For 7 2/3 innings, the bats’ feeble efforts against a southpaw made for quite the snoozefest, but Gunnar Henderson flipped the tables with a late three-run bomb.
For seven and two-thirds innings, this game felt like a trip to the dentist, or the MVA, or a really long, lame graduation ceremony, where the best one can say is, “Well, at least it’ll be over quickly.” Then one late rally flipped the game on its head, giving the Orioles a heroic 4-3 win, and reminding us that there are still reasons to watch this team.
I’m sure none of us felt great about Saturday’s matchup, and for seven and two-thirds innings, you’d have been right. A trade-ravaged Orioles lineup had looked flat as heck on Friday, and now they’d have to face a hot lefty in Chicago’s Matthew Boyd (with Tyler O’Neill out sick, no less). The game played out just as you expected, with Boyd slicing through the lineup like a hot knife through butter over a shutout seven innings, allowing just four hits and no walks while striking out eight.
But then there was the eighth, and if you were still watching, you were in for some fun.
Boyd finally made his welcome exit, and reliever Ryan Brasier immediately set out to make a mess. Brasier walked Colton Cowser on four pitches, allowed Jeremiah Jackson’s second hit of the game (yay, rookie!), then pinch-hitter Terrin Vavra had a single up the middle stolen from him by a diving Nico Hoerner (“Damn you, Hoerner!” [shakes fist]). It’d been such a soggy effort all day from the hitters that it felt like the rally might die there.
But it didn’t! The Cubs, rightly unimpressed with Brasier, yanked him for lefty Caleb Thielbar (when in doubt against the Orioles, pitch a lefty), but that didn’t work, either. Jordan Westburg slapped a single through the right side to score Cowser and make it 3-1 Orioles. That brought up Gunnar Henderson. Chicago had itself a lefty-lefty matchup, but we had ourselves Gunnar Henderson. Thielbar threw Gunnar some hangy breaking ball thing, and here’s how that went:
At 111 mph off the bat, it was one of Gunnar’s hardest-hit home run all year, and in sentimental value, also one of the biggest?
The Orioles still needed six outs, and I wasn’t sure whom they’d get them from. (Who’s in this bullpen again?) It turns out that Yennier Cano and Keegan Akin are still on this team, and they were in form tonight, doing enough to hold onto the 4-3 win.
Now, I’m not going to lie and and say that the problems aren’t there. Tomoyuki Sugano allowed three runs in another short and dissatisfying outing. Three runs over five innings on 95 pitches is pretty much what a 4.42 ERA pitcher will give you, but we need more out of our starting rotation than that. Nothing looked effortless for the right-hander today, and a lot sounded pretty noisy.
Sugano allowed two deep fly balls in the first inning that just missed the seats, leftfielder Colton Cowser backing his way into the ivy to corral one (hat tip, moo). Sugano gave up two runs on a three-hit rally and sac fly in the second, and that might have been lucky, as the contact was all hard: Ian Happ smoked a double to the rightfield corner, Willi Castro hit a line drive that Cowser barely missed a shoestring catch on (ruled a single), and Nico Horner roped a ground-rule RBI double into the ivy that Cowser wisely stopped play on. A sac fly to Cowser made it 2-0 Chicago.
(All I can say is, Tomoyuki Sugano owes the Milkman a steak dinner—or a sushi one, if Cowser and Sugano share the same taste in food. The Milkman also made a running play in foul ground in the third.)
Speaking of outfielders, Jeremiah Jackson is not one. A shortstop playing his second MLB game, Jackson was jammed into right field today to get a right-handed bat in the lineup—and it showed on one costly fourth-inning play when Jackson overran a line drive and turned it into a triple that eventually scored for the Cubs’ third run. But then again, Jackson had two hits today, so maybe we take the inexperience in the outfield.
Nice to see, given the ransacked state of the bullpen, were a bunch of no-name relievers pitching well. (I kid! I kid! Look, we’ll have to learn their names now, like it or not.) Corbin Martin pitched a scoreless sixth, though he allowed two hits. Grant Wolfram allowed a hit and a walk in the seventh, but also struck out two. It was a good showing for Cano and Akin, too.
The trade deadline may have made these Orioles a little harder to watch for now, and it’s true that for 16 2/3 innings this series, the Orioles offense was kept totally silent by Chicago pitching. But today was a reminder that there are still special players in this lineup, and a special core on the team. Adley Rutschman and Jordan Westburg are swinging the bat well lately, and Gunnar Henderson is a stud (I get tired of writing that, but I won’t stop writing it until he stops being one).
We may have to squint a little harder for great baseball this season, but now and then, we’ll still get it.