O's use longball and a clutch relief outing to complete sweep of the White Sox

Some nights the Orioles get a high percentage of their runs from home runs. Some nights they get all their runs from home runs. It often seems to work out well for them. The O's bashed three more homers, producing all their runs tonight in a 4-3 win over the Chicago White Sox as they swept the three-game series at U.S. Cellular Field. The Orioles improved to 73-52 to go a season-high 21 games over the .500 mark. The Orioles completed their third sweep of the season of three or more games. It is their first sweep of the White Sox in Chicago since taking all four games on July 6-9, 1995. There was some late drama in this game. The O's took a 4-3 lead to the last of the eighth before Wei-Yin Chen was replaced by Darren O'Day after Chicago put two on with one out on a pair of singles. With the potential tying run at second, O'Day struck out Jose Abreu, who has 32 homers, and Avisail Garcia, who drove in three runs tonight. It was a clutch relief job by O'Day, who has allowed one earned run over his last 27 innings. American League hitters are now batting just .085 (4-for-47) against O'Day with runners in scoring position. Zach Britton pitched the ninth for his 27th save. Chicago used the longball to get the early lead, their first lead of the series. Garcia's first-inning, two-run homer made it 2-0. The Orioles struck for the lead within the span of a few pitches in the fourth. Steve Pearce hit a leadoff homer, his 13th. After an Adam Jones single, Nelson Cruz crushed a two-run shot to left for a 3-2 lead. Cruz tied his career-high, set in 2009, with his 33rd home run. Jones added a homer leading off the sixth for a 4-2 lead. Jones went 3-for-4, hitting his 24th homer and 77th RBI. Chicago pulled within 4-3 in the bottom of the inning. The Orioles lead the majors with 48 multi-homer games, and are 38-10 in those games. They are now 18-0 when they hit three or more in a game. This was the Orioles' ninth multi-homer game in their last 15 games. They have homered 30 times in that stretch and are now 9-0 in that span when hitting two or more. Chen settled down nicely after the early homer. He retired 10 in a row through the fourth and went 7 1/3, allowing six hits and three runs on 86 pitches. He improves to 13-4 with an ERA of 3.76. Over his last five starts, Chen is 3-1 with an ERA of 2.34, and he has gone seven innings or more four times. The Orioles are 4-2 on this road trip and 39-26 on the season in road games. They have won 18 of 25 games and will take Thursday off before beginning a series Friday afternoon at Wrigley Field against the Cubs.