven innings and put the leadoff man on in six of nine innings. The Rangers had hits in each of the first eight innings, and multiple hits in all but the fifth.

The Orioles pitched to 52 hitters, tied for the most they’ve faced in a game all season, and it easily could have been worse - Texas left 15 runners on base.

Wojciechowski was the first victim. Texas got a run in the first when Roughned Odor walked, advanced on a Willie Calhoun single and scored on another by Nick Solak, but the Rangers got three more in the second to put the game firmly in control. Isiah Kiner-Falefa, Jose Trevino and Shin Soo-Choo had consecutive one-out singles to make it 2-0, and after a strikeout and hit by pitch, Solak reached on an infield single to second that scored Trevino and Choo to make it 4-0.

That was it for Wojciechowski (two innings, six hits, four runs), but Ynoa is hardly a tourniquet. Ronald Guzman reminded us of that when he hammered Ynoa’s second pitch 477 feet for a home run, making it 5-1, and Odor smacked a home run to left-center to lead off the fourth and make it 6-1. Ynoa continued to struggle, loading the bases, but a groundout got the Orioles out of the jam without further damage.

Tanner Scott, the exception to the rule, tossed a scoreless fifth, but Dillon Tate ran into a mess of trouble in the sixth. He walked the first two batters and hit the third, and DeShields followed with a single to make it 7-2. A sacrifice fly by Trevino made it 8-2, and Choo followed with an infield single off of Paul Fry when Jonathan Villar couldn’t make a tough backhand stop on his grounder, bumping the lead to 9-2.

With David Hess on to start the seventh, Calhoun doubled to center, and Solak followed with a single to right to make it 10-2.

The Orioles provided an early response to Texas’s fast start, with Renato Nunez crushing a Mike Minor pitch to left for his 29th home run to make it 4-1 in the second. Minor retired the next nine Orioles, however, negating their chances of keeping up with the damage done by their pitchers.

The Orioles did get another run in the fifth when Villar drew a leadoff walk and Pedro Severino two batters later laced a double down the left-field line. Batimore had another chance to chip away at the deficit in the sixth when Hanser Alberto (Minor is a lefty, so of course he had three hits) and Trey Mancini both singled to lead off the inning, but Minor struck out Anthony Santander and then got Nunez to pop up and Villar to ground out to end the threat.

Minor went eight innings, allowing two runs on six hits while striking out three. A potential Cy Young candidate, Minor wasn’t dominant, but he was efficient, though the Rangers didn’t need much from him given the way their lineup was producing.

Baltimore got across two more runs in the ninth, when Severino drew a bases-loaded walk and Richie Martin grounded into a fielder’s choice that scored Austin Wynns.

So, offensively, a couple of high points. Alberto’s three hits have him up to .321, and his average against left-handers is up to .420. Crazy. Just crazy. And Nunez’s home run moved him one away from 30 in what’s been an impressive season.

The rest? No. Twenty hits allowed? Gross. Boo. Go away.