Baltimore Orioles: 175 Pitches for the Victory
The Baltimore Orioles improved to 2-0 on the young season with a 4-2 win over the Minnesota Twins Wednesday night, once again being bolstered by a strong pitching performance.
It was a “bend without breaking” sort of evening for Yovani Gallardo and four O’s relievers. The Twins had runners on base throughout the game, as the Birds were only able to record a pair of 1-2-3 innings: in the fourth by Gallardo and in the eighth by Darren O’Day.
In the end the Twins only managed a total of five base hits including a home run by Trevor Plouffe and a pair of doubles by Byrun Buxton. But unlike the opening day game, Orioles pitchers surrendered a total of six walks. Even with the baserunners, the O’s pitchers were able to keep all but two from crossing the plate.
This game was one of those tedious affairs with a lot of deep counts and foul balls. It took a total of 3:11 to complete in front of less than 13 thousand fans.
The average number of pitches thrown over a full season by an American League team in 2015 was 23,492. The Orioles were just above that number at 23,576. Doing the math, the average number of pitches thrown by a team in a game was 145.
In the eight innings that the Twins pitchers threw against the Orioles, they tossed 153 pitches. And the O’s five hurlers combined for a total of 175. Lots of deep counts with a total of six walks by each side. The Orioles struck out 13 Twins, while only fanning six times themselves.
On one hand it is a more frustrating game to watch when there are so many pitches being thrown, yet at the same time, it is good that O’s pitchers are hanging around the corners and effectively keeping the opposition from hitting many balls very hard.
Hitting a ball hard and over the fence for the first O’s homer of the season was Chris Davis, putting a ball about 15 feet beyond the near-miss drive to the center field wall from Monday night. But better even than the solo home run was the great defensive play by Crush. He saved an errant throw from J.J. Hardy and has looked like a 20-year-old at first base with his nimble movements. There are more ways to be of benefit than just hitting the ball 425 feet.
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Gallardo was far from awesome in his first Orioles start, again seeing his pitch count elevate while also allowing only a single run on two hits and three walks in his five innings. It may not be always pretty, but if Gallardo can be effective like this over the course of the season, the Orioles are going to enjoy some frequent successes and wins when he pitches.
But the best element of the first two games, along with only four runs being allowed in 18 innings, is the improved plate discipline by Orioles hitters. Though they have struck out 16 times in 16.2 innings of offense, they have also walked on 11 occasions. If this could be a trend for the whole season, the O’s might really defy the deadly predictions of the “experts” in the baseball world.
Ubaldo Jimenez will seek to keep the good pitching streak alive at 7:05 this evening, weather permitting.