Six straight losses, then two swings
Two balls over the fence. That was the whole story.
Coby Mayo went deep twice on Monday night for his 20th and 21st home runs of the year, Baltimore beat Cleveland 6-4, and a six-game skid finally ended. The Orioles had gone three consecutive games without scoring more than a single run before that. Boston shut them out twice in the sweep before it.
“It’s a really cool achievement,” Mayo said of hitting 20 for the first time. “You don’t start the season chasing numbers.” He has a hit in 11 straight games now. Manager Craig Albernaz likes what the second half has revealed: “He has shown he’s resilient.”
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Three games out, with 17 to play
Seventy wins, 75 losses. Baltimore trail Cleveland by three for the last American League wild card spot. In the second week of September, three is not much of a wall.
The Guardians are hardly running away with anything either. They sit 73-72, three wins in their last seven, a game up on Toronto and a game and a half on Texas. The White Sox are still ahead of them in the Central at 75-68.
“The rest of the season feels like the playoffs,” Cleveland manager Stephen Vogt said. “That’s how it goes in September.”
Tuesday belongs to two very different arms
Brandon Young (9-3, 3.42 ERA) starts for Baltimore carrying four straight no-decisions. Win it and he becomes the second Orioles pitcher in two days to reach 10, after Trevor Rogers. The part nobody in the clubhouse wants to talk about: he has given up a home run in each of his last four starts, seven of them altogether.
Tanner Bibee (5-15, 4.06) goes the other way. The right-hander had strung together nine consecutive starts of at least six innings before Thursday in Toronto turned ugly, five runs, four hits, five walks. His career mark of 39-38 is one bad night from dipping under .500.
Cleveland also needed five pitchers to get through eight innings on Monday. That bullpen could use a night off it will not get.
One more number. Eleven different Orioles pitchers have recorded a save this season, a franchise record, which tells you plenty about how their ninth innings have gone.
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