5-run seventh helps end five-game slide
Cashner allows 2 hits in 6 innings, earns quality start
NEW YORK — Seven games into this young but already unsettling Orioles season, the breakout inning at the plate finally came on a night when it seemed like it never would.
Beginning with a bloop single by second baseman Jonathan Schoop, continuing with a a line-drive home run to left-center field by center fielder Adam Jones, and punctuated by a tworun single by freshly christened leadoff man Trey Mancini, the Orioles’ five-run seventh inning provided enough offense for a second win of the season Thursday night and a dash of hope for the team’s bats long term.
Sure, it included a home run, as most big Orioles innings do. But most promising to Jones, who has provided most of the team’s big moments offensively this year, was what came after it.
“It’s huge, because then it started back over after I hit the home run,” Jones said. “The bases got empty, and we put up three more runs. [Anthony] Santander with a massive hit, and Trey to top it off. When we all are swinging the bats good, we just pass the baton to the next guy. When you’ve got a guy in front of you who hits the ball hard, it’s incentive to itself to try and do the same thing.”
Yankees starter Masahiro Tanaka had used just 71 pitches to set the Orioles down with seven strikeouts and only three hits through six innings before Schoop fouled off four straight pitches and flared the eighth pitch of the seventh inning’s first at-bat into center field. Jones followed him two pitches later with his club-high third home run of the season, and the Orioles were off to the races for a 5-2 victory over the New York Yankees. Quality start for Cashner: Andrew Cashner is not a one-way Harry, manager Buck Showalter warned this spring as the Orioles’ February free- agent signing cruised through the Grapefruit League with his sinker up in the zone for strikes and down in the zone for groundouts.
After his sinker yielded three home runs in his Orioles debut last weekend, the hope was that Showalter was right, and Cashner would be able to dip into his five-pitch mix to give the Orioles a better outing Thursday night and beyond.
With the stewardship of Chance Sisco behind the plate, he did just that. Cashner, it turns out, has quite a cutter, and he used it to hold the high-flying Yankees offense to one hit before he went back to the well once too often and saw one fly out to right field for a home run by right fielder Aaron Judge in the sixth inning.
“I think for the most part I was trying to drive through the catcher tonight, more than anything,” Cashner said. “The biggest thing is I had a lot better slider tonight than I did the first night. … I think [I was] just getting out in front with it, just trusting it more than anything and just throwing the piss out of it.”
Said manager Buck Showalter: “Cash was solid, man. That was impressive. That’s good to see. You know you’re going to need it.”