Triple-A Norfolk outfielder Kyle Stowers said he recently made a small batting adjustment. It helped produce big results.

Stowers, ranked as the Orioles' No. 8 prospect via MLBPipeline.com and No. 9 by Baseball America, hit three home runs Sunday at Charlotte. He has hit four homers his past four games and seven in his last 10 games.

Stowers’ three-homer game tied a franchise record for the Tides, and he connected in three straight innings with solo homers in the fifth and sixth and then a three-run shot in the seventh at Charlotte.

Stowers' power is back for him and the Tides.

“I’d say the biggest thing in the last few weeks has been kind of get a little more upright (in my stance) again,” he said today during a Zoom session with reporters. “I was a little crouched early in the year and so it’s kind of getting back to a little more upright, which I feel like is a little more of an athletic position for me. It’s a small change, nothing too big. Kind of been feeling confident all year. Felt like I’d run into some tough luck early and things started to drop a little bit.

The Orioles' high Single-A Aberdeen IronBirds affiliate, at 28-12, has produced one of the best records in minor league baseball this year. There are obvious reasons for that, to include one of the best offenses in the South Atlantic League. The IronBirds score, on average, 5.56 runs per game through Wednesday’s contests.

Then there's a team ERA that ranks third in the league at 3.84 with an unheralded but solid rotation.

And there are more hidden reasons for Aberdeen’s success. Like the club’s tremendous ability to steal bases.

They have stolen a whopping 74 bases this year and have been caught just 13 times for an 85 percent success rate. They rank second in the league in steals, and the “go-go” IronBirds have four players with 11 or more steals and 14 players with at least one stolen base.

In the minor leagues, pitchers can only make a pickoff move toward a base twice per plate appearance. On a third try, the runner will be awarded second base if not picked off. That helps, but manager Roberto Mercado said the club's success in swiping bases comes mainly from talented players employing a good process, not from a rule.

When the Orioles pinned a loss on Yankees right-hander Gerrit Cole on Monday, it was a credit to their hitters to beat such a talented pitcher. But it was also in large part because their pitcher, right-hander Jordan Lyles, dueled head-to-head evenly with Cole for his second straight start.

The Orioles went 1-1 in those two games, but outscored the Yankees 8-7 in the Lyles versus Cole games. Lyles went 13 2/3 innings, allowing nine hits and five earned runs for an ERA of 3.29.

Lyles has been a leader and gamer for the Orioles, going 3-4 with an ERA of 4.10. He has thrown six innings or more in four of his past five starts. He wants the ball and and threw 117 pitches Monday night at Yankee Stadium. That is leadership by example for the other pitchers. The next night left-hander Bruce Zimmermann went a career-high 6 1/3 innings.

But for the 31-year-old Lyles, a player with over 10 years of major league service, he is happy to provide leadership and mentorship to the O’s pitching staff in the four days when he is not pitching, as well. It’s a role he embraces and a role when he was a younger pitcher that he wanted to have some day.

“I have always wanted to be, especially in the second half of my career, a guy that younger guys can lean on for questions on and off the field,” Lyles told me recently at Oriole Park. “There is a lot more that goes into things than just being on the bump and pitching with our major league lifestyle. I think the mental side of things is an area where I’m pretty good with talking to guys about. And then also on the physical side when analytics came into the game I kind of jumped on board a couple of years ago. So even though I am older, I can still relate to them on an analytical standpoint. I can relate to the young guys multiple ways.

It is time for an Orioles impressive stat alert: They are 5-1 in rubber match games this year, winning five in a row since a loss to Milwaukee early in the year.

They have won those games by scores of 5-0 over the New York Yankees, 9-5 over Boston, 6-1 against Kansas City, 3-2 at St. Louis and 7-6 in 11 innings over the Tampa Bay Rays.

So, five wins in a row by a combined score of 30-14 in series-deciding games. The Orioles (18-26) will try to keep that win streak going tonight at New York. A win would make them 2-2 in four series versus the Yankees, who are 10-2-1 in overall series play in 2022. 

The Orioles beat the Yankees and Gerrit Cole by 6-4 Monday night as Cole allowed a season-high five runs. They lost 7-6 in 11 innings last night, playing their third extra-inning game in five games.

Baltimore is now 4-2 the last six games and 4-1 in extra innings. The O's are 12-12 their past 24 games and 6-15 in road games. The Orioles are 4-8 versus the Yankees (1-7 on the road) and 8-13 in American League East games (1-7 on the road).

