Baltimore Orioles swept out of Houston in feast or famine world

Mark Trumbo homered however the Baltimore Orioles fell 4-2 and were swept out of Houston as the strikeouts continue to pile up.

The good news is that Mark Trumbo homered for the Baltimore Orioles last night. The bad news is that all of his teammates continued to try to do just that, and ended up piling up another 15 strikeouts in last night’s 4-2 loss in Houston. The O’s were swept in the three-game set, mainly because of lost opportunities and strikeouts.

I’ve been saying this all week, however the Orioles have hard-hitting and hard-swinging fastball hitters. They fully expect to see fastballs, especially in fastball counts. What they didn’t bank on is the fact that Houston was going to throw caution to the wind and totally throw out the concept of a fastball count. And the only way you can do that is if you’re unafraid to lose – which is to their credit, because they’ve done a lot of losing this year.

On one hand you respect that, but it had to frustrate the living snot out of the O’s. Having said that, this Houston team did the exact same thing to the Orioles last season. In fact the only reason the Orioles weren’t swept was due to the fact that it was a four-game set and they managed to sqeak out a win in game four. So I would say this isn’t symptamatic of big problems for this team, Houston just has their number. That sounds very simplistic, but it’s also true.

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Kevin Gausman is still looking for his first win of the season, although he struggled a bit in his outing. Gausman’s line: 5.0 IP, 5 H, 4 R, 1 BB, 7 K. He led off the game surrendering a solo homer to Springer, who’s smacked Oriole pitching around in this series. However Trumbo soon evened the scored in the second inning with a solo shot of his own – one that almost ended up in Austin, Texas at that!

But the last of the second brought another famliar sight, and that’s Houston’s Valbuena rounding the bases. His two-run home run gave Houston a 3-1 lead, a lead that expanded to 4-1 in the fifth when Springer smacked his second solo homer of the game. Manny Machado brought the O’s to within 4-2 in the ninth with an RBI-single, but it was too little too late to keep the Birds from being swept.

The biggest moment in the game came with two outs in the fifth. The Orioles had worked counts and managed to load the bases with Wieters coming to the plate. This would have been the Birds’ chance to not only get back into the game, but possibly take the lead. However Wieters chased a low-and-away slider, ending the inning.