After playing nine one-run games in the last 13 contests, this was quite different for the Orioles. A laugher. And they got to do the laughing.
On the night they honored 23 Orioles Hall of Famers as part of their 60th anniversary celebration, the Orioles bashed six homers in a 12-2 rout of the St. Louis Cardinals. A huge crowd of 43,743 enjoyed it at Camden Yards.
The team record for homers in one game is seven. The Orioles did that on May 17, 1967 at Boston, on Aug. 26, 1985 at California and on Sept. 26, 2012 at Camden Yards against Toronto.
It was the Orioles' most lopsided win of the year as they improved to 66-49 by winning for the fifth time in six games and for the 12th time in 16 home games. They are now a season-high 17 games over .500.
All the runs came after the Orioles loaded the bases with no outs in the first and did not score. They made up for it by scoring 12 over the next five innings.
J.J. Hardy hit a solo homer in the third and added a three-run shot in the fourth for his 11th career multi-homer game. His last was June 1, 2013 versus Detroit. Hardy hit just two homers in the first 79 games this year.
Manny Machado hit a three-run shot in the second when the O's took a 4-0 lead. Later, they got solo homers from Adam Jones (No. 22) and Chris Davis (No. 20), and a two-run shot by Ryan Flaherty (No. 5).
Davis' homer was the 150th of his career. Jones' homer was his 86th at Camden Yards, moving him past Cal Ripken Jr. into sole possession of fourth place in the park's history.
The Orioles had a total of six hits combined the past two games and they hit six homers tonight.
The Cardinals allowed six homers in a game for the first time since July 23, 2000.
All the offense overshadowed a strong outing by Chris Tillman. He took a shutout into the seventh and lost it when A.J. Pierzynski hit a two-run homer. Tillman went 6 2/3 innings, allowing two runs on four hits with one walk and seven strikeouts to improve to 9-5 with an ERA of 3.73.
He has now allowed three earned runs or less in 12 consecutive starts, going 4-2 with an ERA of 2.40 and 10 quality starts in that stretch.
Now 2-5 all-time against the Cardinals, the O's send Ubaldo Jimenez (3-8, 4.52 ERA) to the mound against John Lackey (12-7, 3.55 ERA) on Saturday at 4:05 p.m.
By accepting you will be accessing a service provided by a third-party external to https://www.masnsports.com/