For the Orioles, the building of the elite talent pipeline on the farm begins for many kids out of the spotlight and in the lower minors.

That is where they try and take their talent and a good learning process and put the two together to start a career toward Baltimore. One that can take a long time and have ups and downs along the way.

For kids from the Dominican Republic, that process starts in the Dominican Summer League and they eventually make their way to the United States to full-season affiliated baseball, where they hope to start to put themselves on the map. That is happening this year with a right-hander that turns 20 today.

He is Juan De Los Santos, from San Cristobal, Dominican Republic. In his first year of full-season ball with low Single-A Delmarva, De Los Santos is showing a fastball touching 97 mph and maybe more importantly, showing how eager he is to learn and grow as a player, soaking up every resource available to him.

It is a nice start to a career that began in the DSL in 2019, was interrupted by the cancelled 2020 minor league season, but continued last summer in the rookie-level Florida Complex League where he pitched to an ERA of 3.83 in 45 innings.

The Orioles were behind 2-0 in the early innings and took a 4-2 lead. They were tied at 4-4 but then took a 5-4 lead. And then 6-4. And they won the series opener at Yankee Stadium by that 6-4 score in a strong start to a week-long American League East road trip to New York and Boston.

Ramón Urías hit a go-ahead homer off losing pitcher Gerrit Cole in the top of the sixth inning. It was No. 3 for Urías, who is 6-for-13 his past three games with a double and a homer, and who has hit two homers his last six games.

Trey Mancini went 2-for-4 with a pair of singles and leads the Orioles with 15 multi-hit games. Mancini owns a season-long 17-game on-base streak, the fourth-longest active streak in the AL and tied for the eighth-longest active stretch in the major leagues.

In the month of May, Mancini is batting .382/.460/.474 (29-for-76) and ranks among AL leaders in on-base percentage (4th), hits (T-4th), and batting average (6th). For his career, Mancini owns a line of .286/.358/.460 with 40 extra-base hits (20-2Bs, 3B, 19 HRs), 60 runs scored, and 67 RBIs in 122 May games.

Robinson Chirinos has four RBIs his last four games and after producing just one in the previous 18 games.

When the Orioles made a series of minor league promotions on Monday, one was certainly no big surprise. Cuban-born infielder César Prieto, signed as part of the latest O’s international class in January, moved up from high Single-A Aberdeen to Double-A Bowie.

There he will join a talented infield that already includes ranked prospects in Gunnar Henderson, Jordan Westburg and Joey Ortiz. But the Orioles feel Prieto deserved to move up and certainly can co-exist on that roster where the first three players mentioned all have starts at multiple infield spots.

Henderson: 22 at third, 13 at short.
Westburg: 12 at second, 12 at third, 11 at short.
Ortiz: 17 at second, 13 at short, two at third.

Prieto, 23, hit .340/.381/.619/ with an OPS of 1.000 in 25 games with Aberdeen. He returned back to their active roster on May 11 after missing about 10 days with a right hamstring strain. As of Monday, Prieto led the O’s farm in batting average, slugging and OPS. He has six doubles, seven homers and 20 RBIs.

It's been a torrid hitting start for a player that some felt could move fast through the system because of his previous experience in the Cuban professional leagues.

The Orioles won another rubber match game on Sunday. Those are games to decide a series after the clubs have split the first two games. The Orioles had to win via a walk-off to get it against the Rays, but they will surely take it.

The Birds are now 5-1 in rubber match games in 2022 and 3-0 against the American League East with such wins over the Yankees, Red Sox and Rays. They also won series-deciding games against the Royals and Cardinals.

Other impressive notes out of Sunday’s win:

* The Orioles have won via walk-off in five games this year, the most walk-off wins in the major leagues. The Orioles won five games via walk-off in all of 2021.

* The Orioles are 5-0 in walk-offs this year, one of six teams in the major leagues to have not been walked off against in 2022. And the Orioles went 5-7 in walk-offs in 2021.

However you want to say it – the Orioles have some heart, they have guts, they are becoming tough to beat, they have a ticker – pick the words, but this team continues to get better in front of our eyes.

For the third time in four games, the team won via a walk-off victory, doing so over the Yankees and Rays - two American League East rivals that combined for 192 wins last year.

Before Sunday’s game, O’s executive vice president and general manager Mike Elias spoke with reporters in the dugout and addressed several topics including his latest take on the progress of the organization’s rebuilding effort. He gave it high marks.

