To hear O’s right-hander Austin Voth’s take, he is not pitching any differently in his last four games than he was in his first four games of the new season.

But the results have been very different.

“Not really,” Voth said in the clubhouse Wednesday about if he made any in-season adjustments. “I feel like I’ve been the same the whole season so far. Just had trouble early on with some offspeed pitches in the zone that were too much middle, but as a whole I feel I have been pitching about the same.”

But Voth, who allowed one homer in each of his first five bullpen appearances this year, has not allowed any in his last three games. His ERA was 10.50 his first four games and is 2.70 his last four. In that most-recent four-game span he has allowed two runs over 6 2/3 innings giving up a batting average of .208 and OPS against of .564 in that time. He has looked more like the pitcher that threw to an ERA of 3.04 for the Orioles in 2022.

But then he was mostly starting – making 17 of his 22 appearances as a starter. Now he is adjusting to a full-time bullpen role. And the results say the adjustment is starting to take hold.

After one comeback from four runs down that led to a win and one from seven behind that fell short, the Orioles (15-8) host the Boston Red Sox (13-12) today in the final game of a three-game series and six-game homestand.

Baltimore is 4-1 this homestand after a series sweep of Detroit followed by Monday’s 5-4 win at Oriole Park and last night’s 8-6 loss. The O’s were behind 7-0 in the third inning to Boston on Tuesday and 8-1 heading to the last of the ninth. But then Gunnar Henderson hit a solo home run, Cedric Mullins added a grand slam, and they pulled within the final two-run margin.

The Orioles are 2-3 this year against Boston. Their pitching staff has allowed 9, 9. 9, 4 and 8 runs in those games, yielding 39 runs with an ERA of 7.42 and 1.626 WHIP. Boston batters are hitting .307 with an OPS of .888 versus O’s pitching in 2023.

"We haven't pitched very well against the Red Sox this year," O's manager Brandon Hyde said this morning. "That is a good offensive club. Always been a big Justin Turner fan, that is a big add for them and (Rafael) Devers is one of the best hitters in our game, top three to five, super dangerous. They have a real balanced lineup with a lot of lefties that makes it challenging. But I just think we haven't pitched very well against them. Won't see them again until September, little different this year."

Baltimore’s starters in this series – Dean Kremer and Kyle Bradish – have combined to allow 15 hits and 11 runs over eight innings. And O’s pitching has allowed eight runs or more six times this season – four times versus Boston.

The Orioles hope they have outfielder Austin Hays available today for the series finale at Oriole Park against the Boston Red Sox.

The clubs have split two games in this series and the Orioles' 8-6 loss Tuesday left their record at 15-8 and saw an end to their seven-game win streak.

Hays bruised his right hand while attempting a bunt in the third inning. Luckily X-rays were negative for a fracture, but he’ll undergo further evaluation.

"We caught a break there with the X-rays being negative, so that's great news," manager Brandon Hyde said after the game. "It's day-to-day. It's obviously really sore. I think we got lucky."

Hays is off to a fast batting start, hitting .301/.341/.542/.883 with six doubles, a triple, four home runs and nine RBIs in 23 games.

As the Orioles host Boston tonight in Game 2 of a three-game series, they will send out right-hander Kyle Bradish (1-0, 0.00) to make his third start. Those first two starts came 16 days apart because he was hit by a liner in Texas and went on the injured list between those two.

The second was last Wednesday in Washington. Bradish threw six scoreless innings on five hits and 92 pitches versus the Nationals. So he has pitched 7 2/3 scoreless to begin his year.

A case could be made that Bradish has been the Orioles' best starter since late last July. Going through his last 15 starts, beginning July 29, 2022, Bradish is 4-3 with a 2.96 ERA and the Orioles are 11-4 in those games. He has five quality starts. In 79 innings in that span he has recorded 1.15 WHIP, allowing just a .211 batting average and .597 OPS.

This year, lefty batters are 2-for-16 (.125) against him and right-handers are batting (.308) at 4-for-13.

But Bradish has never recorded a win against an American League East opponent, going 0-7 with a 7.21 ERA and .904 OPS against in 14 games.

