Not to be lost in the late drama, surprise starter Albert Suárez was great in a return to MLB after seven years gone
The last words spoken on the MASN broadcast before Cedric Mullins hit a walk-off home run to give the Orioles a sweep over the Twins were: “Cedric Mullins has never hit a walk-off home run in his career.” Reliever Griffin Jax threw the next pitch, heard Mullins make contact, dropped his head, and walked off the mound. That’s why it’s called a walk-off. He knew. Everyone knew. This ballgame was over, with Mullins’s two-run shot breaking the tie for a 4-2 O’s win to spare us extra-innings Manfred Man-induced drama.
This is another one of those games where the story could have easily been a different one that is much less fun by the time it got to the end. For a little while there, what it looked like is that it was going to be a darn shame that the Orioles spoiled the surprisingly great start of fresh callup Albert Suárez, a 34-year-old who was 2,395 days removed from his most recent MLB appearance.
Pressed into service on short notice due to Tyler Wells landing on the injured list, Suárez could have just as easily looked like a sacrificial lamb who was there to get it up and maybe save the bullpen for one game. Instead – with the necessary grain of salt given that he was facing a weak Twins offense – Suárez was fantastic, throwing a strong fastball with solid horizontal movement that kept Minnesota’s batters off-balance. They swung and missed at 14 of the 75 pitches that Suárez threw.
What this added up to was Suárez rolling through the lineup. He pitched 5.2 innings, with just four hits and no walks allowed. The Twins did not do much that threatened him. Even Suárez’s final out recorded was a nice play on his part, as he fielded a grounder and spun to throw to third base, where a runner was attempting to advance from second to third, surely assuming that the throw would go to first.
Suárez did all of this with absolutely no margin of error, because this was the sum of the Orioles offensive output while Suárez was in the game: Gunnar Henderson led off the bottom of the first inning with a solo home run. That’s it. This gave him a 1-0 lead very early and that’s all that he got. It’s all he needed. Suárez looked like he deserves to make the start when this spot in the rotation comes up again on Tuesday against the Angels, and if he pitches well there, the O’s might have to figure out how to keep him around even once John Means makes his anticipated return.
Manager Brandon Hyde chose to go to the bullpen in the top of the sixth with two outs, the tying run on first base, and a good lefty in Alex Kiriloff due up. Hyde brought in Danny Coulombe for the platoon advantage and Coulombe got an easy groundout to end that threat.
Coulombe returned for the top of the seventh, retired his second batter easily, then walked pinch-hitter Manuel Margot on four bad-looking pitches. Having gotten through the lefty part of the lineup, Hyde called on Jacob Webb to grab the baton from here. If you’re still suspicious of Webb because of how he pitched in the playoffs last year, this outing did not do anything to make you feel better about him.
Webb was wild as he threw to his very first batter, Austin Martin, and as Webb tried to battle back from falling behind 2-0, Martin swung at a pitch in the middle of the plate a bit above the zone that he hit for a line drive into left field.
Things got weird from here. There’s no way that a runner should score from first on a single, right? Right. Colton Cowser fielded the ball and made a good throw in to Henderson, who was the cutoff man for the play. In the meantime, the Twins third base coach had idiotically sent Margot. The Orioles had him dead to rights, except Henderson made one of the worst relay throws possible and Margot didn’t even have to slide at home to score. Martin advanced to second on the throw, as it was such a bad throw it didn’t even afford a play at second on the back end.
Just like that, the game was tied at 1-1. The tie did not last for long, with Webb getting beaten by Minnesota’s #9 batter, Kyle Farmer, who entered the game batting .071 on the season. Imagine how some other team would feel if they gave up a clutch hit to Austin Hays right now. Ouch. That’s Webb for you, at least for today. He finished the inning but departed with the O’s trailing, 2-1.
This seventh inning rally worked out for the benefit of Twins starter Pablo López, who was taken off the hook for a potential loss even as Suárez had a win yanked away from him. López was pretty good in six innings, allowing just two hits and no walks. Another way to say that is that he retired 18 of the next 19 batters after Henderson’s leadoff home run. López entered Wednesday afternoon’s game with a 4.86 ERA, but this was a guy who was good last year and probably will be again this year.
The Orioles offense picked Webb up just as quickly as he let the team down. Anthony Santander flipped around to the right side to face lefty reliever Steven Okert. Last July, when Okert was on the Marlins, he was the opener in a game against the Orioles and he gave up a dinger to Santander. Okert’s back in the bullpen and he’s still giving up dingers to Santander. Tony Taters blasted a lower-third-down-the-middle fastball into the fence that separates Mr. Splash’s area from the bullpen. The game was knotted, 2-2.
Hyde did not care to mess around with relievers other than his best from this point. Yennier Cano pitched a scoreless eighth with only one walk as a blemish. No one got on base against Craig Kimbrel in the ninth inning; he needed just 12 pitches to set the Twins down in order. That set up the O’s for the potential walkoff in the bottom of the ninth, and within three batters, that potential was a reality. Ryan Mountcastle hit a single with one out, then got to enjoy a nice trot around the bases when Mullins’s home run landed comfortably up past the out-of-town scoreboard in right field.
Waiting for Mullins at home plate was the recently-unveiled homer hydration station. He received the customary cooler dump even as he chugged from the station. A sweet reward for his fifth homer of the year. That’s not enough for the team lead, though, since Henderson’s leadoff homer was #6. Santander’s game-tying dinger was his fourth.
So far, the 2024 season is carrying the good vibes from 2023 over and then some. It’s a blast to watch. Not a bad show for the announced crowd of 15,860. That’s a bump of about 4,000 fans over a comparable mid-week day game in mid-April a year ago.
Baseball stats queen Sarah Langs noted that this was the fifth straight game in which the Orioles hit three or more home runs. They are tied for the second-longest such streak dating back to 1900. The random team that once hit 3+ homers in six straight games? That was the 1987 Orioles.
We’ll see on Friday as the Orioles go to Kansas City to play the Royals whether they can climb to the top of the list. Dean Kremer and Alec Marsh are the probable pitchers for a 7:40 Eastern scheduled start time.