Joey Rickard on the win and some impressive Manny Machado stats

For Orioles rookie outfielder Joey Rickard, the night began with him facing a knuckleball pitcher for the first time ever. It ended with him on second base, where he had a good view of the first walk-off win via a passed ball in Orioles history.

"It was exciting," Rickard said of the Orioles' 4-3 win over Toronto in 10 innings. "We put ourselves in a good spot. These guys behind me, my job is to get them to the dish in that situation and tonight it paid off. Two teams out there with pretty strong lineups and good teams throughout. It's going to be a dogfight every time we play them. We know that and we'll be ready for it."

Rickard-Swings-White-Sidebar.jpgRickard was in the middle of a lot of it last night. He had two infield singles and a double in five at-bats, and a leaping catch at first base robbed him of another hit. This was his fifth career multi-hit game and first three-hit game of his brief major league career. He's now batting .327.

"A game like this, it's a battle. We knew good things eventually would come around for us. Pitching staff, our bullpen did a good job tonight of letting our offense fight and scrape one across for them late," he said.

Rickard leads all major league rookies with 18 hits. He has hit safely in 12 of his 13 games and has reached base in each of his first 13 career MLB contests. In 11 games in the leadoff spot, Rickard is batting .292 (14-for-48) with four runs scored.

He also recorded his first career outfield assist. He threw Ryan Goins out at the plate to end the top of the sixth when Josh Thole's flare to left hit his glove and popped out on his attempt at a diving catch.

"I'd like to catch that ball there and make it a little easier," Rickard said. "But I saw the guy in front of me and I knew he was going to go. Just tried to get the ball and Caleb (Joseph) made a good play at the end for me."

Since the beginning of the 2015 season, the Orioles lead the majors with 50 outfield assists. They have nailed runners at the plate in each game of this series.

Manny Machado went 2-for-3 with an RBI double in the win. He extended his hitting streak to 13 games (.407/.467/.796), the second-longest hitting streak of his career behind only a 14-game stretch from June 2-16, 2013. Machado now owns the longest active hitting streak in the majors. Since 2013, Machado ranks sixth among major league third basemen (fourth among AL third basemen) in extra-base hits with 168 in that span.

Machado's name is all over the AL league leaders right now. He currently ranks first in the AL in batting average (.407), hits (22), on-base percentage (.467), slugging (.796) and total bases (43). He is tied for the league lead with 11 extra-base hits.

Machado is batting a stunning .488 (20-for-41) when batting against right-handed pitching with an OBP of .533, a slugging percentage of .976 and an OPS of 1.509 with five doubles and five homers off right-handers.

The good news for him is that the Blue Jays start right-hander Marco Estrada tonight in the series finale at Camden Yards.

The Orioles had hit a homer in every game this year save for opening day, until last night. They are 2-0 this year when they don't hit a homer. They had hit 10 homers in the previous three games.




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