Bats slowed in loss as road trip begins (more on Valdez's role)

As the Orioles began a three-game series and 10-game road trip on Friday night, their offense had another slow night. After being held to one run and two hits on Thursday afternoon, they got two runs on four hits last night and lost 4-2 to Washington.

The Orioles continue to be, as Trey Mancini put it a few days ago, "out of synch."

When they get some decent pitching, they don't back that up with some runs, like last night. And when they do get some offense, as they did recently in three straight games, they give up a big number to lose.

Going back to last Sunday, the Orioles scored 10 runs to beat the Yankees 10-6. Then six runs on Tuesday was not enough in a 13-6 loss to Tampa Bay. Seven runs the next night was not enough. Even with John Means on the mound, they lost 9-7 to the Rays.

Now back-to-back games scoring a total of three runs on six hits. After 23 runs the previous three games. But with the loss Friday they fall to 17-27 and have lost four in a row, eight of nine and 11 of the last 13 games.

The Orioles are 2-11 since Means' no-hitter at Seattle. Yikes.

The Orioles have scored two runs or fewer 17 times this year, and they are 0-17 in those games.

The hope is the return of right fielder Anthony Santander should be boost for a sagging offense. He did go 1-for-4 last night, driving a single to center in the second inning that left the bat at 100 mph.

Mancini extended his hitting streak to eight games with doubles in the sixth and ninth innings. Mancini is batting .464 (13-for-28) during his streak, with six doubles, three home runs, 10 RBIs, six walks, and seven runs scored. He's now batting .281/.349/.533/.882 with 12 doubles, 10 homers and 39 RBIs.

The O's turn to Baltimorean Bruce Zimmermann (2-3, 4.79 ERA) in this afternoon's game at Nationals Park. He allowed two hits and one run over 5 2/3 innings on Sunday in relief versus the Yankees. Lefty Jon Lester (0-3, 3.80 ERA) starts for Washington.

How to use Valdez?: The Orioles began last night with nine saves, more than just one other American League team. That was Cleveland, with just seven saves.

Right-hander César Valdez has pitched to a 2.01 ERA with 1.053 WHIP in 25 games since joining the Orioles late last season. But sometimes they don't get to him in the ninth inning with a lead. So in one respect, are the O's missing out on more opportunities to get Valdez on the mound if they hold him off for only the ninth inning?

Going through this last stretch of 13 games, it has been hard to get a lead to the ninth to even use Valdez.

I asked manager Brandon Hyde about that yesterday, and he said he may look for chances to get Valdez in games sooner moving forward.

"There have been some moments this season so far, especially in the Yankees series, with their heavy right-handed lineup, there has been consideration from me to putting Valdez in there in the seventh or the eighth inning," said Hyde.

"We just don't have the guy behind him right now. I think Paul Fry, for me, has worked his way into that. I could possibly do that with him, but there's not a safety net there, so I've been trying to get the ball to him in some capacity just because we don't have much experience in the ninth inning besides that. It's been challenging, there's no doubt about that. And I think we're just going to continue to kind of play with it a little bit.

"When you have a bullpen full of inexperienced guys and guys that haven't really pitched in a ton of big spots in their career, and now we're kind of scuffling a little bit, possibly from starters going short, possibly just because it's now the second month and teams have seen them or bullpens kind of go through the ebbs and flow of a season, also, where guys can get hot for a while, then there are a couple bad outings and hopefully you get them hot again. It hasn't been easy. I just don't have a ton of guys down there with much experience.

"So, you know, Valdez has shown that he can get some outs in the ninth inning and in the games that we've won, the majority of the time he's been on the field for it at the end of the game. But yeah, that could change going forward also."

Grayson the great: The O's top pitching prospect, right-hander Grayson Rodriguez, was dealing again last night. He got the win as high Single-A Aberdeen beat Wilmington 5-2.

Rodriguez went six innings, allowing one hit and one run on a solo homer. He did not walk a batter and struck out eight to improve to 2-0 with a 1.47 ERA in four starts.

For the season, he has thrown 18 1/3 innings, allowing nine hits and three runs with four walks to 31 strikeouts. That is a strikeout rate of 15.22 per nine innings. His opponent batting average is .141 and his WHIP is 0.71.