"I think everyone in the company, ownership on down, is very pleased with the foundation, the processes that have been laid, the infrastructure that we have across our organization right now and it’s just about building and growing from here," Elias said.

“But we’ve got blue skies ahead of us. We’ve got a No. 1 farm system, we’ve got a young, talented major league team. We have payroll flexibility where we are past the pandemic and there are going to be more and more people coming into the ballpark. We’re going to be renovating this place. There is a lot to look forward to. I’m very excited and feel like the most difficult, arduous part of the work that we’ve had to do is kind of behind us.

The Orioles have a rubber match coming up this afternoon against the Tampa Bay Rays. The teams have split two games in the series, with the Orioles winning 8-6 in 13 innings Friday night and the Rays winning 6-1 on Saturday night.

The Orioles (16-25) are 4-1 in rubber match games this season, 3-1 at home and 2-0 when the opponent is from the American League East. They have won such games against the Yankees, Red Sox, Royals and Cardinals and lost at home versus Milwaukee.

The O’s have now lost four of six games on the homestand that ends today. Over longer stretches, they have lost seven of nine and eight of their past 11 games. The O’s had scored 17 runs Thursday and Friday in posting back-to-back walk-off wins, but were held to just one run and six hits last night in the second game of the series.

O’s pitching has allowed 32 runs and 10 homers during this homestand, and 18 runs over the past three games. O’s starters have pitched to a 6.40 ERA over the last 11 games. But the Baltimore bullpen, which has a 3.22 ERA of for the year to rank fourth-best in the AL, has pitched to an ERA of 2.05 over the last 17 games.

Catcher Adley Rutschman made his big league debut Saturday as the starting catcher, batting sixth. He finished the night 1-for-3 with a triple, a walk and a strikeout. Rutschman tripled in the seventh inning for his first career hit, becoming the ninth Oriole to triple in his first career hit, and the first since Ryan McKenna on April 11, 2021 against Boston. Rutschman is the first Orioles catcher to do so since Matt Wieters on May 30, 2009 against Detroit.

Adley Rutschman’s first day in the major leagues did not lead to an Orioles win. They lost 6-1 to the Tampa Bay Rays to fall to 2-4 on this homestand and 16-25 on the season.

But one game is not as important as what Rutschman's arrival represents. The rebuild no longer is inching forward but taking a big leap. With more prospects and more such leaps still to come. Between the Orioles and the top of the American League East is a big gap. But the hope across Birdland is that that gap is starting to close, and yesterday was the latest and maybe greatest step forward.

“Somebody that Mike (Elias) took 1/1 and we have high hopes for,” manager Brandon Hyde said before Rutschman’s Saturday night debut. “So much pressure put on him and there is so much anticipation that I want him to relax and play the game like he did in high school. I understand that is not realistic, but I want him to enjoy today with all the hoopla that is going into it. It’s a day he’ll never forget.

“I think the fans are going to embrace how he plays, how hard he plays. His personality. What kind of guy he is and he’s going to be a good player. Whether that is going to showcase tonight or this week, who knows? But he’s going to be a good player for a long time.”

And hopefully this arrival – the first of a few for top Baltimore prospects this year – means the organization will now be more consistently trending up. It may not be a straight line headed for the top, but the Orioles hope they are moving in the right direction now.

As the Orioles host the Rays tonight in the second game of this weekend series, the game also marks the long anticipated major league debut of catcher Adley Rutschman. He is the player the Orioles selected with the No. 1 overall pick in the 2019 First-Year Player Draft, who will catch and bat sixth tonight.

Rutschman arrives in Baltimore after parts of three seasons and 179 games on the farm, not counting the cancelled 2020 minor league season. He would have arrived sooner, no doubt, but for his right triceps injury in spring training that derailed any chance of his making this year’s opening day roster.

Rutschman has played his last 12 games with Triple-A Norfolk, batting .233/.377/.442 with an .819 OPS. In his last three games with the Tides, he went 5-for-12 with two homers and five RBIs. In 19 games on his rehab assignment through high Single-A Aberdeen and then Double-A Bowie and Norfolk, he hit .309/.427/.515 with a .942 OPS, five doubles, three homers, nine RBIs, 11 walks and seven strikeouts.

He has a career .879 OPS in 650 minor league at-bats.

“I’d say about as excited as I can be right now," Rutschman said this afternoon at a Camden Yards press conference. "This is probably the coolest thing, coolest moment, that I’ve had so far. I’m really excited for it.”

It’s a huge day in Birdland with the arrival of the No. 1 prospect in baseball to the Orioles. Adley Rutschman will catch and bat sixth tonight to make his major league debut as the Orioles host the Rays.

