Sometimes the unofficial save comes before the ninth inning

When the Orioles beat the Tampa Bay Rays Wednesday night 2-1 in a series-deciding game, righty reliever Yennier Cano was remarkable again. He got a drama-free save, getting three quick outs in the ninth on just eight pitches. He sure earned a save.

But sometimes an unofficial save can come before the ninth inning, and for me, Wednesday was one of those nights.

Lefty reliever Danny Coulombe, who had given up some runs in the Kansas City and Atlanta series, came on in the top of the eighth, just after Tampa Bay had cut a 2-0 deficit to 2-1. Coulombe got two huge, huge outs to keep the O’s ahead and set up Cano to do his thing in the ninth.

Coulombe, acquired by the club in late March from Minnesota for cash considerations, has done a real nice job this year for the Orioles. And he's doing that throwing his fastball, which averages only 91.3 mph, just 13 percent of the time.

He told me earlier this year how he is very confident in his ability to “spin” the ball, meaning that he can throw quality breaking pitches. And he sure can. Per Statcast, he uses his slider 54 percent of the time and his sweeper 17 percent. That's a very high percentage of breaking balls for Coulombe, who is 1-1 with a 2.84 ERA in 16 games over 12 2/3 innings. He has walked three and fanned 18 with a 1.03 WHIP to go with a .208 batting average against and .575 OPS.

His breaking pitches work better against lefty batters, but he came in with a man on first and one out Wednesday, and first up was right-handed batting pinch-hitter Randy Arozarena, who sports a .964 OPS this year, and in his career versus the Orioles has hit 15 homers with 38 RBIs in 40 games for an OPS of 1.112. Did I mention Arozarena is showing a .370 average and 1.296 OPS this season against left-handed pitching?

So yeah, that was a tough, tough out to try and get with the game on the line.

But Coulombe fanned Arozarena on three pitches, which were labeled as a slider, sweeper and knuckle curve by the game tracker. Then, during the at-bat against Harold Ramírez, who has a .945 OPS this year, Wander Franco stole second base. This season, Ramírez is batting .435 versus lefty pitching with an OPS of 1.177. But Coulombe fanned him too, also swinging at what was labeled a knuckle curveball.

“I have always been a (good) spin guy, always been able to spin the ball my whole career,” Coulombe told me last month. “The best pitch analytically in the game is a left-on-left slider. So, I have a slider, curveball, sweeper and cutter. Lot of different types of spin to try and keep the hitters off balance. Against righties I added a changeup last year and that has helped to try and neutralize them.”

And this year he is holding lefty batters to a .125 average and .347 OPS, but right-handers have hit .292/.804 against him – much better. But when the game was on the line against the Rays and he faced two right-handed hitters with big numbers against lefty pitching, he stared down those stats and saved the lead for the Orioles. He stuck out two good hitters and preserved that lead for the ninth where Cano could officially earn a save.

Coulombe, even with his below-average velocity fastball, has been hard to square up this year. How hard? His hard-hit rate by opponents of 16.7 percent is second-best on this team among pitchers with 10 innings or more, behind only Cano at 8.8. By comparison, Tyler Wells, having a strong season in the rotation, has a hard-hit rate of 34.2, and Dean Kremer, even after two great starts in the last week, is at 38.6. They throw much harder than the lefty with plenty of quality pitches, but he is just tough to square up so far this year.

Coulombe ranks at the top of the scale among some other Statcast stats, too. He's in the 100^th percentile in exit velocity against at an average of 81.2 mph, with the next closest on the team being Cano at 85.3. Coulombe ranks in the top seven percent in strikeout percentage, top nine percent in chase rate and top 10 percent in expected slugging.

These numbers jump off the page right now.

“When I’m going well, I’m attacking the zone,” Coulombe said. “Not getting in bad counts. Pitching is count leverage – that’s the name of the game. When I am going well, I am throwing a lot of strikes and throwing balls when I want to.”

The Orioles needed to get 27 outs to beat the Rays Wednesday. Coulombe got two of the biggest, and toughest, to get.

In a related story, you think the Twins are wondering what led them to include Cano and Coulombe in separate trades with Baltimore in the last year?