So this Orioles-Red Sox series got a bit more interesting today when O’s manager Brandon Hyde said comments that Boston manager Alex Cora made last night were “disrespectful to our hitters.”

Cora seemed to grudgingly, if at all, give the Orioles credit for making such good contact on a night they did not strike out in their 5-4 comeback win over Boston.

It was the first time the Orioles did not strike out even once in a game since Aug. 8, 2010 versus the Chicago White Sox. On the night O’s batters swung at 65 pitches and whiffed just four times, per Statcast. They swung and missed on just two of 42 swings against Chris Sale, a strikeout pitcher who had a 15.0 K rate this year going into that game. He had fanned 11 in six innings in his previous start against Minnesota, getting 19 swings and misses.

“At one point there, there was no swings and misses on tough pitches. Got to give credit to them I guess," Cora said as part of his postgame comments Monday.

“I’m not sure what he was getting at. Honestly pretty disappointed in hearing that,” Hyde said this afternoon in a response to a question about Cora's comments. “Thought it was disrespectful to our hitters, to be honest with you. I thought we had a great plan. We had major league hitters take really good at-bats and I loved our approach last night,” Hyde said.

He just turned 19 in December and in 33 career pro baseball games, shortstop Jackson Holliday is batting .339/.503/.530/.1.033 with 11 doubles, a triple, three homers and 24 RBIs. There have been few, really no struggles, for Holliday yet on the Orioles' watch.

But if he doesn’t tear it up initially as he now moves up from Low Single-A Delmarva to High-A Aberdeen, he will be keeping good company. Gunnar Henderson started 1-for-31 his first 11 games at Aberdeen in the 2021 season and last season Heston Kjerstad hit .233 with an OPS of .674 at Aberdeen in 43 games.

Those stats for both were modest but it didn't keep them from advancing in their careers.

Now the player that the O’s drafted No. 1 overall last summer, a player ranked as baseball’s No. 10 prospect by MLBPipeline.com and No. 13 by Baseball America, will play his first IronBirds game tonight when Aberdeen plays at Wilmington. His home debut is to come May 9 at Ripken Stadium.

On my WBAL Radio O’s postgame show last night, Orioles executive vice president and general manager Mike Elias joined me to talk about Holliday’s promotion.

For the first time since April 9, the Orioles will face an American League East team tonight. They open a three-game home series versus the Boston Red Sox.

The O’s (14-7) opened the 2023 season at Fenway Park, winning 10-9 before losses by 9-8 and 9-5 scores. They allowed Boston at least nine runs in three consecutive games.

Contrast that with the pitching lately, where the Orioles have allowed just seven runs during a six-game win streak. O’s pitchers have allowed just three runs over their past 54 innings and three runs the last five games, allowing, in order, 0, 0, 1, 1 and 1 against Washington and Detroit.

But Boston (12-11) just took two of three at Milwaukee, and the Red Sox, since beginning this season at 5-8, are 7-3 and have won three of their past four. They are 2-5 versus AL East clubs, going 2-1 against Baltimore but 0-4 against Tampa Bay.

The current AL East standings

At the end of a baseball season, when a team like the Orioles hopes to have enough wins to make the playoffs, victories like Sunday may really seem important. They took a game where they didn’t have a baserunner until the seventh inning and didn’t score until the eighth and they won that game.

Adam Frazier scored the winning run and afterward talked about the importance of turning a potential 1-0 loss into a 2-1 win to sweep the Detroit Tigers.

"Those kinds of wins at the end of the season, they add up," Frazier said Sunday. "That's how you make the playoffs. A lot of good teams can win a series, but to sweep a series is hard to do.”

Frazier pinch-ran for the placed runner at second base to start the bottom of the 10th inning. He advanced to third on a sac bunt and then, with Jorge Mateo batting, scored on a wild pitch thrown by Mason Englert to end the day with the third O’s walk-off win in their past four at home.

