A resilient victory, as O's come from five runs down to win at Boston

During my postgame show on WBAL Radio last night, a caller said the Orioles win showed they are resilient and can overcome adversity. Well, they indeed did do that in a 7-5 win over the Boston Red Sox.

They are now 7-4 overall, 3-2 on this road trip and won another series, and can sweep it tonight behind Grayson Rodriguez (2-0, 2.19 ERA) at Fenway Park.

Jordan Westburg has hit two homers this year - one was a walk-off at Camden Yards and last night it was a go-ahead homer in the top of the seventh. With his club down 5-4 and two men on, he blasted a two-out shot out to the left of center. It was a ball he hit 111.2 mph and drove it 432 feet. It turned a one-run deficit into a 7-5 lead which the Orioles would hold.

Westburg said he was just trying to keep the line moving when he got into one. 

“I just viewed all those situations as ways of our guys passing the bat back to the next guy, trying to string together innings, string together some runs, get back in the game,” he said. “It got up to me and I was kind of doing the same thing. I wasn’t trying to do too much. I was just trying to get the bat to the next guy in the lineup. And it just so happened that it went out."

The Orioles bullpen made it stand up as Mike Baumann, Keegan Akin and Craig Kimbrel combined to throw four scoreless with nine strikeouts. A couple of nice catches in left in the eighth by Colton Cowser aided their cause.

The Orioles already have five comeback wins. 

Now you can trail briefly in the first inning and win, and you get credit for a comeback win. This though, was a real comeback. Down 5-0 after five innings.

This is where that adversity comes in. They were down by five in the middle of the game and won. They overcome leaving six runners on base in the fourth and fifth innings. They overcome a couple of blown calls by the plate umpire that essentially cost them three runs. 

The Boston pitching staff began this series with the best team ERA in the majors.

Boston opened play Tuesday night leading MLB with a 1.49 ERA, the club’s lowest mark through 10 games in the Live-Ball Era (since 1920). The Red Sox were just the 11th team in the Live-Ball Era to post an ERA below 1.50 through their first 10 games, and the first since the 2005 Florida Marlins.

But the Orioles have scored 14 runs in two games, going 11-for-29 with runners in scoring position. In the previous seven games coming into this series, the Orioles had scored 23 total runs.

Last night they passed Boston to move into second place and are now two games behind the New York Yankees (10-3) who lost to Miami.

The game marked the MLB debut of Jackson Holliday at age 20. The kid got here fast, after just 147 Triple-A plate appearances. It took Gunnar Henderson 295 at that level to make it and Adley Rutschman 238. This was exceedingly fast.

At 20 years, 128 days, Holliday is the first high school draft pick from the 2022 MLB Draft class to make it. He is the youngest Orioles position player to debut since Manny Machado (20 years, 34 days) on Aug. 9, 2012 vs. Kansas City.

He went 0-for-4 but per MLB.com, he is the fourth-youngest Oriole with an RBI in his debut, behind Brooks Robinson (18 years, 122 days) in 1955, Andy Etchebarren (19 years, 98 days) in 1962 and Ron Hansen (20 years, 10 days) in 1958.

The kid handled himself so well, pre and post-game and the hits will soon be ringing off his bat. It was touching for this long-time Oriole fan to see the class between the Holliday and Ripken families as Jackson took uniform No. 7, once worn by the great Cal Ripken Sr.

The man that defined and lived the Oriole Way was no doubt looking down with pride watching an Oriole that became the No. 1 prospect in baseball wear his old number.

“Super exciting,” Westburg said of Holliday's first game. “Our lockers are right next to each other – me, Gunnar, Adley, Cowser and Jackson. There’s not a more excited stretch of guys in the clubhouse like right now. We have each other on the same club again. We’re all smiles today. We’re just trying to keep him level, but he’s so mature that he handled it really well."

The O's bullpen now has an ERA of 1.78 for the year to rank fourth-best in MLB. In this series they have thrown six scoreless. Since allowing four earned runs in the first two games, the O's 'pen in the last nine games has an ERA of 0.92 and has fanned 39 in 29 1/3 innings.

Kimbrel has allowed one hit and one run over four innings and has two saves on the year and 419 for his career. He has a 2.25 ERA and 0.25 WHIP with no walks, seven strikeouts and an .083 batting average against.

Cowser is now 8-for-19 on the year, batting .421 with an OPS of 1.060 and seven RBIs.