More with Ariel Miranda (O's lose 9-4, swept four straight at Seattle)

SEATTLE - Cuban-born left-hander Ariel Miranda is in the major leagues for the first time. The Orioles signed the 27-year-old Miranda to a minor league contract in May of 2015 after he pitched for seven seasons in Cuba's Serie Nacional.

Today his contract was purchased from Triple-A Norfolk and he was added to the Orioles roster as right-hander Tyler Wilson was optioned to Triple-A. Pitcher Brian Duensing was moved to the 60-day disabled list to make 40-man roster room for Miranda. Miranda is available today out of the Orioles bullpen.

Miranda went 3-7 with a 4.06 ERA in 15 starts for the Tides, but it is his last three that really stand out. He has thrown 19 scoreless innings in those three games, allowing just seven hits with four walks to 18 strikeouts.

"The thing that helped me was getting ahead in the count," Miranda said. "Plus locating my second and third pitches really helped me to get better," Miranda said through O's coach Einar Diaz, who served as his translater today. "I had to make some adjustments. The Cuban League was different and those adjustments really helped me."

Seth Smith again: As for the game, for the fourth contest in a row, Seth Smith has homered against Orioles pitching in this series. This one was a grand slam as Seattle led 4-0 in the third.

Smith hit an 0-2 pitch fastball from Ubaldo Jimenez over the wall in right-center. A walk, bloop single and bunt single preceeded the slam, the first of Smith's career. In this series, Smith is 8-for-15 with four homers and 11 RBIs.

The Orioles got three runs back in the top of the fourth when Mark Trumbo blasted a solo homer into the second deck in left field. It was his 24th and made it 4-1 Seattle. J.J. Hardy drove in two with a double to make it a 4-3 game. It scored Jonathan Schoop and Pedro Alvarez.

More Seattle runs again: The Mariners scored twice in the fourth on a walk, single, double and balk by Jimenez that scored a run. They lead 6-3 in the fifth and have scored 28 runs in this series.

Miranda debuts: Miranda came on to pitch with a man on second and one out in the fifth and retired his first two major league batters faced. He got Kyle Seager to groundout and struck out Adam Lind. JImenez allowed six runs and six hits over 4 1/3 innings.

O's starters in this series: 18 innings, 29 hits, 21 runs, seven homers allowed, 10.50 ERA.

O's down two: Trumbo's second RBI of the game, on a single in the seventh, cut Seattle's lead to 6-4. But Edwin Diaz fanned Schoop with runners on second and third and two outs to end that inning. The Orioles are 2-for-12 today through the seventh with runners in scoring position.

Winless in Seattle: For the first time since June 22-25, 2000, Seattle has swept the Orioles in a home four-game series. The final today was 9-4 and the Mariners outscored the Orioles 31-15 in this series.

Both Boston and Toronto won today to gain ground on the Orioles, who are 47-34 exactly 81 games into the 162-game season. Boston is three games behind and Toronto is 3 ½ back of Baltimore in the AL East.

The Orioles went 2-0 in San Diego and 0-4 in Seattle and now it's on to Los Angeles to face the Dodgers for three games starting Monday night.

Check back later for some postgame quotes and a wrapup report from Seattle.