Baltimore Orioles: Austin Hays Continues To Dazzle And Amaze

It’s the Austin Hays show and Baltimore Orioles fans are thoroughly enjoying it.

Thank the baseball gods for Austin Hays. If someone told you Monday morning that watching a 105-loss Baltimore Orioles team in late-September, with Chandler Shepherd on the mound giving up six runs in three innings (including three home runs), would be worth your time, I can only imagine what your response would have been. Well, I hope you watched.

Monday night was yet another night that belonged to the 24-year-old center fielder of the future in Birdland, Austin Hays. The outfield wall at the Rogers Centre was no match for Hays as he mashed multiple home runs over it and crashed into it to add another big highlight to his impressive reel of defensive efforts in just 16 games at the major league level in 2019.

The contest didn’t start out well for the Orioles, who found themselves down 3-0 before Shepherd recorded the first out of the ballgame, but a barrage of home runs by the Orioles offense helped to propel a comeback and make this one interesting.

The comeback started in the top of the third inning with two outs. Chance Sisco was hit with a 3-2 pitch, Jonathan Villar singled, and Austin Hays cleared the bases on a 1-2 pitch with a 400-foot shot to left field. Don’t worry, I’ve included all of his highlight plays, courtesy of the Baltimore Orioles official Twitter account, so you can enjoy each and every one of them, again and again.

Still down 5-3 in the fourth inning, Hays then did his best to keep the Orioles close with yet another masterful catch out in center field against this Toronto team. Instead of leaping up and preventing a Vladimir Guerrero Jr home run from leaving the yard, Hays lept, caught a flyball off the bat of Jonathan Davis, slammed into the wall, and held on for the out. It wouldn’t be his last highlight play in centerfield.

The fifth inning belonged to the Baltimore Orioles and featured not only Austin Hays, once again, but two players we highlighted Monday morning for their impressive second-half performances. Before Villar finished his celebration in the dugout from his leadoff home run, Hays was rounding the bases with his second home run of the night, an opposite-field shot, his fourth round-tripper of the season in just his 16th game.

Rio Ruiz would send his 12th long ball into the stands later in the inning to give the Orioles their first lead of the game at 7-6. That lead would last until the bottom of the seventh inning, when Cavan Biggio hit home run number 16 for his rookie season. It was his sixth against the Orioles in just 12 games. Baltimore pitchers will have to figure him out eventually because he isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. But that’s a problem for future teams. Tonight was about an Orioles win and the spectacular play of Austin Hays.

Toronto threatened in the sixth, putting two runners on and attempting to take advantage of Miguel Castro and his recent stretch of rough outings. Enter Austin Hays, again, to save the day.

Batted balls with similar exit velocities and launch angles have resulted in a base hit 55% of the time, according to Baseball Savant’s expected batting average stat. Is there anything this Hays kid can’t do?

Again with two outs, this time in the eighth inning, the Baltimore Orioles went back to work to break a 7-7 tie. Stevie Wilkerson sent a two-strike pitch to the wall for a triple, Chance Sisco walked, and Jonathan Villar broke the tie with an opposite-field, RBI single.

It was then all up to that man, as Austin Hays singled up the middle for his third hit of the day, scoring pinch-runner DJ Stewart. It was his fifth RBI of the night.

Shawn Armstrong tried to close things out in the ninth to shut the door on a 9-7 Orioles victory, but gave up two runs on three hits to send it into extras. At the time of publishing, the game was still tied in the 10th.

It has been the sort of game that has come to define the never give up attitude of the 2019 Baltimore Orioles. They may not match up well with other teams when it comes to talent and they have gotten shelled numerous times, but they refuse to give up and let teams just walk over them. Kudos to this team and this coaching staff.

*Update- The Orioles eventually fell 11-10 thanks to a walk-off home run off the bat of Anthony Alford. A small footnote in just one of 106 losses this season and on a night where Austin Hays continued to give fans confidence in what they can expect out of their likely starting center fielder in 2020.

These same two teams match up on Tuesday night for game two of this series. Dylan Bundy (6-14, 4.89 ERA) takes on Anthony Kay (1-0, 5.79 ERA).