The Guardians wouldn’t go away quietly.
The Orioles built two early leads Sunday — a three-run advantage in the third inning and a four-run edge in the fourth — and both times Cleveland, MLB’s best team, chipped away to trail by only one.
But Baltimore’s counterpunches were stronger.
In the fourth, Jackson Holliday and Gunnar Henderson — two former No. 1 overall prospects — homered to provide a cushion for starter Corbin Burnes. After Josh Naylor’s three-run blast threatened the Orioles’ lead, Ryan Mountcastle and Adley Rutschman teamed up with RBI hits in the sixth for welcomed insurance en route to a 9-5 win.
The win salvaged a four-game split after the Orioles dropped the series’ first two contests. It also keeps Baltimore (67-46) tied atop the American League East with the New York Yankees, who walked off the Toronto Blue Jays in 10 innings Sunday.
“It’s tough to be consistent offensively, but the quality of the at-bat was much better these past two days,” manager Brandon Hyde said. “Give our guys a lot of credit for getting a split out of here. That’s a tough place to play, a tough team to play. Kind of getting our butts kicked the first two games, the way we responded and swung the bat the last two games has been nice.”
Holliday’s home run off Cleveland starter Gavin Williams was his second in five games since he rejoined the Orioles on Wednesday. It wasn’t a mammoth grand slam like the first, but it cleared the right field wall at Progressive Field and put Baltimore up 4-2.
The 20-year-old rookie looks like a different player now than during his first stint in the majors. He recorded only two hits in 34 at-bats in April. He’s now done so in each of his past three games, most of them scorchers hit harder than 95 mph.
“Showing a lot more confidence,” Hyde said about Holliday. “It’s great to see him swing the bat this way this series.”
Henderson’s two-run shot off Williams, who gave up a career-high six runs in his 23rd MLB start, put Baltimore up 6-2. It was the AL Most Valuable Player candidate’s 29th long ball of the season but first of the second half. Despite the power outage, the 23-year-old shortstop still entered the contest hitting .300 with a solid .791 OPS since he started the All-Star Game and participated in the Home Run Derby. Now batting in the No. 3 hole, Henderson reached base in each of his first four plate appearances Sunday.
“Yeah, it’s been a while,” he said about his first big fly since July 14. “It was nice to get that one, and hopefully, more to come.”
Henderson sparked the rally in the sixth with a line drive single to right field, moving leadoff hitter Colton Cowser to third after the AL Rookie of the Year front-runner extended his hitting streak to 17 games — tied with Trey Mancini in 2017 for the Orioles’ rookie record.
Hyde then brought in Mountcastle, who delivered with a pinch-hit bloop single to score Cowser. The RBI knock marked the third straight hit from one of Hyde’s pinch hitters after Rutschman and Ryan O’Hearn came through clutch in Saturday’s win. Rutschman, starting behind the plate for the series finale, continued to emerge from his slump by driving in Henderson with a 98 mph double to right field to put the Orioles up 8-5.
For the first time this season, Baltimore’s bats were tasked with bailing their ace — and they did. After tallying 15 hits in a win Saturday for the first time since June 20, the offense did it again Sunday to back Burnes, who delivered his worst start as an Oriole but still earned the win. Eight batters tallied a knock, with Cowser, Henderson, Rutschman, Holliday and Eloy Jiménez each recording multihit games.
“I thought we just took good at-bats against [Williams],” Hyde said. “Up and down the order — Gunn, Eloy with some big hits, O’Hearn with a backside double, Rutsch is starting to swing the bat like we know he can. So a good day for us offensively.”
O’Hearn gave the Orioles an early lead with an opposite-field double down the left field line. Rutschman drove in a run with a sacrifice fly in the third and capped off the day’s scoring with an RBI single in the eighth. Jiménez smacked three hits, including a double in the second and an RBI single in the third, to begin his Orioles tenure 5-for-9.
“I feel really good,” said Jiménez, who was slumping with the lowly Chicago White Sox before Baltimore acquired him Tuesday. “I feel like I’ve been playing here for a year. And I just have, like, three days here. To be able to feel like that, it tells you something.”
Burnes (12-4) allowed five runs (four earned) in five innings, with Naylor’s homer following a two-out infield single serving as perhaps the biggest hit off the ace this season. The fact that four earned runs in five frames, allowing seven hits and one walk with four strikeouts, is undoubtedly Burnes’ worst start of the season is perhaps the strongest case for why he’s a viable AL Cy Young Award candidate.