A veteran like Trey Mancini noted this takes the rebuilding phase to another level. The organization, for want of a better phrase, is getting on with it.

“Yeah, I think so,” Mancini said this afternoon in the clubhouse. “It’s not something that happens overnight, obviously. But it’s not a thing where you can circle like, ‘Oh in this year, we are going to start competing.’ It’s something that just happens over time and it starts by establishing the culture that we have here. And when you do that and do things the right way, sometimes you can compete a little earlier than you think. And we’re going to see more guys like Adley come up here over the next year or so. And that is really exciting, and for the fans, too. I know they have been waiting for this day for a long time.

“It’s a really exciting day for the franchise and most importantly for Adley. I’m expecting it to be a great atmosphere tonight. I think he’s going to be able to handle it all really well. It’s a lot of attention and a big day, but when it gets close to game time, it’s basically like any other game that you’ve played in your career. You have to treat it like that even though there will be a huge adrenaline rush for him. It’s a day you want to soak in no matter what. It’s one of the more special days of your life and it goes by quickly.”

The Orioles have posted back-to-back walk-off wins for the first time since June 6-7, 2017 against Pittsburgh and the first time with homers ending the game since Aug. 14-15, 2015 versus Oakland.

They feature five players ranked among the Orioles' top 30 prospects on MLBPipeline.com. It has been that group of five and several more key contributors that have led the Orioles' high Single-A Aberdeen IronBirds affiliate to the best record in all of minor league baseball through their first 35 games.

The IronBirds cooled off Friday night, losing 6-0 to Rome for their first shutout loss of the year. But their record of 26-9 is good enough to be playing .743 baseball and that is the best mark among 120 full-season clubs in the minors.

An MLB team winning at such a pace would go 120-42.

“The guys come to work every single day, man," Roberto Mercado, the Aberdeen manager and a first-year staff member in the O's organization said of his club on Friday afternoon. "They enjoy each other. There is a great team chemistry in the clubhouse. Guys enjoy being around each other. They will get here early and hang out before they start their workday. Lot of positive energy going around the club. And we have a great staff that has really helped prepare the guys. What a solid job they all have done so far."

The top 30 prospects include outfielder Colton Cowser (No. 4), infielder Coby Mayo (No. 7), infielder Connor Norby (No. 11), infielder César Prieto (No. 12) and outfielder John Rhodes (No. 23).

After producing the walk-off win Thursday afternoon against the New York Yankees, the Orioles host the Tampa Bay Rays today in the opener of a three-game series and continuation of a seven-game homestand.

After back-to-back one-run losses to New York, the Orioles (15-24) salvaged the series finale Thursday 9-6 on Anthony Santander’s three-run shot. It was his seventh homer of the season and first career walk-off hit.

The game marked the first walk-off home run by an Oriole since Rio Ruiz hit a game-ending longball off Roberto Osuna on Aug. 11, 2019, versus Houston. It was the Baltimore’s third walk-off victory of the season, with all three coming against American League East foes - two against the Yankees and one against the Red Sox.

According to Elias Sports Bureau, Santander, with two doubles a homer in that game, is the third Oriole to record three extra-base hits, including a walk-off home run, in a single game, joining Randy Milligan (2-2B, HR) on June 12, 1990, against Milwaukee and Manny Machado (3 HRs) on Aug. 18, 2017, versus the Los Angeles Angels. And Santander is the first major league player to record such a game since Alex Verdugo (2-2B, HR) did so with the Los Angeles Dodgers on June 22, 2019, versus Colorado.

In the month of May, Trey Mancini has batted .377/.441/.492 (23-for-61) and ranks among AL leaders in OBP (2nd), batting average (4th), and hits (T-5th). For his career, Mancini owns a line of .282/.352/.462 with 40 extra-base hits, 60 runs scored and 65 RBIs in 118 May games. Mancini has hit safely in 14 of 16 games this month, including producing multiple hits in seven of them, and on the season, he leads the team and ranks tied for sixth in the AL with 12 multi-hit games.

For a while we wondered when the Trey Mancini would get some payoff for how hard he was hitting the ball with little to show for it. And this month the hits have started to come for him and his numbers are now getting more in line with what might be expected.

The same has not happened yet for infielder Ramón Urías.

After producing an OPS of .774 in 296 plate appearances last year – which was 12 percent above the American League average – his OPS now is .541. That is 41 percent under the current AL average.