“Guy (Eduardo Rodriguez) was throwing a perfect game, so anytime you can steal one like that it means a lot,” Frazier added this afternoon, speaking of the O’s 14^th win. “Those little wins where it looks like you might not win start adding up later in the year.

He is one of baseball’s best prospects and has been playing very much like it this year. And now, after just 13 games to begin his 2023 season at Low Single-A Delmarva, the Orioles are promoting shortstop Jackson Holliday to High-A Aberdeen.

Holliday, 19, the No. 1 overall pick in the 2022 MLB Draft, will play his first IronBirds game tomorrow night when Aberdeen begins a six-game series at Wilmington. The following week Aberdeen plays at Brooklyn. Holliday will make his home debut at Ripken Stadium on Tuesday, May 9 against Hudson Valley.

With Delmarva, Holliday was batting .392/.523/.667/.1.190 with six doubles, a triple, two homers, 15 runs, three steals and 15 RBIs. He ranked in the top three in the Carolina League in average, OBP, slugging, OPS, runs and RBIs. He produced three games with four RBIs each and on Friday went 3-for-6 with his first two homers of the season. He ends his time with Delmarva batting .429 (12-for-28) during a seven-game hitting streak.

Holliday, who turned 19 on Dec. 4, is ranked as MLB’s No. 10 prospect by MLBPipeline.com and No. 13 by Baseball America. Last summer he became the third No. 1 overall pick in Orioles history, following Ben McDonald in 1989 and Adley Rutschman in 2019.

He became the first high school position player taken by the Orioles with their top draft selection since Manny Machado was selected No. 3 overall in 2010.

The Orioles, through 21 games, are playing .667 ball at 14-7. They are on a pace to win 108 games this season. It’s a pretty solid start, to say the least.

They are second in the AL East, 4.5 games back of a 19-3 Tampa Bay team, but 1.5 games ahead of both the Yankees and Blue Jays and three games up on the Boston team they host tonight.

Birdland has to be pleased with that start, which ties for third-best after 21 games in Baltimore Orioles history.

The Orioles started the year playing three teams that are all playing .522 or better ball right now in the Red Sox, Rangers and Yankees. They went 4-5 in those games. They have played four teams since that have not played better than .350 ball to this point. Against those lesser clubs, they cleaned up going 10-2.

O’s manager Brandon Hyde doesn’t see the schedule in terms of games and series they should win, he said yesterday.

After 2-1 and 5-1 wins the last two days over the Detroit Tigers (7-12), the Orioles can complete their first three-game sweep of the 2023 season with a win this afternoon at Oriole Park.

O’s pitchers have allowed just two runs and seven hits this weekend with five walks and 23 strikeouts. Right-hander Kyle Gibson allowed one run and two hits over 6 1/3 innings last night. He walked three and tied his career high with 11 strikeouts. Gibson is now 4-0 with a 3.60 ERA. The rest of the O’s rotation has combined for just two wins.

Highest Single-Game Strikeout Totals by O's Pitchers since 2019:

12 K: John Means on 5/5/21 at Seattle

12 K: John Means on 9/20/20 vs. Tampa Bay

When Jorge Mateo was with the San Diego Padres earlier in his career, he could not crack the starting lineup and get regular playing time. But he played in 150 games last season for the Orioles, and maybe all those reps are paying off now.

Mateo is off to a sizzling start at the plate and making a real difference for an Orioles team that already expected to see him play strong defense and steal bases. They knew they would get two of these elements, but now they are getting all three.

Mateo, who has missed the last couple of games with a hip injury, could return to the lineup today. He was in the original lineup yesterday but the wet field led to the Orioles making the precautionary move to sit him another day. 

When center fielder Cedric Mullins watches Mateo play, the O’s leadoff man sees a player he can relate to.

“When I first saw him as a player and his skill set, what he is doing right now is what I always envisioned,” Mullins said recently. “For example, I think me and him are similar in that power-speed combination. He provides great defense on the field. Able to steal bases. Everything that I do at my peak, I think he can do as well. To be able to see it all come together with his hard work is great to see.”

