After first playoff series win ever, Bowie Baysox will play for Eastern League title

For the first time in the 23-year history of the franchise, the Double-A Bowie Baysox won a playoff series. Now, for another first, Bowie will play against Reading for the Eastern League championship starting Tuesday night.

Needing one win to take its series with Altoona three wins to one, Bowie got it last night with a 3-0 shutout. Right-hander David Hess pitched a gem, allowing just one hit over seven innings. Andrew Triggs got the last five outs to record a save as Bowie pitched a combined three-hitter.

The Eastern League championship series begins Tuesday night at Reading, which will host the first two games. Bowie will host Game 3 on Thursday, with Game 4 on Friday if necessary and Game 5 on Saturday if the series goes the distance.

Bowie bashed three solo homers last night with Mike Yastrzemski and Quincy Latimore connecting in the first inning and Garabez Rosa in the second. The Baysox outscored Altoona 21-3 in the final three games. Latimore went 8-for-17 with three homers and eight RBIs in the series. Yastrzemski went 7-for-14 with two homers and five RBIs.

Latimore is a 26-year-old Double-A veteran who the Orioles signed as a minor league free agent in November. He tied for the league lead with 20 homers and was fifth with 64 RBIs.

He said he really has enjoyed his first season in the Orioles organization.

"It's been a lot of fun," Latimore said. "I've had a lot of opportunity to play. It didn't start so hot. Then me and Keith Bodie, the hitting coach, started working each day about an hour before everyone else. We just started working on a routine and what I do well. Hunting the pitch I want and taking a good swing and I've been pretty consistent since June. I thank Keith every day for his help. I could have gone south and tanked and never had the season I've had. The work paid off."

Before the playoffs started, Bowie manager Gary Kendall talked about his club winning the division title and overcoming the usual large number of roster moves on the farm.

"We had quite a transformation from what we started with to what we finished with," Kendall said. "We had close to 70 transactions, but our guys persevered. I think we've been in first place since late June in a pretty good division. We had to answer the call, and I'm real proud of what our guys and staff have done. It's been a very, very enjoyable year.

"We've had guys that have come up to us from our system and guys that helped this year we got from other organizations due to good scouting from our guys and our development guys."

By the way, I was told that Orioles pitcher Mychal Givens was at Prince George's Stadium last night after the O's game to cheer on the players he played with for much of this season. Givens went 4-2 with 15 saves and a 1.73 ERA for the Baysox this year.

When I was in Bowie on Friday, I could tell in interviewing Trey Mancini and Yastrzemski that the Baysox are driven to try and win the championship. It was pretty much the same feeling I got around Manny Machado and Jonathan Schoop at Single-A Frederick during the 2011 Carolina League playoffs. Machado and Schoop led the Keys to the league championship, the last title won by an O's affiliate.

Now, the Baysox fans and players finally get to celebrate a playoff series win, and maybe a league championship is still to come.

Meanwhile the O's Triple-A Norfolk club lost 6-2 at Columbus last night and is 2-1 down in the International League playoff series. Norfolk faces elimination today and needs two straight wins to advance.

Norfolk has scored just 10 runs in this series, batting .186 (5-for-27) with runners in scoring position. In Game 4 tonight at Columbus, left-hander Chris Jones pitches for the Tides against right-hander Jarrett Grube.

As for the Birds: After scoring 14 runs to win Friday's game, the O's gave up as many last night in a 14-6 loss to Kansas City. The Orioles took a 4-1 lead to the sixth inning but then allowed five runs in both the sixth and seventh innings. Kansas City's Mike Moustakas went 3-for-5 with two homers and a club record nine RBIs. He hit a grand slam and a three-run homer.

On Friday night, the Orioles scored 10 runs in one inning (hitting two grand slams in the eighth inning), and last night we saw one player with a nine-RBI game.

More notes on the Orioles:
* O's starting pitchers have just one quality start in the last 15 games. Over the past 41 games, O's starters have pitched to an ERA of 5.87 with only 14 quality starts.

* Nolan Reimold has homered in both games of this series. Over his last six games, he is 7-for-21 with three homers, five walks, eight runs and seven RBIs. This is the fifth time in his career that he has homered in consecutive games. The most recent was April 18 and April 20, 2013.

* The Orioles bullpen has allowed 14 runs in 7 2/3 innings in the series.

* The O's offense has produced 20 runs on 23 hits against Kansas City pitching the last two nights, with four doubles and six home runs.

* The Orioles have produced multi-homer games in seven of their past nine contests, hitting 20 homers in that span.