Battery of Arrieta, Wieters charges Orioles

I'll admit that I love that title. It's downright inspired. Let's hear from Jake Arrieta, who blanked the Twins on four hits over six innings and lowered his ERA to 5.06.
"I think overall it was really good. When we score runs offensively, I think the biggest thing to do is not give up rebound runs. I think those are the biggest innings for guys, when your team puts some runs on the board for you, to go out here and put up a zero. It continues to build their confidence, knowing that when they do their job, you go out there and do your job. I thought that aspect of the start was really good. "Struggled tonight with some things, but made some pitches in big situations and was able to get out of some jams. A lot of credit goes to Matt for calling a great game back there. I shook him off maybe one time. I wanted to throw a changeup to maybe keep him honest. But he did a really good job back there tonight." Arrieta has turned in three quality starts in four outings. He just needs to be more economical with his pitches so he can stick around longer. He hasn't exceeded six innings. "I think going forward I want to not get into so many deep counts, because looking back on this outing tonight, it would have been great to get in the seventh or eighth inning with a little bit lower pitch count. But that wasn't the case," he said. "Just kind of got to learn from it and get better. Always trying to do that. I want to pitch deeper in games and that's not only going to benefit me, but it's going to help our offense, help our bullpen. That's the kind of guy I want to be, someone who's going to go out there and not give the ball up until the seventh or eighth inning. Just got to get out of some deep counts." Matt Wieters is making those adjustments at the plate work for him. "I think ever since I moved standing a little more upright, I felt more comfortable at the plate and am hitting more balls on the barrel. And tonight I was able to find holes and hit the ball hard," he said. As I mentioned earlier, Wieters is now 5-for-5 with eight RBis with runners in scoring position this season. "You always want to drive those runs in, but it's seeing pitches and being able to find some holes more than anything. And hopefully we can keep that going throughout the whole year," he said. His shining moment was the three-run double off the out-of-town scoreboard in right. "I was just looking to get something up in the zone," he said, "because I saw in Luke's at-bat what (Carl Pavano) would do with him on 3-2 where he threw him the changeup. So I was just trying to make sure I got something up and I had that in the back of my mind where if it started down, maybe I'd just let it go and take the walk and get one of them in there." Asked about the frustration that built during the eight-game losing streak, Wieters said, "It's frustrating, but it's early. It's too early to be making playoff predictions right now. We're very comfortable with how our team is, and even with this eight-game losing streak, we're very comfortable with where we are."