O's game blog: The search for the quality start continues

The Orioles look to get back over .500 and complete a winning road trip if they get a win tonight at Toronto. They are also looking for their third series win of the season. But once again, fans will be closely watching an O's starting pitcher. The Orioles are still in need of starters getting deeper into games. Six times over the last seven games, the O's starting pitcher has worked fewer than six innings and that has happened 13 times on the season. O's starters have no quality starts and an ERA of 5.21 over the last six games. The lack of starter innings has been taxing on an O's bullpen that has been mostly good, but has given up nine earned runs and 19 hits over its last 9 2/3 innings. On offense, we'll see tonight if Nelson Cruz can extend his RBI streak to seven games. The last Oriole with at least an RBI in seven consecutive games was Mark Reynolds from Sept. 15-22, 2012. Over his past six games, Cruz is 10-for-25 (.400) with four homers, 14 RBIs and four multi-RBI games. He is 4-for-9 in this series with three homers and eight RBIs. Cruz has six homers on the year and is tied for third in the American League in that category. His 21 RBIs are tied for second in the AL and he is second in the AL in slugging at .603. The O's can finish a 4-3 road trip with a win tonight. That would give them their first winning road trip since they went 4-3 July 19-25, 2013 at Texas and Kansas City. Bud Norris (0-2, 4.42 ERA) pitches against Drew Hutchison (1-1, 3.60) tonight at Rogers Centre. Hutchison is 1-0 with an ERA of 1.00 in three career starts against Baltimore. Homer notes: The Toronto Blue Jays added two more homers off the Orioles in the top of the second tonight to lead 3-0. Both homers came off Norris and Toronto has now hit eight homers in this series. Through the last of the fourth tonight, O's pitchers have allowed 20 runs in 21 innings of this series. Coming into tonight, Toronto was averaging six runs per game this year against the Orioles with a team slugging percentage of .487 and an OPS of .838. It's now a 3-1 game after Jonathan Schoop hit a solo homer to left in the fifth, his second homer of the season.