Tillman on his struggles, Castro his outing and Mancini the offense

The Orioles overcame another short start by Chris Tillman tonight. He allowed four hits and six runs in 1 1/3 and allowed a Salvador Perez first-inning grand slam. Yet the Orioles rallied for an 11-6 win over Kansas City to take a series for just the third time in 2018.

Tillman gave up sevens runs in an inning-plus in his start before this one against the Los Angeles Angels. Tonight, his ERA rose to 10.46. Over his past two games he's pitched 2 1/3 innings, allowing 11 hits and 13 runs (12 earned). This tied for the fifth-shortest start of his career.

He was asked yet again if he might be running out of chances?

"I can't worry about that," he said. "I've got to focus on what I have to do to get better. That's the bottom line. I've got to focus on the game plan and keep working.

"It's really frustrating. I can see it, I can feel and I'm just not getting it done. It's not good right now. Have to make better pitches and get ahead more often. Fastball command wasn't there. Execution was poor overall," he said.

Tillman said once again that he is healthy and once again that he feels what is causing his struggles is fixable. Yet he's made 25 mostly sub-par starts since 2017.

"I think so (it can be fixed). But it takes a lot of reps to get it there. I've got a plan of what I need to do. I've just got to get it done. Bullpens are much, much better but I'm not getting it done on start day," he added.

Right-hander Miguel Castro replaced Tillman in the second and restored order on the mound. He threw 4 2/3 scoreless on 65 pitches allowing the offense a chance to rally.

"Thank God, I feel really good, physically, mentally," Castro said through interpreter Ramon Alarcon. "I trust a lot in myself. I have a lot of confidence with my pitches. So, my job was to mix my pitches, to be aggressive, let my defense make some plays for me as well."

Castro's outing was the second-longest of his career behind only the six innings he pitched on Aug. 3, 2017 versus Detroit.

"I'm thinking of helping my team regardless of how long, how short they want to use me," he said.

The Orioles rallied from 4-0 down in the first and 6-3 in the second to win. They scored a season-high in runs and went 6-for-7 with runners in scoring position. They scored 23 runs in the series.

"It was great," Trey Mancini said after going 3-for-5 with a single, double and two-run homer. "We know that we have that potential, what we showed tonight. We just put some really good at-bats together and trusted the guys around us to get the job done. And we didn't panic early. Everybody did great tonight. It's huge having Schoopy and Mark (Trumbo) back in there, too. They've been doing a really good job these last few games, since they've been back."

Mancini and Adam Jones both finished a triple shy of the cycle. Mancini's three hits tied his career-high for the 13th time. According to STATS, Mancini and Jones are the first Orioles 1-2 hitters each have at least three hits and three runs in the same game in team history.

The Orioles won two in a row for just the second time in 2018.

"Hard to believe," Mancini said. "Baseball's a crazy game. You see something every year that you don't expect to, and we've been on the wrong side of a lot of games this year but everybody here has got a lot of pride and the game of baseball is bigger than your record or anything like that."

Finally Mancini had some empathy for Tillman, a teammate going through a tough time.

"Everybody here has gone through tough times. Tilly is one of the best teammates and best guys I've ever played with. Look at everything he's done for this organization since he's been here - since he was traded over. He and Adam and some of the other guys in here were really the faces of kind of the renaissance, if you want to say that, of the Orioles. Going to the playoffs, he was the ace of that staff for a long time. He's done so much for the organization and the city, so yea, it's tough to see any of your teammates struggle but a guy like Tilly, you always cheer for," he said.