Rodrigo Lopez gets the loss, his 13th.
Lopez was batted around for 13 hits in his 6 innings of work. Somehow he managed to only let 4 runs score from those 13 hits, and he struck out 3 batters. It seemed like a bunch of the hits were hard luck for Rodrigo, but hes given up more hits than any other pitcher in the Major Leagues so its not like it came out of nowhere. But he did manage to keep it at 4 runs over 6 innings. The real story (for me at least) was James Hoey’s major league debut. See my previous post for more on Hoey. After Byrdak came in and got 2 outs in the 7th, Hoey came in with runners on 1st and 3rd. He walked the first runner he faced on a full count. He was hitting 97 on the radar gun and struck out the next hitter he faced on 3 pitches. Watch out for this guy, he’ll be a set up man next year and very important for our future. Todd Williams and Bruce Chen pitched a scoreless inning each to round it up.
The offense seemed to get robbed for multiple hits and could not manage more than a single run tonight. Nick Markakis was especially robbed of an RBI single by a Michael Cuddyer diving catch in right field. Even with that, Markakis had the Orioles only RBI with an RBI single in the 3rd. Miguel Tejada, Jay Gibbons, Kevin Millar, and Ramon Hernandez were the only other O’s with hits, all singles. Tough night for the bats, the Twins bullpen basically dominated us.
Markakis watch: 1-4 (.305)
Kris Benson (10-9, 4.63) and the obsurely named Boof Bonser (2-4, 5.51) face off in the series deciding game tomorrow night. Go O’s.
