TWICE AS NICE
Gausman gets 1st win in early game as O's take doubleheader vs. Rays
It took Kevin Gausman 13 starts to earn his elusive first win of the season, but the Orioles right-hander left no doubt Saturday afternoon. He had one of the finest performances of his career in a 5-0 victory over the Tampa Bay Rays in Game 1 of a split-admission doubleheader at Camden Yards.
Gausman allowed just four singles over 72⁄3 scoreless innings, retiring 17 of 18 batters before he allowed two singles in his final inning. Gausman struck out seven and walked none in the win. His outing received a game score — a metric devised to determine the strength of a pitcher in any one game — of 85, which is the highest of his career, highest of an Orioles pitcher this season and ranked among the top 20 starts in the majors this season.
Despite entering Saturday having posted quality starts in six of his 12 outings, Gausman had a 2.91 run-support average, the lowest of any Orioles starter and a factor in his 0-5 record.
“Every time you take the mound, you expect to win,” Gausman said. “That’s what I’ve done 13 times now. I’ve expected to win 13 times. Obviously, there have been a couple games that got away from me, and I’ve just kind of hoped that the team would pick me up, and they have before. … You just try to do what you can and you try to be that guy every fifth day.”
Gausman hadn’t helped his cause in his previous two starts, allowing 10 earned runs in eight innings. That included his shortest outing of the season, when he gave up seven runs on six hits in three innings in Boston on June 15. After his outing Monday in Texas, in which Gausman failed to hold an early three-run lead in a 4-3 loss to the Rangers, Gausman, 25, expressed frustration about being unable to take advantage of a rare lead.
“He was proactive instead of reactive,” Orioles manager Buck Showalter said of Saturday’s start. “That’s what we always stress about all phases of the game. … He gives up a line drive in the eighth inning [Saturday], and all of a sudden, he gets a doubleplay ball. He made a lot of pitches that kept them from getting any momentum.”
On Saturday, Gausman was one out away from matching his longest outing of the season and entered the eighth having retired 12 straight. But he left the game after two singles sandwiched a double play. Gausman was carrying his best stuff down to his 113th and final pitch — a fastball that hit 99 mph — and he walked off the field to a standing ovation from the announced 18,229.
“It looked like he was spotting his fastball pretty well, mixing his pitches, keeping them off balance,” shortstop J.J. Hardy said. “He wasn’t letting them hit the ball hard, and obviously, the upper-90s fastball helps.”
Infield ‘D’ sets bar high: Orioles second baseman Jonathan Schoop looks across the diamond at Hardy and third baseman Manny Machado and knows the defensive bar is high.
“They make good plays all the time,” Schoop said. “I just want to be a better player and get better.”
Each of the three infielders made spectacular defensive plays behind Gausman in the Orioles’ 5-0 win over the Tampa Bay Rays in the first game of Saturday’s doubleheader, with Schoop’s play on a high hop off the pitcher’s mound up the middle perhaps the most impressive of them all.
Schoop joked his was better than the play Machado made ranging into foul territory to get Evan Longoria at first base. The play before that, Hardy fielded a nasty hop off the dry infield for an impressive play of his own.
The Orioles infield defense has been among the league’s best this season, even with Hardy missing nearly two months and Machado deputizing at shortstop. The infield had saved 15 runs this season entering Saturday, according to FanGraphs, with highlight plays the norm.
Hardy’s hearty week: Hardy has made a smooth transition back into the starting lineup after missing seven weeks recovering from a broken bone in his left foot. He had two hits in the first game of the doubleheader for his third multihit game in his first seven games back.
“I feel like I’ve gotten some cheap ones,” he said. “I’ve hit the ball hard and made some outs, but that’s the game.”
Around the horn: Showalter said roster management is difficult this weekend with the doubleheader coming a day before the Orioles leave for an 11-day road trip to San Diego, Seattle and Los Angeles. The pending returns of reliever Vance Worley (groin) and catcher Caleb Joseph (testicular surgery), plus a couple of players whose wives are expecting to give birth soon, complicate matters from a travel standpoint. ... Worley allowed one run on five hits over 12⁄3 innings Saturday in his first minor league rehabilitation appearance at Double-A Bowie. Worley threw 36 pitches, 27 for strikes.