masn-baseballs-orioles.jpgThe Orioles set a season high with four home runs tonight and also tied their season high by allowing four home runs, the second night in a row that they’ve surrendered that many to the Nationals.

If that’s going to happen, you may as well win the game and focus on the first part.

“It was a good win,” said manager Buck Showalter following a 9-6 victory at Camden Yards. “I may take a little slower jaunt down Pratt.”

Sounds like a plan. Roll down the windows, crank up the tunes and soak…The Orioles set a season high with four home runs tonight and also tied their season high by allowing four home runs, the second night in a row that they’ve surrendered that many to the Nationals.

If that’s going to happen, you may as well win the game and focus on the first part.

“It was a good win,” said manager Buck Showalter following a 9-6 victory at Camden Yards. “I may take a little slower jaunt down Pratt.”

Sounds like a plan. Roll down the windows, crank up the tunes and soak up the atmosphere.

The Orioles were down 6-2 after five innings before rallying for a run in the sixth and six runs in the seventh.

“There’s just not a whole lot of panic,” Showalter said. “I think they have a lot of faith in each other. They really do. I don’t think they feel like, and I think our pitchers feel that way, too, if we can just get some zeroes up there and get the momentum headed in the other way. I think what I see, it’s a young group, the youngest one in the division, but still a mature group. They don’t panic.”

Chris Davis hit two more home runs as part of a 4-for-4 night. He’s batting .359 with 19 homers and 50 RBIs.

“He’s just been consistent, and when people are consistent in the way they live their life, they have a chance to be consistent in baseball and sports, too,” Showalter said. “He’s in a good place in a lot of ways. All you had to do was be in the dugout before the game. He wanted no part of going out there and accepting an award (AL Player of the Month), but then he knew there was a nice donation made by our ownership to one of his charities that he believes a lot in, so he went out there.

“We’re proud of him and he’s getting back what he’s putting into it. That’s not always the case, but the baseball gods let you off, and Chris has had a lot of people thinking he couldn’t do what he’s doing.

“He squared up a lot of balls, and if you go back through a lot of home runs he hits, a lot of them aren’t strikes, and that’s a tough combination for a pitcher because you’ve really got to get out of the zone to do something. He’s in a good place, obviously, and the people in front of him and behind him are keeping all the focus from just being on him.”

The teams combined for eight home runs, but Showalter didn’t place all the blame on the conditions at Camden Yards.

“There were some balls flying out of Washington, too, and Toronto,” he said. “You better catch the ones that stay in there. That kind of puts a premium at that. You can’t walk people because there’s power through the lineup. The key to it is having a guy like Steve Johnson shut them down for a couple of innings and get us back in the dugout.”

Johnson retired seven in a row, striking out two over 2 1/3 innings, to pick up his first win of the season.

“Probably the key outing was Steve Johnson,” Showalter said. “Stevie was solid. Kind of settled things down and gave us a chance to get back in it a little bit. We got a couple good innings out of our bullpen behind it to make it matter.”