Like his team, pitcher Bryan Baker is on a roll right now

It doesn’t have its own name like “Homer Hose,” in fact it doesn’t have any name, but Bryan Baker’s little backward dance off the mound Wednesday night after getting a strikeout in Washington had the texting on his cell phone pretty active for a while.

He said he heard quite a bit about it after he had pitched a 1-2-3 seventh inning to preserve what was then a 3-0 O’s lead. Using his changeup, which was on point in that game, he got strikeouts of CJ Abrams and Lane Thomas.

In the early going this year, the changeup has become a big pitch for Baker. It’s often been a big pitch for the Orioles as a pitching staff. Baltimore pitchers threw the second-most changeups in the American League in 2022. And this year, at 13.7 percent usage, the Orioles rank third in the league behind the Los Angeles Angels (14.4) and New York Yankees (14.2) in throwing changeups.

“I feel like I finally kind of found it against the Nationals the other day,” Baker said earlier today of his change. “Made a little bit of a tweak with my grip. But just need to maintain consistency with it. Kind of the hardest pitch to do that with, because it’s such a feel pitch. So, yeah, will just try to hold on to what I had the other night.

“The action was good. And it wasn’t too slow to, like, where I was telegraphing it and letting them know it’s coming, and sometimes I do that. Yeah, just try to maintain that going forward.”

Baker used his slider more than his changeup last year, throwing it 26 percent to 17 for the changeup. But the mix has changed early on this year and he’s using the changeup 26 percent and slider 15. Both play off his fastball, which he uses 57.6 percent at an average velocity of 95.7 mph.

Baker said he had one of his all-time strong changeups on Wednesday.

“Probably, yeah. But it was kind of a small sample size. You have to judge a pitch off of three or four of them, as opposed to a starter, where you may see 15 or 20 of them. With us (relievers) it kind of depends on how it feels in the bullpen, how it felt earlier that day. A multitude of things. But I had no idea if it would be that good in that game. Faced a righty first and didn’t plan on heavy changeup use there. A lot of times in the ‘pen you are really focusing on just getting that first out. So, a lot of times I am not focusing on my changeup or the bullpen action on it that night, but it was there when needed.

“But you get a couple of reps with it and then it’s, ‘Well I can use this to a righty tonight also.’ There were times last year I felt I could throw it 50 percent of the time in a particular outing, and that might mean eight, 10 pitches where I could use it. It was definitely a good night for it in Washington."

And Baker, like his team, is on a roll right now. His ERA is 2.89 over nine games on the year. But you might remember he gave up three runs in his first game of the season in Boston. Since then he has thrown 8 2/3 scoreless innings on two hits with one walk and 10 strikeouts. That is an .074 batting average against in that span.

And his celebration this time after a strikeout was the little backward dance, a moonwalk look for him.

“Yeah, I’ve heard quite a bit about that one the last couple of days,” he said, laughing. "Most of the time it just happens. Definitely wasn’t the plan.”

Click here for the strikeout and the dance from Wednesday night.