Zach Wilt: Zach Britton is following the Jim Johnson blueprint in the ninth

Zach Britton entered Wednesday's game in the ninth inning, attempting to hold a 2-0 lead over the Rays and secure a series win for Orioles. Tampa Bay's 3-4-5 hitters (Evan Longoria, James Loney and Ben Zobrist) were due up. It's never easy in the American League East, even against the lowly Rays.

In the blink of an eye, Joe Angel had pronounced that the Orioles were indeed in the win column after Britton struck out Longoria and Zobrist, and forced Loney to ground out to first base. Twelve pitches, 10 strikes and the ninth save for Britton in 10 attempts. He's locked in right now.

What's fascinating about Britton's dominance is that he's doing it with one pitch: his sinker, which he throws between 95 and 97 mph. On Wednesday, all 12 of his pitches were two-seam sinking fastballs, as were all six of his pitches to the Rays on Tuesday night. Over his last five appearances, Britton has thrown 51 pitches; 50 of them have been sinkers. The hitters know exactly what's coming, but none of them can seem to do anything with it.

Britton has allowed just one hit in his last five innings of work and hasn't given up an earned run since his lone blown save on May 27 against the Brewers. What's even more impressive to me is his consistent ability to generate ground balls with the sinker. Over his last five appearances, five of the 15 outs he's generated have been via the strikeout, and the other 12 outs have come from nine ground balls (two double plays). A hitter hasn't been able to hit a ball in the air against Britton since June 6.

All the stats check out, and no one can argue against Britton's success in the ninth. He's allowing less than a base runner per inning and has a 2.54 strikeout-to-walk ratio and a 0.72 ERA. It should be comforting for Orioles fans when they hear AC/DC's "For Those About To Rock," much like when they heard the Foo Fighters' "Pretender" back in 2012. In a lot of ways, Britton is following the Jim Johnson ninth-inning blueprint: hard sinkers for groundball outs.

During his All-Star, 51 save season, Johnson struck out 5.4 per nine innings and induced ground balls 62.3 percent of the time. Britton is striking out 6.69 per nine innings and 79.2 percent of balls in play against him are on the ground. Britton has walked 2.63 per nine innings; Johnson walked 1.97 per nine. Johnson gave up just 0.39 homers per nine innings, while Britton has given up 0.24. You get it.

Not surprisingly, those results have come from both guys successfully throwing the sinker. Britton has used it 91.30 percent of the time this season (coming into yesterday's appearance), while Johnson relied on it just 66.03 percent in 2012. Both players throw/threw the pitch with an average velocity of roughly 95 mph and with 8-9 inches of horizontal movement.

Johnson and Britton both set up left- and right-handed batters with the sinker and lean on it as their out pitch with two strikes. Johnson mixed in a changeup when ahead in the count to lefties, but stuck mostly with the two-seamer against right-handed hitters. As noted above, Britton is essentially throwing the sinker every pitch, which may be why he's averaging 13.14 pitches per inning this season, while Johnson threw 14.89 per frame with the Orioles in 2012.

Of course, there is some concern for a one-pitch/pitch-to-contact guy in the ninth. When he doesn't have his command or the ball isn't moving as much as it typically does, he will be hit and likely won't have sharp enough secondary pitches to escape a jam. We've seen hitters post a .214 batting average on balls in play against Britton this season and a .251 BABIP against Johnson two seasons ago. That number didn't hold up for Johnson in 2013, as it ballooned to .327, which resulted in his nine blown saves.

So far, though, there's been no reason for concern for Britton. As long as he can continue to generate balls rolling through the infield grass, the Orioles defense is strong enough to convert them into outs.

Zach Wilt blogs about the Orioles at Baltimore Sports Report. Follow him on Twitter: @zamwi. His views appear here as part of MASNsports.com's season-long initiative of welcoming guest bloggers to our pages. All opinions expressed are those of the guest bloggers, who are not employed by MASNsports.com but are just as passionate about their baseball as our roster of writers.