Baltimore Orioles Win Softball Game Over Red Sox

Jun 1, 2016; Baltimore, MD, USA; Baltimore Orioles shortstop Manny Machado (13) looks to throw after fielding a ground ball during the sixth inning against the Boston Red Sox at Oriole Park at Camden Yards. Baltimore Orioles defeated Boston Red Sox 13-9. Mandatory Credit: Tommy Gilligan-USA TODAY Sports /

The Baltimore Orioles prevailed 13-9 over the Red Sox on Wednesday night in one of the more unusual games one will ever see.

The final score, along with all of the home runs, hits, and walks, had the look of a beer league softball game rather than a professional baseball game. Also, a ground ball with the bases through the legs of a certain diminutive second baseman added to the same appearance. That was special!

Boston hit a total of five home runs. How often does a team give up five homers and still win the game? When is the last time the O’s have done this? I don’t know, though the answer may appear somewhere in other media coverage of the game. But it is exceedingly rare to have this happen.

Along with five home runs, Orioles pitchers allowed a total of 15 hits and five walks. And even though the only extra base hits by the O’s were four doubles, they did pound out 14 hits of their own along with nine bases on balls (including four to Chris Davis). If you calculate the total on-base percentage of both teams, it was .478.

“Our guys just refused to be outscored tonight,” said Buck Showalter in the postgame press conference.

This sort of game is what the Baltimore fanbase feared was going to be the type that would be repeated over and over this season. The pitching would be poor and the Orioles power hitters and total offensive muscle would have to simply outscore the opposition. This is only the fifth time in 51 games that the Orioles have won by needing to score more than five runs. A total of 11 losses have been in games where the opposition has scored five or more runs.

At this point of the season, just shy of one-third of the way through it, the Orioles have been held to two or less runs on 16 occasions. By comparison, this happened 18 times in 2015 in the same number of games and 51 times over the course of the whole season. So the current Birds are on about the same pace, though we thought this team would be a better-scoring outfit. It may yet happen.

Getting three hits apiece for the Orioles were Pedro Alvarez and Hyun Soo Kim. For Alvarez, this was the second occasion of doing this, the other being against the White Sox on April 30^th. For Kim, this was his third three-hit game amongst his 14 starts this season.