Wade Miley, Caleb Joseph and Trey Mancini after O's loss to Jays

The Orioles came up a win short of their first three-game home sweep of Toronto since September 2014. Blue Jays right-hander Marco Estrada fanned 12 today over 7 2/3 innings to tie his career high in Toronto's 3-1 win.

Estrada threw a season-high 115 pitches and held the Orioles to five hits. They have faced him three times this year, and he has an ERA of 1.31 in 20 2/3 innings. This was his sixth career game of 10 or more strikeouts.

Toronto is 2-7 against the Orioles on the season, and the two wins have come in Estrada starts. Today, he threw 53 changeups.

"Just a really good mix of pitches," Trey Mancini said. "His changeup is one of the best I've ever seen, if not the best. It's hard to tell (which pitch it is) right out of his hand. He's got the same body motion. And same delivery. Even if you know it's coming, it's hard to wait back. He was on his game today."

O's left-hander Wade Miley almost matched Estrada this afternoon. Miley gave up a Devon Travis three-run homer in the first, but nothing else through seven innings. The Travis homer followed a two-out error by second baseman Jonathan Schoop and a single by Justin Smoak.

"I made one mistake early on and Travis put a good swing on that ball to put them up early. I tried to keep them right there. Marco Estrada, he had a really good mix of pitches going today," Miley said.

In his previous two starts, Miley had thrown 119 pitches in five innings against Washington and 109 in five at Detroit. This was a step forward in pitch efficiency as he threw 107 pitches and gave up six hits over seven frames.

"I think I just pitched more today," Miley said. "Rather than just throw. More of a cat and mouse thing. Went hard fastball, soft fastball, changeup, curveball and had a mix and was able to make a few pitches when I got behind. The BP fastball, was getting some groundballs. That is more or less who I would like to be rather than just go out and throw it as hard as I can."

Miley took the loss and is 1-2 with a 2.59 ERA through 10 starts. This was his longest outing since going seven on April 25. It was the second time in his career in which he took a loss but allowed zero earned runs. The two-out error today made all three runs unearned. That also happened with Miley on the mound Aug. 6, 2012 for Arizona at Pittsburgh.

He was frustrated in not getting deep in the game in those recent starts.

"Just tried to get three outs at a time. Get this out, next out and next out and go sit down," he said. "You start trying to put pressure on yourself about getting deep in the game and next thing you look up and you're at 75 pitches in the third. Try to not even look at the pitch count."

With a walk-rate averaging 5.8 per every nine innings coming into this game, lowering that was also a focus for Miley today, and he walked one batter.

"I was on a five-run there for a while where I walked five every game. Got back to pitching," he said. "Last couple of starts, it was like I would get mad about the walks, overthrow and lose command. Tried to back down and just make pitches today."

The Orioles (25-17) dropped back into second place, a 1/2-game behind the Yankees, who beat Tampa Bay. The Orioles still hold the best home record in MLB at 15-4, but an eight-game Oriole Park win streak was snapped this afternoon. Three of their four home losses have come on Sundays.

Catcher Caleb Joseph talked about Miley's solid outing, coming on a day in which he got just one run of support.

"You've got a guy you could throw a ping-pong ball up there, and he's going to get a hit in Travis. He's seeing it really well. (Miley) threw seven innings of shutout (no earned runs) baseball," Joseph said. "I think it was just a matter of what we didn't do before Travis got up than him really getting into bad luck. He deserved a better fate. Great game, pitched well enough to win. Seven innings, no (earned) runs.

"You can't really ask for more, and again things are magnified when you can't score any runs, either. That guy was real tough. He's been doing it against us for a while now. It's tough when you've got the real slow changeup and you can zip a fastball up there. It's really only two pitches. It's tough."

The Orioles took two of three this weekend after a 1-6 road trip, and now they host Minnesota on Monday night to open a three-game series.