Brach gets on a roll, plus other Orioles notes

It is not easy to sweep a team in a four-game series, but the Orioles can do that tonight at Camden Yards against Texas. The O's last home four-game sweep against the Rangers came from Aug. 6-9, 2004. The Orioles swept four at Texas from July 8-11, 2010. That was their first four-game sweep at Texas since June of 1976. One reason the Orioles could come back from a 4-0 deficit last night to win 6-4 was another strong night for the bullpen. Brad Brach, Darren O'Day and Zach Britton combined to pitch 3 1/3 scoreless innings on just one hit. Brach got one of the game's biggest outs to end the top of the sixth. He came on for Chris Tillman with the bases loaded with two outs and the O's down 4-1. He got Carlos Pena to ground out to strand the bases full. What was the key to that at-bat against Pena? "Just being real aggressive," Brach said. "Not changing much. Wanted to get ahead, and go right at him and hopefully he's going to put it right at somebody. "You know we're going to score some runs at some point, whether it is the first inning or the ninth inning. Knew we'd make a comeback." They did and that made Brach a winner as he improved to 2-0 with the Orioles. Since his latest recall to the team on June 21, Brach has pitched 7 2/3 scoreless innings over five games, giving up just two hits with one walk and seven strikeouts. "Able to mix my pitches a lot better," Brach said of this five-game stretch. "The last couple times going down they really wanted me to work on mixing offspeed with fastballs. Just basically work on attacking the zone with all three pitches." Brach is part of a bullpen that has been pretty outstanding lately. The O's 'pen gave up nine runs on Sunday. But in the last 11 games, not counting Sunday, they have allowed just two earned runs over the last 38 innings for an ERA of 0.47. "It's been awesome. Every guy is getting the ball and doing what they are supposed to do," Brach said. "Put up a zero and get it to the next guy. We've been doing a good job with that." More notes on the O's and Rangers: * The Orioles have scored 21 runs on 26 hits in this series with three doubles and nine homers. * The Orioles now have six straight multi-homer games after hitting two more last night. They've hit 15 homers in the six games, and the Orioles have hit at least one homer for 12 consecutive games, hitting 27 in that span. * The Orioles have won 10 of their last 11 games against Texas since losing the first two games between the teams last season. * The Rangers have lost four in a row and 13 of their last 16 games. Texas has lost a season high eight straight road games. The Rangers have lost five straight games at Camden Yards. * Adam Jones is batting .524 (11-for-21) during a six-game hitting streak with three doubles, two homers, three runs and five RBIs. Jones is now two home runs shy of Cal Ripken Jr. (85) for fourth on the club's all-time list at Oriole Park at Camden Yards. With three RBIs last night, Jones moved into a tie with Brian Roberts for 13th on the O's all-time RBIs list with 521. * Chris Davis snapped an 0-for-21 with a single in the eighth inning. Over his past 19 games, Davis is 8-for-65 (.123) with three homers and 10 RBIs. Davis has gone 19 games since his last multi-hit game on June 11.