A few notes and quotes as O's get blanked in series opener

They have a depleted roster and had not played in eight days, but when you get pitching like that, you can win a ballgame. Right-hander Pablo López, 24, made a strong season debut as Miami blanked the Orioles 4-0 last night.

If you can strike out Hanser Alberto twice in one game, you are doing something. López did that twice in his five scoreless innings last night, getting Alberto both times with changeups. This is a hitter that was batting .429 at game time and was 9-for-19 his previous four games.

He had struck out just three times in 37 plate appearances for the season before López got him twice. The Orioles went just 3-for-30, but struggling center fielder Austin Hays went 2-for-3 on the night, and 2-for-2 with a pair of singles off López.

It's hard to look anything but flat when a team is getting shut out, and the Orioles looked flat while getting blanked for the first time since Sept. 3 in the second game of a twinbill at Tampa Bay.

O's left-hander John Means looked good, and again had more life on his fastball than he did in 2019. He allowed just one run and took a loss, but averaged 94.4 mph on his fastball.

O's starting pitchers have a 2.37 ERA over the last four games, with four walks to 17 strikeouts in 19 innings. Right-hander Alex Cobb pitches the first game of today's doubleheader and Asher Wojciechowski will pitch the second game.

Meanwhile in Bowie: O's manager Brandon Hyde said he's pleased with everything going on with the group of players at Bowie, the O's alternate site. They don't quite have enough position players there to go nine-against-nine in an intrasquad game. But pitchers are still getting their innings in and the work is ongoing for both vets and prospects alike.

"Well, they have a full schedule every day," Hyde said. "It is different on a day-to-day standpoint. They are not intrasquading right now, I think that might happen. They are taking a lot of live at-bats, like simulated games. But I don't think we have a full 18 players playing against each other. But there are a lot of simulated-type games going on.

"There are guys down there for development reasons and guys down there for, you know, to be major league-ready to be called up at any time. So, little different priority with each player. But everybody is getting great work in. Buck Britton, Gary (Kendall), all the guys down there are doing a fantastic job. They communicate with us, I get the schedule every day. It's going very, very well. Some of the guys here now that have been down there say they were very pleased and complimentary of the staff down there. We are very happy with how that Bowie camp is going."

Marlins return with a win: To say the Marlins have been a team in flux the last week is probably an understatement. The roster that they used to beat the Phillies 11-6 on July 26 was very different from the one they had last night. The Marlins went eight days between games due the COVID-19 outbreak on their club. Some players were bused back to Miami to continue the quarantine that began in Philadelphia. The club acquired new players through trades and free agent signings and added them to the roster for last night's resumption of their schedule.

"I can't express enough how excited our guys are to be out on the field," Marlins general manager Michael Hill said about an hour before game time during a Zoom interview. "In the midst of this we had to endure a tropical storm that blew through Baltimore on top of everything else. But it's a beautiful night in Baltimore and a beautiful night to play baseball.

"We had daily Zoom calls with our players and staff, sometimes multiple times a day to keep them updated as best we could on what was going on. This is a great group of guys and they understand what we are a part of. There is a pandemic that has struck the entire world. We tried to keep them informed so they knew exactly what the plan was."

Depleted and retooled roster or not, Hill was not conceding anything when he spoke before the Marlins win.

"We expect to win games," he said. "You never anticipate needing to replace 18 players. But it's a credit to the work we've done to build depth in our organization to try and absorb what we are doing today.

"A lot of our regulars are still in place," Hill added, citing players such as Corey Dickerson, Jesús Aguilar, Brian Anderson and former Oriole Jonathan Villar.

"From an offensive standpoint, you have an incredibly competitive club that you will put on the field. You have one of your regular starters in Pablo López and another one in Elieser Hernández. Another starter in Jordan Yamamoto, who's made big starts for you in the major leagues already. So every day we show up to the ballpark we show up with a mindset that we will win games.

"No one is making excuses. We know what we're dealing with and that we have a job to do. It starts tonight and we're ready to go," he said.