Friday’s 2-1 walk-off victory provided the Orioles with a 12-7 record and a fourth win in a row. If they can win one more this weekend versus Detroit (7-11) they will have four consecutive series wins.

They went 3-1 versus Oakland, 2-1 at Chicago against the White Sox and 2-0 at Washington. Overall the Orioles have won six of seven and eight of their past 10 games. They are now 5-3 at home and 5-2 in games decided by one run.

The AL East standings at this hour:

Tampa Bay, 17-3
Orioles, 12-7
New York, 13-8
Toronto, 12-9
Boston 11-10

New York beat Toronto 3-2 this afternoon via a walk-off win scoring in the last of the ninth on DJ LeMahieu's single. Danny Jansen's two-run homer had tied the game 2-2 in the top of the ninth for Toronto.

For Orioles rookie right-hander Grayson Rodriguez, it was one very welcome sight. That was seeing his changeup with great movement and getting the swings and misses it got last Sunday at Chicago.

As he goes into his next start tomorrow at home versus Detroit – his fourth in the majors – he feels having that pitch be as effective as it was his last time out will be huge for him going forward.

When the Orioles selected Rodriguez with the No. 11 overall pick in the 2018 MLB Draft out of Central Heights High School in Nacogdoches, Texas, he could throw with big velocity. But he didn’t have much of a changeup to go to.

On the O’s watch and in their player development system, not only did he develop a good one, but over the years it became his best secondary and helped him become the top pitching prospect in baseball.

He worked hard on it before that start at Chicago and then had it really going that day as, after allowing four runs in the first inning, he threw scoreless ball from the second through the fifth innings against the White Sox in a 93-pitch outing.

The Orioles (11-7) have a couple of streaks going heading into tonight’s game, a series-opener against the Detroit Tigers to start a six-game homestand at Oriole Park.

They are 6-0 this year in series-opening games and their pitching staff has thrown 26 consecutive scoreless innings dating back to the second inning last Sunday at Chicago. The team record for the Orioles is 54 straight innings without allowing a run. That was done by the 1974 team from Sept. 1-7.

The Orioles have their first three-game win streak of the season heading into tonight’s game, and they have won five of six and seven of their last nine games since the start of the Oakland series at Camden Yards.

Detroit (7-10) has a losing record but had won five in a row until Wednesday’s 3-2 loss to Cleveland, which snapped that streak. Detroit has actually played more American League East games so far this year than the Orioles, but is just 1-8 in those games and been outscored 59-21. The Tigers went 0-3 against Tampa Bay and Boston and 1-2 versus Toronto. Their staff ERA is 6.75 and OPS against is .839 in those AL East games.

The Tigers and Guardians combined for 4 hours, 13 minutes of playing time in Tuesday's doubleheader. According to the Elias Sports Bureau, it was the shortest major league doubleheader in which both games went at least nine innings since July 29, 1984, when the Cubs and Mets combined for 4:10. It was the quickest Tigers doubleheader in which both games lasted at least nine innings since Aug. 1, 1980 vs. Seattle, which also lasted 4:13.

It doesn’t have its own name like “Homer Hose,” in fact it doesn’t have any name, but Bryan Baker’s little backward dance off the mound Wednesday night after getting a strikeout in Washington had the texting on his cell phone pretty active for a while.

He said he heard quite a bit about it after he had pitched a 1-2-3 seventh inning to preserve what was then a 3-0 O’s lead. Using his changeup, which was on point in that game, he got strikeouts of CJ Abrams and Lane Thomas.

In the early going this year, the changeup has become a big pitch for Baker. It’s often been a big pitch for the Orioles as a pitching staff. Baltimore pitchers threw the second-most changeups in the American League in 2022. And this year, at 13.7 percent usage, the Orioles rank third in the league behind the Los Angeles Angels (14.4) and New York Yankees (14.2) in throwing changeups.

“I feel like I finally kind of found it against the Nationals the other day,” Baker said earlier today of his change. “Made a little bit of a tweak with my grip. But just need to maintain consistency with it. Kind of the hardest pitch to do that with, because it’s such a feel pitch. So, yeah, will just try to hold on to what I had the other night.

