Bradish's gem, Urías' homer carry O's to series-opening win (updated)

HOUSTON – For an Orioles team searching many nights for offense recently, one swing can make a big difference. It did on Thursday night and Kyle Stowers was the hitter then. It did Friday night in the series opener at Houston and Ramón Urías had the huge swing.

The Orioles third baseman broke up a 0-0 tie and ended a night of mostly frustration on offense for his squad when he blasted a two-run homer to left. The sixth-inning blast helped lead the Orioles to 2-0 win over Houston behind a gem from right-hander Kyle Bradish.

Making his 16^th big league start, Bradish had one spectacular night on the mound for the Orioles.

The rookie had a 4.21 ERA in five starts since coming off the injured list. His strong outing tonight came against the team that ranks third in the league in runs, second in homers, third in slugging and OPS and with the second fewest strikeouts at bat.

Bradish spun eight scoreless innings at the Astros, allowing just two hits: a single in the fourth by Kyle Tucker and another in the seventh by Alex Bregman.

“Think he just kept his delivery so consistent throughout," manager Brandon Hyde said. "Was 95, 96. Limited the walks. Had a great slider tonight. Threw his slider a lot. Lot of bad swings on it against a really, really good club. What an impressive performance, eight shutout on the road against the Houston Astros in a rookie year. Pretty special.

“He was going back out for the eighth inning. The decision process was (whether to) send him back out for the ninth inning. We were very short in the 'pen tonight. ... Really needed Bradish to get through that eighth inning, I was going to give him every opportunity to do that, and I was considering sending him out for the ninth as well."

Bradish walked two and fanned six, throwing 96 pitches, 67 for strikes. Only one runner even reached third base against him as Houston batters went 2-for-25.

It was likely his best career start, surpassing the two runs he allowed over seven innings with 11 strikeouts on May 10 at St. Louis. Especially considering the quality of this opponent and importance of the series and road-trip opener.

Bradish is now 2-5 with a 5.63 ERA.

“I went one pitch at a time," Bradish said when asked when he knew he might have a special night. "I was talking with Adley, and around the fourth or fifth inning, everything kind of sharpened up even more than it was, and that is when I was kind of ‘All right, we can get deep in this one.’

“Fastball was really good. Had good life, both sides of the plate, and slider was good early and then it got a lot better as the game went on. I think my fastball was playing up a lot, and that helps the slider, and then was working with the changeup too to get some back-door chase on that one.”

Bradish threw his slider 52 percent of the time and got 13 whiffs on 29 swings against the pitch. His four-seam fastball, which he used 34 percent, averaged 95.3 mph and topped at 96.5, per Statcast.

The game ended amid huge drama, with Dillon Tate facing Trey Mancini with two on and two out in the ninth. Tate struck him out on three pitches to record his third save as Mancini went 0-for-3 against his former club.

“It’s one of those things, it can’t be written up any better than that," said Tate. "I had kind of been thinking about that for a few weeks and didn’t know how it was going to play out. Just funny that I found myself on the mound face-to-face with him. It was pretty crazy.”

The Orioles moved seven games over the .500 mark for the first time since May 22, 2017. 

The Orioles had much frustration on offense early in this game. Against right-hander Lance McCullers Jr., making his third start, they were 0-for-8 with runners in scoring position over the first four innings and left six runners on base.

Cedric Mullins led off the game with a single and quickly moved to second on Adley Rutschman’s grounder, but he was stranded. The Birds put two on with no outs in the second with no runs. Same thing in the third when Mullins walked and stole second before Rutschman walked. But Houston turned a nifty 4-6-3 double play and Ryan Mountcastle grounded out and they had come up empty again. In the fourth they rallied with two outs – Urías singled and Rougned Odor doubled to left – but Jorge Mateo bounced to short to end that rally.

The Orioles finally had something to cheer about on offense when Urías blasted No. 14 in the sixth. The ball carried deep down the left-field line and went over the Crawford boxes onto the train tracks at Minute Maid Park. Urías hit a 1-1 fastball off righty Cristian Javier to score Kyle Stowers, who had singled to right with two outs and none on.

Javier just recently was moved from the rotation to the Houston bullpen as the Astros moved out of what had been a six-man rotation. Tonight he replaced McCullers, who threw five scoreless innings on four hits and kept getting out of those jams.

Urías’ homer left his bat at 105 mph and went 389 feet into the night to break the scoreless tie. Urías had gone 0-for-7 in the Chicago White Sox series and had just one homer his previous 15 games.

The Birds' win comes over a Houston team that is now 81-46 and has the best record in the American League. A team that had won seven in a row at home coming into this series was an AL-best 42-18 at home this year and 27-8 in the last 35 at home. Also, Houston had been 28-11 (.718) against the Orioles since the start of the 2015 season.

The Orioles (66-59) have won five of seven, 15 of 23 and 42 of their last 66 games. They gained ground on at least two of the wild card teams ahead of them as Toronto and Tampa Bay have already lost.