Homer happy: Orioles bash five homers in 9-1 rout of Rays

To put tonight's game in perspective, the Orioles scored four runs on 13 hits with two homers in the three-game weekend series at Wrigley Field. Tonight, they scored nine runs on 14 hits with five homers. The Orioles bashed Tampa Bay 9-1 and "bash" is the appropriate word as the longball returned to the offense. Twice tonight the Orioles hit back-to-back homers and the second time they hit three in a row. Tonight marks the first time in club history that the Orioles hit back-to-back homers and then later hit three in a row in the same game. Nick Markakis (No. 12) snapped an 0-for-21 stretch with a two-run shot in the third and Steve Pearce (No. 15) followed with a solo homer for a 3-1 lead. In the O's six-run fifth, Delmon Young's three-run homer (No. 6) was followed by solo shots from J.J. Hardy (No. 8) and Chris Davis (No. 22). The last time the O's had hit three homers in a row was when Ryan Flaherty, Hardy and Markakis did it in Game 1 of a doubleheader against Texas on May 10, 2012. And that was to lead off that game. Before tonight, the O's last hit back-to-back homers twice in the same game on May 27, 2008 against the New York Yankees. It was Kevin Millar and Ramon Hernandez and then Luke Scott and Millar. The Orioles' season-high for homers is six on Aug. 8 against St. Louis and the team record for one game is seven, which has been done three times, most recently on Sept. 26, 2012 against Toronto. Keep in mind that the O's hit all those homers against one of baseball's best pitching teams. Tampa Bay entered tonight with a major league-leading 2.28 ERA since the All-Star break and its starting pitchers had an ERA of 1.43 over the last 17 games. Jake Odorizzi gave up 11 hits, eight runs and four homers in four-plus innings tonight. He was 7-5 with a 3.01 ERA over his previous 14 starts. One last note on all the offense: The Orioles scored nine runs with four homers in the six games on the road trip at Cleveland and at Wrigley Field over the past two weekends. Tonight, they matched that run total and topped that homer total. By the way, Chris Tillman pitched pretty well. He gave up just three singles (two were infield hits) and one unearned run over seven innings. Tillman is now 11-5 with an ERA of 3.41. Tillman has recorded 15 consecutive starts allowing three or fewer earned runs. In that span, he is 6-2 with an ERA of 2.15 and has 13 quality starts. The Orioles are now 16-5 in 21 home games since June 30 and tonight, they began a stretch where they will play 21 of the next 27 at Camden Yards. The Orioles improved to 9-4 versus Tampa Bay, 31-19 against the American League East, 14-8 in August and 74-55 for the season. In the second game of this series on Tuesday night, Wei-Yin Chen (13-4, 3.76 ERA) faces right-hander Alex Cobb (9-6, 3.01 ERA).