Baltimore Orioles: 3 takeaways from the Birds’ first home series win of 2018

The Baltimore Orioles rode steady run production and a pair of strong starts to their first home series win of the year.

They didn’t always look like a well-oiled machine, but the Baltimore Orioles still managed to take two out of three games from the Detroit Tigers over the weekend. With their 5-3 victory on Sunday, the Birds clinched their first home series of the year, a nice consolation to cap off a rough April.

The offense was consistently solid, scoring either five or six runs in all three games. As has been the case for most of the season, Manny Machado and Trey Mancini did a lot of heavy lifting, and they got a big assist from Pedro Alvarez, who appears to have found his power stroke after a slow start to the season.

But in the end, it was Baltimore’s starting pitching that played the biggest role in the outcome of the series. The Orioles got two good starts from Chris Tillman and Kevin Gausman, winning both of those games; their lone loss, featuring a seven-run performance from Andrew Cashner, was sandwiched in the middle.

In the end, the Orioles outscored the opposition 16-12, good for one of their best three-game stretches of the year. The offense is humming along nicely, but the rebuilding Tigers aren’t exactly a marquee opponent. Time will tell if the O’s can keep it up against the Angels, who boast a superior pitching staff.

Until then, here are three takeaways from the Orioles’ big weekend series.