Eveland now

Any Barry Manilow fans out there? OK, anyway... Left-hander Dana Eveland said he didn't think much of his performance tonight. "I was very fortunate to have awesome defense behind me today," he said. "It was one of the worst games I have had all year. I've been throwing the ball pretty well down there. I haven't been walking people. Just did not have command today. Could not find my off-speed pitches. Fastball wasn't really there. I had to grind through it. Fortunately for me, those guys played great behind me." Eveland is a guy who pitches to contact, so he's not used to issuing a lot of walks. The six free passes tonight are the most from Eveland since June 10, 2008 vs. the Yankees, a stretch of 46 games, including 40 starts. "Definitely very frustrating," he said. "I just couldn't get it done today. I was trying to go sinkers away from guys and leaving them up. I hit a couple guys. I hit a guy with a 0-2 pitch. That's obviously the last thing you want to do. It was a tough day for me. I was glad to get out of there and pitch six innings and only give up three runs and keep the team in the game. With these guys the way they're swinging, I had a good feeling about tonight, so I was glad to get out of it." Eveland has never spent a full season in the majors, so he's used to going back and forth between the bigs and the minors. His contract was purchased today from Triple-A Norfolk, but he has no idea how long he'll stay here. "Every time I've come up and down, it's gotten a little bit easier," he said. "I wasn't nervous tonight. I was ready to pitch in the big leagues, which is always a good feeling. I remember back when I was 21, 22, 23 years old coming up, I was overly nervous. It's really hard to pitch when you're feeling like that, so I felt good mentally. "It's the first time I've pitched on short rest since 2009. It went better than it did that time. That was good. But I don't really know that that factored into what happened tonight. I just didn't really feel great. My delivery didn't feel very good. I just had to grind. "I got a little more comfortable (in the later innings), but even so, it wasn't there. I started to find my sinker a little better, which was good. But really, I couldn't throw a slider for a strike much today. I think I threw one curveball for a strike and I think I threw one changeup for a strike the entire game, so when you're pitching off one pitch, it's never easy, especially when you're only throwing 87, 88. It's not an easy thing to do." On the positive side, he only allowed three runs and made it through the sixth, giving the Orioles a chance to win. "Definitely," he said. "I don't feel like I could throw the ball much worse than I did today. I had six walks on the season down there and had six walks today and still got out of there with a quality start. If I can do that on my worst stuff, hopefully when I have my good stuff I can really go out there and put up some good innings."