Notes
Gausman earns first win
Game score of 85 is highest of his career
It took
Gausman allowed just four singles over 72/3 scoreless innings, retiring 17 of 18 batters before he allowed two singles in his final inning. Gausman struck out seven and walked none in the win. His outing received a game score — a metric devised to determine the strength of a pitcher in any one game — of 85, which is the highest of his career, highest of an Orioles pitcher this season and ranked among the top 20 starts in the majors this season.
Despite entering Saturday having posted quality starts in six of his 12 outings, Gausman had a 2.91 run-support average, the lowest of any Orioles starter and a factor in his 0-5 record.
“Every time you take the mound, you expect to win,” Gausman said. “That's what I've done 13 times now. I've expected to win 13 times. Obviously, there have been a couple games that got away from me, and I've just kind of hoped that the team would pick me up, and they have before. … You just try to do what you can and you try to be that guy every fifth day.”
Gausman hadn't helped his cause in his previous two starts, allowing 10 earned runs in eight innings. That included his shortest outing of the season, when he gave up seven runs on six hits in three innings in Boston on June 15. After his outing Monday in Texas, in which Gausman failed to hold an early three-run lead in a 4-3 loss to the Rangers, Gausman, 25, expressed frustration about being unable to take advantage of a rare lead.
“He was proactive instead of reactive,” Orioles manager
On Saturday, Gausman was one out away from matching his longest outing of the season and entered the eighth having retired 12 straight. But he left the game after two singles sandwiched a double play. Gausman was carrying his best stuff down to his 113th and final pitch — a fastball that hit 99 mph — and he walked off the field to a standing ovation from the announced 18,229.
“It looked like he was spotting his fastball pretty well, mixing his pitches, keeping them off balance,” shortstop
“They make good plays all the time,” Schoop said. “I just want to be a better player and get better.”
Each of the three infielders made spectacular defensive plays behind Gausman in the Orioles' 5-0 win over the Tampa Bay Rays in the first game of Saturday's doubleheader, with Schoop's play on a high hop off the pitcher's mound up the middle perhaps the most impressive of them all.
Schoop joked his was better than the play Machado made ranging into foul territory to get
The Orioles infield defense has been among the league's best this season, even with Hardy missing nearly two months and Machado deputizing at shortstop. The infield had saved 15 runs this season entering Saturday, according to FanGraphs, with highlight plays the norm.
“I feel like I've gotten some cheap ones,” he said. “I've hit the ball hard and made some outs, but that's the game.”
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