O's game blog: The road trip begins in Buffalo against the Blue Jays

The Orioles begin a three-city, 10-game road trip tonight in Buffalo as they play the first of a four-game series against the Toronto Blue Jays. The teams met over the weekend in Baltimore with the Orioles winning 7-1 Friday but then losing 10-7 and 7-4 to complete the series.

The Orioles (23-51) have lost five in a row and 13 of the last 14 games. Manager Brandon Hyde said they have to look at every game and the start of every new series as a chance to reset and reboot and believe that is the night they will turn this around.

"For sure," Hyde said. "We just had our hitters advance meeting, we talk about that. Players talk about it. Let's turn the page. Yesterday was awful. Let's turn the page and try and play better baseball tonight.

"We just haven't played very good baseball lately. It's been a while since we put together a string of good, well-played games together. Something we've been talking a lot about. We just need to start playing better baseball, give ourselves more of a chance to start winning games."

The Orioles are out to snap a 19-game road losing streak tonight. It is the longest road losing streak in O's franchise history surpassing a pair of 13-game streaks from April 13 to May 17, 2018 and April 8-28, 1988. The 19 straight road losses are the longest streak in the American League this season and the second-longest road losing streak in the majors, trailing a 23-game winless drought by the Arizona Diamondbacks (May 4 - current).

Right-hander Dean Kremer (0-6, 6.20 ERA) will make his 12th start of this year and the 16th of his career, looking for his second win. He won his major league debut on Sept. 6, 2020 against the New York Yankees, but has been winless since that game. The team has gone 4-11 in his big league starts.

Kremer threw well on Saturday versus Toronto, allowing three hits and two runs over six innings and 90 pitches. In the first inning that day he allowed solo homers to Marcus Semien and Vladimir Guerrero Jr. But then he settled down and Toronto went 0-for-14 against him from the second through the sixth inning. It was his second quality start of the year.

Lefty batters are hitting .259 against him with an OPS of .843 and right-handers are batting .294/.895. Kremer is 0-3 with a 5.09 ERA in five road starts.

Since leaving Baltimore, Toronto (37-35) swept two games versus Miami and the Blue Jays have now won four in a row following a five-game losing streak. They are 13-16 at home and 10-10 in June. The Blue Jays are in fourth in the AL East, six games behind division-leading Boston.

The Blue Jays have a rather strong 13-2 interleague record. The 13 wins tie their team record for IL wins in a season (13-7 in 2014, 2016, 2018). Toronto is 24-33 in games versus AL teams.

Toronto's Vladimir Guerrero Jr. went 1-for-3 with a walk and scored the game-winning run last night. He has now reached base safely a majors-leading 136 times this season. The 22-year-old is currently tied with Shohei Ohtani for the major league lead in home runs (23) and tied with Rafael Devers in RBIs (60) while leading the bigs in OBP (.442), slugging (.664), OPS (1.106) and total bases (172). He is currently second in average (.340), fourth in hits (88), tied for sixth in extra-base hits (37), and ninth in walks (44). His 4.2 WAR (per FanGraphs.com) is the highest among all major league batters, with Ronald Acuña Jr. second at 3.6.

Lefty Anthony Kay (0-2, 6.43 ERA) gets the start for Toronto. His last outing was in relief on Saturday at Camden Yards when he gave up two runs over 3 1/3 innings.

Baltimore's Ryan Mountcastle has hit safely in 14 of 19 games this month, with eight multi-hit efforts. He leads AL rookies in hits (26), home runs (7), RBIs (19), extra-base hits (10), and OPS (1.017) this month. His 40 RBIs this season are the second-most on the O's and he's batting .319/.344/.612 with 28 RBIs his last 31 games since May 15.

The Orioles as a team are batting .275/.328/.453 against left-handed pitching, the second-highest batting average and slugging percentage and the fourth-highest OPS (.781) against left-handers in the majors. Trey Mancini is batting .299 with eight home runs and 29 RBIs against lefthanders, and his 29 RBIs against lefties lead the majors.