Urías homered on Tuesday versus the Yankees, but then went 0-for-8 in the last two games of that series and is just 3-for-23 over his past seven games. In 32 games this season he is batting .196/.246/.295. Last year his line was .279/.361/.412.

“I’m going through a tough situation and I haven’t been hitting good,” he said this afternoon before the series opener with Tampa Bay. “But I’m staying positive, I’m still working, I’m still coming in every day and thinking that I can hit well that game. I’m just trusting the process and still working hard, and hopefully we are out of that soon.

If some of the young pitchers at higher levels on the Orioles farm right now – hurlers on a list include Mike Baumann, Dean Kremer, Zac Lowther and Alexander Wells to name a few – want to find someone who had struggles and turned it around, they can look at someone they once shared a rotation with.

They can look at lefty Keegan Akin, someone they know well, because they came up about the same time as he did. Now he is where they want to be – not just in the majors but pitching with success in the big leagues.

It was just Aug. 1 when Akin had an ERA of 8.14. Then 10 days later, he gave up six runs to the Tigers and his ERA was 8.23. But the Orioles kept giving him chances. Over his final six 2021 starts, he took a step forward. With his overall numbers and struggles last year, it may have been hard to notice that he pitched to an ERA of 4.02 his last six starts.

Then he showed up this year healthy and with a strong mindset to attack the zone at all times. And he is thriving.

Akin is 1-0 with a 1.46 ERA and 0.770 WHIP over 24 2/3 innings. He has a 1.8 walk rate, 0.4 homer rate and 7.3 strikeout rate. He's thriving versus lefty and righty batters, at home and on the road.

Before Anthony Santander could hit the Orioles first walk-off homer since Aug. 11, 2019 as they beat the New York Yankees today 9-6, there were some other players that camp up big as the Orioles ended a six-game losing streak.

Like right-handed reliever Dillon Tate, who somewhat quietly is having a solid year.

He put up a zero in the seventh to preserve what was then a 6-5 Orioles lead. They got a win after losing three in a row in this series to the Yankees and by a single run the last two nights.

“This one was huge,” said Tate, who has a 2.33 ERA and 0.88 WHIP in 17 games. “I think it’s a big weight off the guys’ shoulders. You know, came up short a few games and it really did sting because we were playing good baseball and it’s just good to get back in the win column.”

Tate came on for the seventh, right after the O’s had scored three runs to take a 6-5 lead. He allowed a single to No. 9 hitter Marwin Gonzalez and then got leadoff man DJ LeMahieu, who would later tie the game with two outs in the ninth, on a foul fly ball to right.

When the Orioles hosted the Yankees in mid-April they won two of three in the series, allowing six total runs. But first-place New York is playing much better ball this series in Baltimore. With a win this afternoon, the Yankees would complete a four-game sweep of the Orioles.

New York won 6-2 Monday night and has now posted two straight one-run wins, by 5-4 and 3-2 scores.

The Orioles (14-24) have lost six in a row and seven of their past eight games. They fell behind 3-0 in the first inning last night and are 4-20 when their opponent scores first. The Yankees (28-9) are now 19-2 when they score first in the game.

The Orioles are 2-7 and have lost six in a row to the Yankees since that first series at Camden Yards. They are now 9-10 at home, 5-7 in one-run games and 4-11 versus the AL East.

The O’s offense has produced just eight runs on 19 hits in this series. Baltimore batters have scored two runs or less six times in the past eight games. In those eight games, they have scored 15 runs total and have gone 4-for-40 with runners in scoring position.

The high Single-A Aberdeen IronBirds have gotten off to a hot start, producing the best record of any minor league team in full-season ball. That covers 120 clubs. There are many reasons for that and just one is the play of shortstop Collin Burns.

With some more high-profile names on that IronBirds' roster, Burns can fly under the radar. But the 21-year-old lefty batter is hitting .333/.381/.422/ with an OPS of .803 in 24 games. Burns has six stolen bases, eighth doubles and 12 RBIs. He has low walk (5) and strikeout (15) totals.

A sixth-round pick out of Tulane from the 2021 draft, Burns has been solid for Aberdeen.

“He’s another guy that has had a lot of quality at-bats, is getting on base and hitting balls hard,” Orioles director of player development Matt Blood said in a recent interview. “And he’s playing quality defense. A nice pickup for the org. He plays shortstop and even some left field. We like to get guys moved around.”

Burns, 21, hit .305 in 24 games after the draft last season between the Florida Complex League O's and low Single-A Delmarva.