O's game blog: Birds face 2021 NL Cy Young winner in series finale

It is a marquee pitching matchup to wrap up the Brewers-Orioles series tonight as O’s lefty John Means (0-0, 2.25 ERA) faces Milwaukee right-hander Corbin Burnes (0-0, 5.40 ERA) at Camden Yards. Tonight’s winner takes the series after Baltimore’s 2-0 win Monday and Milwaukee’s 5-4 victory last night.

Burnes won the 2021 National League Cy Young Award in a close vote over the Phillies' Zach Wheeler and Max Scherzer, who was with the Nationals and Dodgers last year. In the final vote tally, Burnes came up with 151 points to 141 for Wheeler and 113 for Scherzer. The 10-point margin of victory was the closest in the NL and tied for the fourth-closest overall since the ballot expanded from three to five pitchers in 2010. The closest in the American League was in 2012, when the Rays’ David Price outpointed the Tigers’ Justin Verlander 153-149.

Some Orioles fans will certainly remember that the closest election in the AL before that occurred in 1969 with the only tie in Cy Young Award balloting, between the O’s Mike Cuellar and the Tigers’ Denny McLain, the last year when voters could select only one pitcher.

Burnes is the first Brewers pitcher to win the Cy Young Award in the NL. The only other Cy Young Award winners for the Brewers, Rollie Fingers in 1981 and Pete Vuckovich in 1982, did so in the AL. The Brewers moved to the NL in 1998.

Burnes went 11-5 with an ERA of 2.43, best in the NL, in winning the award. Over 167 innings, he recorded a WHIP of 0.94, allowed just 6.6 hits per nine and only seven homers for a homer rate of 0.4. In 2021, he recorded 58 strikeouts before issuing his first walk on May 13. The Brewers went 19-9 in his starts.

But Burnes and the Brewers lost on the road to the Cubs in his first start in the season opener last Thursday. He allowed four hits and three runs over five innings on 83 pitches.

Burnes’ most-used pitch, via last year’s stats, is his cutter at 52 percent with an average velocity of 95.2 mph. He only throws his fastball 11 percent of the time at 96.9 mph. In that start versus the Cubs, he used his cutter nearly 57 percent of the time and his true fastball just five percent of the time.

The Orioles had another rough night with runners in scoring position Tuesday, going 1-for-13 – including 0-for-6 over the last two innings – in the loss. They are 4-for-47 with RISP for the year.

Cedric Mullins, who has driven in all six runs they have scored in this series, blasted his first career grand slam in the Baltimore second. Mullins is the O’s first center fielder to hit a grand slam since Adam Jones on July 28, 2008 against the Yankees and the first to do so at home since Brady Anderson on Aug. 26, 1997 against the Royals. He tied his career high with four RBIs and produced his 17th multi-extra-base hit game when he added a double in the ninth inning.

The Orioles (1-4) have played four games decided by two runs or less thus far, going 1-3, and have gone 0-2 in the pair of games decided by just one run. The Brewers (2-3) lost its first two games to the Cubs, but has won two of the last three and will try to win the series here tonight.

Means got the start for the Orioles in a no-decision on opening day against Tampa Bay. Over four innings, he gave up six hits and one run with one walk and five strikeouts. He threw 84 pitches, 56 for strikes. Rays hitters whiffed 11 times on 48 swings against Means, including on six of his 18 changeups they offered at.

After this game, the O’s will take Thursday off before the Yankees come to Baltimore for a weekend series beginning Friday night.