masn-baseballs-orioles.jpgThe Tampa Bay Rays hit three early homers today to take a 5-0 lead against Wei-Yin Chen, who began today with a 2-0 record and 2.61 ERA this month. But Chen got bit by the longball today in the Orioles’ 5-4 loss.

He gave up five runs and seven hits over 3 1/3 innings in the shortest start of his career.

“Those pitches were not well-located,” Chen said of the homers through his interpreter. “I didn’t do a good job commanding my pitches out there. From the beginning, I was not able to…The Tampa Bay Rays hit three early homers today to take a 5-0 lead against Wei-Yin Chen, who began today with a 2-0 record and 2.61 ERA this month. But Chen got bit by the longball today in the Orioles’ 5-4 loss.

He gave up five runs and seven hits over 3 1/3 innings in the shortest start of his career.

“Those pitches were not well-located,” Chen said of the homers through his interpreter. “I didn’t do a good job commanding my pitches out there. From the beginning, I was not able to pinpoint my pitches in the zone and I started to think too much about a lot of things. It wasn’t really like I was supposed to be.”

Chen tied a season-high for runs allowed and the O’s as a staff tied their season-high, allowing three homers for the seventh time.

Chen gave up just four homers in his first nine starts of the year but now has allowed six in his last three starts and 11 in the last seven outings.

“For every game, you don’t want to give up any home runs,” he said. “I don’t think I did anything different, it’s just lately I’ve been leaving more pitches up in the zone. Maybe the opponent hitters are studying me more than they used to. So if I didn’t make the adjustment necessary, the results are going to be bad. I’m going to work on that to try and get a better result in the next few outings.”

Catcher Caleb Joseph expressed a similar sentiment, that Chen didn’t locate his pitches well enough today.

“Some balls down the middle and they hit them really hard, three for home runs,” Joseph said. “He had good stuff today, he just kept missing up, especially with off-speed stuff. Tried to grind it out, but couldn’t get anything going.

“He had really good stuff in the ‘pen. Threw electric stuff, just kept missing up and this league will punish you when you miss up.”

Joseph was asked whether there’s any specific reason Chen is giving up so many homers lately.

“I don’t think so,” he said. “Nothing comes to mind for me. Just missed in the middle part of the plate. The three- and two-run homers hurt you following walks or dinker hits. He’s been good for us and he needs to be good for us to be a playoff team.”

Meanwhile, the Orioles didn’t get much going against Erik Bedard today, although they did finally knock him out of the game when Manny Machado’s two-run homer in the eighth cut the O’s four-run deficit to 5-3.

“He just showed us a different look with that curveball,” Joseph said. “He was slow with it, really slow. The guy threw like 90-some pitches and threw 18 balls. He apparently threw a lot of pitches that looked like strikes we were chasing out of the zone. He was on today and we’ll see him again and hopefully have a better fate next time.”

In his four wins this season, Bedard has an ERA of 1.44. He is now 2-2 with a 5.84 ERA in eight career starts against the Orioles.

Five Orioles relievers combined for 5 2/3 scoreless innings today. Over their last five games, the O’s ‘pen has not allowed any earned runs in 20 1/3 innings. Over the past eight games, the bullpen has given up just one earned run over 29 2/3 frames.

The Orioles hitters have gone 3-for-19 with runners in scoring position, leaving 17 runners on base in this series.