Baltimore Orioles: One Swing, One Run, One Win

The Baltimore Orioles defeated the Detroit Tigers 1-0 Friday evening on the strength of Adam Jones’ 200^th career home run and the shutout pitching of Chris Tillman.

It was obvious from the early innings of this game that even a single run might make the difference, even one swing of the bat from either side. And that was the story as Jones’ homer was the only anomaly in a game of zeroes.

Justin Verlander, in spite of his mediocre start this season, was his typical nasty self of old. Often when watching Orioles games, I wonder what it is that is happening at the plate that makes a pitcher difficult to hit, as he may not appear to be very unhittable from a distance or on TV. However, the nasty factor was clearly evident on this evening.

But Tillman has his own nastiness, especially when his off-speed stuff is working, which it has been this season. After seven scoreless innings, his 3.05 ERA had dropped to 2.58. This is indeed the Tillman we all hoped for over the offseason and wanted to see this year. And then follow Tillman with an inning each of nastiness from Darren O’Day and Zach Britton, and you have a shutout.

And a shutout is exactly what it is going to take to win some of these games where the Orioles run into a top pitcher with his best stuff. The O’s offense can be shut down, and to win these sorts of games, the Baltimore pitching is going to need to be nearly as perfect. The Birds did the same against Tanaka and the Yankees last Thursday. The Orioles have been held to less than three runs on nine occasions this year, while holding opponents to less than three runs a total of 13 times.

Adam Jones has hit a lot of big home runs in his career. This was the third ever off of Verlander. The most off any pitcher is four, of which there are three culprits: CC Sabathia, Brandon Morrow, Jeremy Hellickson.

The Jones homer that I most remember is the line drive he crushed over the Green Monster off former Orioles outfielder Darnell McDonald in the top of the 17^th inning at Boston just over four years ago. This made Chris Davis the winning pitcher. Just 10 days later he broke a 3-3 tie in the top of the 15^th inning at Kansas City with a game-winning solo shot off Nathan Adcock.

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Jones has an inside-the-park home run as well as two walk-off homers. The first of these was off Joakim Soria and the Royals on May 24^th, 2011. The second was on June 9, 2012 off the Phillies’ B.J. Rosenberg in the bottom of the 12^th inning.

Orioles fans would be pleased to see him hit another couple hundred home runs for the O’s. That might be too many to expect, but there will be more big ones to come.