-1745819772711.png){kind=logo}
Charlie Morton had to wait out a rain delay tonight that lasted more than an hour before throwing his first pitch. The grounds crew sprinted to the tarp and stood shoulder-to-shoulder behind it after the top of the fourth inning, cutting through the finish line of the hot dog race.
Morton was the one on a roll.
The only way to slow him was to drench him.
Morton tossed five scoreless innings and tied his season high with 10 strikeouts before umpires halted play with one out in the bottom of the fifth following Ramón Urías’ single. The 69-minute break forced interim manager Tony Mansolino into a pitching change, with Yennier Cano entering in the sixth.
The bullpen backed up Morton with four scoreless frames, and a couple of solo home runs led the Orioles to a 2-0 win over the Angels before an announced crowd of 20,204 at Camden Yards.
The Orioles are 28-40 and get two attempts to win the series before flying to Tampa.
Félix Bautista notched his 13th save after Cano, Gregory Soto and Bryan Baker blanked the Angels, giving the Orioles their second shutout. Baker retired the side in order in the eighth and struck out Mike Trout and Jorge Soler. Bautista had a spotless ninth and also struck out two.
“It’s kind of what we’ve been watching a little bit," said Mansolino. "It seems like night in, night out they’ve been really good. Baker’s really settled into that kind of eighth inning spot. So as he’s available it’s kind of lining up that way. He’s pretty neutral, right and left out. Confidence is skyrocketing right now. It seems like the other guys kind of see that, they’re kind of settling into some of their spots and they’ve been throwing the ball really good here for a while.”
Bautista exceeded 99 mph three times tonight.
“We think he’s getting closer, man, and there’s probably another gear in there," Mansolino said. "Don’t be shocked if we look up and it’s a couple ticks up from that here in July at some point. It kind of falls in line with all the science kind of says about coming back from Tommy Johns and what experience from previous players say about it. He was really good tonight.”
Ryan O’Hearn homered on the first pitch of the second inning, his 10th to tie Cedric Mullins for the team lead. O’Hearn crushed a slider from Jack Kochanowicz, sending it 405 feet to the flag court at 104.8 mph. He watched it for a few seconds, started toward first base and flipped his bat.
O’Hearn was 5-for-31 with no home runs this month. He crouched past first base and slammed his helmet to the ground while holding onto the brim after hitting into a double play earlier this week. It felt good to unload on a baseball tonight.
Ramón Laureano led off the fifth by lining a changeup over the left field fence at 105.6 mph. The rain returned as he got back to the dugout, sending fans up the aisles seeking cover.
“He’s having a nice year," Mansolino said of Laureano, who drew his first career intentional walk in the sixth. "Don’t look up at the scoreboard. You’re gonna look up and go, ‘How did he get there so quick?’ You think about how the year started for him and he didn’t play the first part of the year a whole lot and kind of came out slow. He was probably frustrated a little bit. He’s picked up steam here over the last month-plus and it’s a pretty tough out right now in a lot of ways. Not just doing damage, but just tough. It’s five, it’s six, it’s seven pitches every at-bat. It’s hard to punch him out. There’s walks. It’s a nice hitter to have around all our young hitters for a lot of different reasons.”
A downpour hit two batters later and there was no way to push through it. The game was official and would have counted as a complete game for Morton, his first since the traditional kind on May 18, 2011 with the Pirates in Cincinnati. A message on the video board included the line, “We expect to play this evening.”
They did. Again.
“We as a staff go around yelling at everybody in a joking manner that, ‘Let’s get going,'" Mansolino said. "It’s kind of the staff’s responsibility to make sure that we don’t come out dead, right? So as the staff is working the room, the different locker rooms and weight rooms and going around, you feel good that they’re going to come out with energy, and they did.”
The first two batters reached against Morton after a walk and single, but he struck out the next three, getting called third strikes with curveballs to Trout and Soler. Morton painted the black. He should have worn coveralls.
Morton escaped another jam in the second after Luis Rengifo’s two-out single and stolen base. Top prospect Christian Moore, making his major league debut, struck out on a fastball to run Morton’s total to five.
Morton struck out three more in the third – two curveballs and a changeup – and stranded Trout after a single. Logan O’Hoppe and Jo Adell opened the fourth with singles, and a strikeout, force play and ground ball kept the Angels scoreless.
The 10th strikeout came on a curveball to Zach Neto leading off the fifth, and Morton cruised through the inning on nine pitches to give him 78. He allowed five hits and walked one batter.
"Man, I feel like he’s really hitting his stride," said catcher Maverick Handley. "Changeup has been excellent of late, and he hit like 97 tonight on the board. That’s crazy impressive. Curveball’s his pitch, too. Struck a guy out and it hit him on the front foot, I think. He had everything working tonight."
“I think I had a good mix," Morton said. "I think my stuff was pretty good and I was throwing strikes, locating pretty well. I don’t know. After two innings, I think I was pretty deep in my pitch count. I think I was somewhere around 40. But I settled in and Mav hung with me. I think it was, all in all, I was making pretty good pitches.”
Morton and Rich Hill in 2011 are the only 41-year-old pitchers with multiple 10-strikeout games in a season since Randy Johnson in 2008. Morton’s career high is 14 in 2018. He was barreling toward that mark tonight following a 67-minute delay to begin the game.
This is more like the version of Morton that the Orioles thought they’d get for their $15 million. He’s allowed eight earned runs and struck out 39 batters in 29 1/3 innings since May 10.
"I mean, for me, it’s landing the fastball, landing the breaking ball," Mansolino said. "You saw him tonight run some fastballs inside, which just made the breaking ball that much more devastating at times. I just felt like he’s in the zone the whole night. And I don’t know if it’s the chicken or the egg with the breaking ball, but to me, it’s the fastball. He gets the fastball in the zone, everything kind of feeds off that. He gets ahead in counts. It’s a tough breaking ball to hit, it’s a tough breaking ball to lay off. To me, that’s what it is.
"And I think there was probably something, my guess without knowing any information about it whatsoever, there’s probably something mechanical that he was working through when he was struggling that they fixed.”
The Orioles left the bases loaded in the sixth. They collected a single and three walks without scoring because of O’Hearn’s double play.
O'Hearn doubled in the eighth and was stranded, but it didn't matter in the end.
Two runs and two storms were ample.
