Walk-off walk: Seth Smith's bases-loaded walk gives O's a 5-4 win

The Orioles scored two runs in the last of the 11th tonight, turning defeat into victory, to beat Tampa Bay 5-4 and improve to 14-6 through 20 games.

Down 4-3 heading to the 11th, they loaded the bases on two singles and a walk with one out against Alex Colome. They would tie the game on Jonathan Schoop's sac fly and won it when Danny Farquhar walked Seth Smith on four pitches with the bases loaded. The Orioles avoided losing their first series of the year.

The Orioles loaded the bases on a single by Chris Davis, a one-out single by Welington Castillo and a Hyun Soo Kim walk. Schoop drilled a sac fly to center, and a walk to Ryan Flaherty again loaded the bases. Farquhar replaced Colomé, but couldn't find the strike zone, walking Smith on four pitches to end the game.

The Orioles bullpen will not give up many leads this year, but it happened tonight. The Rays tied it in the eighth and went ahead 4-3 on Jesús Sucre's RBI single in the 11th off Alec Asher.

The Rays scored a run off the 'pen to tie the game at 3-3 in the top of the eighth. After a Derek Norris double off Mychal Givens, Donnie Hart came on and hit his first batter and walked the second. That brought on Darren O'Day, who could not wiggle out of that major jam, but held Tampa Bay to an RBI groundout by Brad Miller that tied it.

The O's bullpen had allowed just one run over 19 2/3 in the previous seven games.

Dylan Bundy gave the Orioles another strong outing tonight. But when Tampa Bay tied it in the eighth, he was denied his fourth win.

But Bundy still recorded his fifth quality start in five outings. Bundy gave up a pair of solo homers, but not much else, allowing four hits and two runs over 6 1/3 innings with two walks and three strikeouts. His fastball velocity was down during the game, often at 88-90 mph and he threw curves, sliders or changeups on 68 of 106 pitches.

Over his past three starts though, Bundy's ERA is 0.93 with two runs allowed over 19 1/3 innings. This was the Orioles' 10th quality start over their past 13 games and the rotation ERA is 3.07 in that stretch.

The Orioles scored three runs in the second to take the 3-0 lead with the last two coming on when Smith singled and raced home on a pair of throwing errors.

First, they moved ahead 1-0 on singles by Kim, Schoop and Flaherty with one out. Flaherty singled in the run after starting the year 0-for-4. Kim's single was his 100th career major league hit.

With two outs, Smith followed Flaherty and singled to center and Flaherty headed toward third. The throw from center fielder Kevin Kiermaier went past the base and was backed up by pitcher Alex Cobb. Cobb's throw back to third as Flaherty was headed back that way after rounding the base hit him and caromed into left field. Flaherty scored and Smith came all the way around to score. Yep, it was a crazy play with Smith circling the bases on an E-8 and an E-1. It was scored a single, no RBI and two errors on the play for a 3-0 Orioles lead.

Meanwhile, most of the Rays lineup did little against Bundy through five innings. Most, but not all. Shortstop Tim Beckham hit solo homers off the right-hander in the third and fifth innings to pull Tampa Bay within 3-2. It was Beckham's second and third homers and his first career two-homer game.

The homer in the third was the first allowed by Bundy this year and his first over a stretch of 33 1/3 innings dating to last year.

After improving to 3-0 in extra innings and to 6-1 in one-run games, now the Orioles take Thursday off before beginning a seven-game road trip against the Yankees and Red Sox on Friday night at New York.