“The action was good. And it wasn’t too slow to, like, where I was telegraphing it and letting them know it’s coming, and sometimes I do that. Yeah, just try to maintain that going forward.”

As the rotation turns for the Orioles, it took a turn for the better beginning with the second inning Sunday at Chicago. Grayson Rodriguez allowed a pair of homers in the first and the Orioles were down 4-0 to the White Sox.

But they would rally to win that game and two teams have not scored off Baltimore starters, or any Baltimore pitcher, since. Starting with the second inning Sunday, the Orioles staff has thrown 26 consecutive scoreless innings. The starters since that point have thrown 16 2/3 consecutive scoreless.

The back-to-back shutouts at Nats Park reduced their team ERA to 4.68, which is ninth now in the American League and still not as good the league average of 4.32. But trending up.

The Orioles doubled their total of quality starts from two to four in the series in Washington. They are 4-0 in those games. But they rank 22^nd in the majors with four QS. Boston, Detroit and St. Louis are at the bottom of the bigs with just two. The Los Angeles Dodgers and Pittsburgh have 11 and Cleveland is next with 10.

But the O’s hope their young starters are turning a corner and starting to lock in as they did late last year. Right now the rotation features Rodriguez, 23, Kyle Bradish, 26, Dean Kremer, 27, and Tyler Wells, 28.

WASHINGTON – He didn’t make the Orioles' Opening Day roster out of spring training as he hoped, but Ryan O’Hearn didn’t have too long to wait to make his Orioles debut.

On April 13, for the final game of the home series with Oakland, the O’s called up O’Hearn. The 29-year-old lefty hitter got the start that day, went 2-for-3 and drove in three runs. You have a great memory if you remember the last player before O’Hearn to drive in three in his first game with the team was Jon Knott on April 17, 2007, at Tampa Bay. You have a great memory if you even remember Knott, who played in just seven games in his brief O’s career.

O’Hearn tried to make the club by swinging a hot bat under the Florida sun in March. He hit .375/.444/.650/.1.094 in spring training but began the year with Triple-A Norfolk.

But with the club about to face a series of right-handed pitchers he got the call.

O’Hearn said that based on his career where he has been often trying to make a roster or hang onto his roster spot with Kansas City between 2018 and 2022, he did not get down when he started this season on the farm.

WASHINGTON – The Orioles got one of their starting pitchers back tonight, and it was a welcome sight for them to see right-hander Kyle Bradish on the mound. He was activated off the injured list and pitching for the first time since taking a liner off his right foot April 3 at Texas.

And they got back the Bradish that pitched to a 3.28 ERA in his last 13 starts of the 2022 season.

Tonight, he threw six scoreless innings as the Orioles beat Washington 4-0 to sweep a two-game series by throwing back-to-back shutouts.

O’s pitchers have thrown 26 consecutive scoreless innings dating back to the second inning on Sunday versus the White Sox in Chicago. Their rotation ERA was 6.75 to start this series, but Bradish and Dean Kremer combined for 12 2/3 scoreless innings against the Nationals.

They also saw the home run ball return to their offense tonight, and that was a welcome sight as well.

WASHINGTON – The Orioles (10-7), winners of six of their past eight games and with a record of 3-1 on this road trip, can sweep this two-game series if they win tonight at Nationals Park.

Washington (5-12) allowed just a run and five hits in Tuesday’s 1-0 loss. The Nats, who began this series averaging just 3.88 runs per game this season, were held to three runs or fewer for the ninth time, and they are 0-9 in those games.

The Nats have lost five of six games, are 2-8 at home and are 0-4-1 in five series in 2023.

Right-hander Dean Kremer and three relievers teamed on the Orioles' second shutout of the year, joining their 2-0 win April 3 at Texas. Kremer, now 1-0 with a 6.16 ERA, went 6 2/3 innings, allowing just four singles and no walks while notching six strikeouts on 95 pitches, 66 for strikes. He threw first-pitch strikes to 21 of 25 batters in the series opener.

Speaking of series openers, the Orioles are now 6-0 in such games this year.