O's game blog: Alex Cobb faces the A's in road trip finale

The Orioles are a loss away from a second straight winless and 0-6 road trip. They lost 2-0 in 12 innings at Oakland last night when Khris Davis hit a two-run homer to end it off Pedro Araujo.

The Orioles are 8-25 overall and have now lost 11 consecutive road games. The team record is 13 in a row on the road in 1988.

The Orioles have been swept in three-game series at Houston, Boston, Detroit and Anaheim. A loss today and they can add Oakland to that list. The Orioles went 3-1 in a road series at Yankee Stadium April 5-8. But they are 0-14 in every other road game this year.

The Orioles offense produced seven hits last night but the club went 0-for-7 with runners in scoring position and Orioles batters struck out 20 times. The most ever by the club in a regular season game was 21 at Washington on Sept. 12, 1962. Over their past 13 games, they are batting .174 (15-for-86) with RISP.

The A's have a chance today to sweep the Orioles in a three-game home series for the first time since May 27-29, 2011. Oakland is 17-16 after Saturday's victory. The A's are 7-1 in their past eight home games and 10-6 at home for the season. They are 12-6 in their past 18 games overall.

Right-hander Alex Cobb (0-3, 9.68 ERA) will make his fifth start for his new team. After beginning the year 0-3 with a 13.11 ERA, Cobb pitched his best game on Tuesday versus the Angels. Over six plus innings he allowed seven hits and two runs on 89 pitches. He got 13 of his 18 outs on groundballs.

"That was a good outing," manager Buck Showalter said after that game. "I'm happy for him because I know he's been tough on himself. That is the guy who was such a thorn for us when he was with Tampa and healthy."

Here was Cobb's take after that game: "I think when my delivery is on point pretty good, you're going to see a lot of groundballs. The next step you're going to start seeing is more swings and misses after that. That is kind of the direction when I know I am kind of right. The groundballs start happening and the swings and misses happen. But it does show that I'm moving in the right direction."

Cobb has allowed a whopping 37 hits over 17 2/3 innings with left-handed batters hitting .512 off him and right-handers batting .338. He has allowed a .407 average when pitching with runners in scoring position.

Right-hander Andrew Triggs (2-1, 5.20 ERA) will make the start for Oakland. The 29-year-old Triggs spent most of the 2015 season in the O's organization and he went 0-2 with a 1.03 ERA for Double-A Bowie and helped the Baysox win the Eastern League championship. But the following March the Orioles tried to take him off the 40-man roster and he was claimed on waivers by Oakland.

In his first three starts this year he went 1-0 with a 2.87 ERA. In his past three he is 1-1 with an ERA of 8.25, allowing 11 runs in 12 innings. In his last start Tuesday at Seattle he gave up six hits and four runs over 4 2/3.