Showalter speaks after a 4-3 10-inning win

Few moments in sports rival the walk-off passed ball for pure excitement.

It never happened for the Orioles before tonight.

They were in a celebratory mood after Caleb Joseph raced home with two outs in the bottom of the 10th inning to give them a 4-3 win over the Blue Jays before 15,404 at Camden Yards.

With Adam Jones at the plate, a pitch from Rule 5 pick Joe Biagini scooted past catcher Josh Thole, who earlier had handled knuckleballer R.A. Dickey without incident.

According to STATS, it's the first walk-off passed ball in club history.

Joseph doubled with two outs, Joey Rickard reached on his third hit - and second that didn't leave the infield - and Manny Machado walked. Nice way to build a rally.

"Joey's had quite a few of those," said manager Buck Showalter, who's club also had a walk-off win on Matt Wieters' single on opening day. "He puts a lot of pressure on infielders. I couldn't run for Caleb there. I was hoping to get him to third. There were a lot of parts to that, a lot of parts to that. Manny stayed patient there. There's a lot of things we're doing better in those situations, passing the baton there. It's obvious they're trying to get him out of the strike zone."

Showalter didn't consider the 10th inning an example of how to win while playing small ball and he's not overly concerned with showing the world that the Orioles need to do it.

"Not really," he said. "It's important that we pitch consistently well. Score runs. We had a double. Was that 'little' or whatever you all call it? Little, small, wee. I consider that pretty big. And an infield hit off a pretty good pitch by them. He got jammed and just hit it in the right place. A walk to Manny and then a wild pitch/passed ball.

"I don't make light of it. I understand what you all are talking about. But scoring runs is scoring runs. It's always important to have different ways to do it."

Machado had an RBI double, single and two walks to leave his average at .407 with a 1.263 OPS. Only 13 games, but a big enough sample size for Showalter.

"It's really a big sample if you think about last year, too," Showalter said. "Manny's gotten better, and what I've liked is he's stayed within himself for the most part and has let the game come to him instead of pushing it because as your reputation gets more, they're going to see how many times they can get you out of the strike zone. And passing the baton is going to be important as we go forward, when we get certain guys hot and then that good zone that we have somebody behind them that picks them up if they'll take that walk."

The Blue Jays pushed across the tying run against Brad Brach in the seventh after working starter Ubaldo Jimenez for 110 pitches in five innings. Jimenez allowed two runs and five hits, walked four and struck out six. Josh Donaldson belted a solo home run leading off the fifth.

Brach hadn't allowed a run this season in 8 1/3 innings before coming back out for the seventh. He needed Rickard's perfect throw home to avoid surrendering the tying run in the sixth, Ryan Goins ruled out at the plate after Thole's single. Rickard attempted a diving catch, got back to his feet and fired a strike to Joseph for his first major league assist.

Michael Saunders led off the seventh with a double, the sixth Toronto batter to reach base to start an inning. He got to third with one out and stayed there as Jones made a diving catch in right-center to rob Jose Bautista. Saunders had a brain camp and wasn't standing on the bag as Jones belly-flopped, but Edwin Encarnacion rescued him with a double to left.

The first four Orioles reached against Dickey, but the knuckleballer retired 15 of the next 18, starting with Mark Trumbo, whose double-play grounder scored the third run of the inning.

"It's hard," Showalter said. "He gets a feel for the knuckleball. He was just missing, a lot of borderline pitches that went our way the first inning. You don't know where the opportunity is going to be there. He's such a unique pitcher. It's not one of those things if he can't get his breaking ball over, his stuff is not as good. You know he's going to find it. And it'd be easy to say we should have added on more runs.

"It's hard. This guy is good. And coming out of the bullpen, it's such a completely different look for the next group coming in, it takes a while it adjust your tempo back up again at the plate."

The defense managed to make some big plays, including two by Jonathan Schoop, despite a sluggish pace and pitch counts that inflated like hot air balloons.

"That's hard on both sides," Showalter said. "It kind of worked a little bit against them. They had, what, nine or 10 left on base? It was frustrating because Ubaldo had pretty good stuff and was 0-2 on a lot of hitters and let them get back in the count. And you end up getting hurt with that.

"Two runs, five innings, there was stuff there to pitch a lot deeper in that game, though. That was frustrating for him. We really stretched the chain of trying to get to the last inning with a lead.

"We got some big innings pitched. Mike (Givens), Darren (O'Day) and Zach (Britton). Brad (Brach) had four days off and Darren had four days off. I was going to try to extend Brad, he didn't quite get there."

Showalter indicated that he won't need a fresh arm for the bullpen on Thursday.

"As long as (Chris) Tillman goes seven, eight or nine innings," he said, grinning. "I've got two guys I won't use tomorrow. A lot depends on what we do with (Vance) Worley as we go forward."

Down on the farm, Kevin Gausman allowed three runs and four hits in 5 2/3 innings with Triple-A Norfolk. He walked two, struck out nine and threw a wild pitch. He threw 91 pitches, 63 for strikes.