Lowther's strong outing and the multiple MVO winners

On an otherwise not-so-great night in Birdland - in a 6-0 loss to Boston with the Orioles held to four hits - the best development of the night for the O's was the pitching of 25-year-old lefty Zac Lowther.

It has been a tough year in some respects for Lowther, who began the 2021 season ranked as the Orioles' No. 11 prospect, per MLBPipeline.com, and No. 19 via Baseball America.

He had a strong resume on the O's farm coming into this season, one that included his leading all O's minor league pitchers in strikeouts in 2018 and 2019.

Then this season, a strained left shoulder meant he spent time on the injured list and in rehab starts. He never got to settle in for any extended period of pitching and development at Triple-A Norfolk. His year includes just 69 total innings through last night, 29 2/3 for the Orioles and 39 1/3 in the minors.

Until Lowther got the win in his start on Sept. 23 with five scoreless innings versus Texas - which was his first big league win - Lowther had been winless for the year. At all levels.

But more than getting a win on his record, it had to be big for him to pitch well versus an American League East team. He took the loss last night but allowed just one earned run in five-plus innings on 73 pitches to the Red Sox. Coming into this outing his ERA this year in four games versus AL East opponents was 16.76. His ERA in two previous starts versus Boston was 15.88.

But Lowther excelled in two starts this month against Texas and Kansas City, allowing just one run and six hits over 11 innings for an ERA of 0.82. But he had given up 10 runs in 5 1/3 innings in two starts this month against the Blue Jays and Red Sox.

Yes, you can see quite a difference between pitching within the AL East and pitching outside of it. And yet for all the importance we put (rightly so) on beating the AL East teams - the Orioles are going to have to do that to complete their rebuild - the O's still play more than half their games outside of the division. So pitching well against Texas and Kansas City counts and still means something.

But for a young Oriole pitcher like Lowther, it just must mean more to have success versus Boston. Or any other club in the AL East. These are the clubs he will see often if he can become a permanent fixture in a future Baltimore rotation.

"Very encouraging," Lowther said. "Just a lot of the stuff that we have been working on finally coming to fruition. The past two weeks have been very dedicated work, and just getting in a rhythm up here. It's been really promising for me to see that my stuff, I don't have to change anything, I just have to have a plan, go attack these guys and do my thing out there."

Encouraging indeed, and if that was his last appearance of the year - and it most likely was - he leaves on a good note.

The MVO: Cedric Mullins was a unanimous winner of the Most Valuable Oriole award. In a year when Ryan Mountcastle and John Means have had such strong seasons and Trey Mancini made his remarkable comeback, no Baltimore media member voted for anyone but Mullins first for this award.

So, we got this one right.

Mullins became the 46th person to be named MVO in club history. The Orioles report that he is the first unanimous winner since vote totals were saved beginning in 1998.

This could be the first of several MVO awards for Mullins over the next several seasons. If he wins two or more he will join this group of 13 that won two or more MVO awards in club history.

7 - Eddie Murray.
4 - Cal Ripken Jr. and Brooks Robinson.
3 - Adam Jones, Rafael Palmeiro, Frank Robinson, Ken Singleton.
2 - Chris Davis, Stu Miller, Jim Palmer, Boog Powell, Brian Roberts and Miguel Tejada.