Ryan Mountcastle stepped to the plate for his first at-bat Saturday mired in his longest home run drought of the season: 17 games dating to May 10. He put an end to that skid with a two-run shot on his first swing of the day and added another three innings later for good measure, leading a four-homer afternoon for the Orioles in a 9-5 series-clinching victory over the Tampa Bay Rays.
The Orioles’ first baseman has caught fire since a slow start to the month of May, hitting .459 (17-for-37) over his past 10 games. The one missing element of that stretch had been the long ball, but he made up for it Saturday with two blasts over 400 feet.
“Everybody goes through little stretches here and there,” said Mountcastle, who dropped to as low as seventh in the lineup right before heating back up. “I don’t know if that’s the reason why but yeah, just happy to be swinging it good again and producing for the team.”
He wasn’t alone, either. Anthony Santander, on his bobblehead day, hit the Orioles’ first Eutaw Street home run of the season and Jordan Westburg returned from a two-game absence because of a hand/wrist injury and hit a 414-foot homer of his own.
Baltimore needed the offense early with starter Kyle Bradish lasting only 2 2/3 innings. Coming off seven hitless innings against the Chicago White Sox, Bradish’s pitches didn’t avoid the Rays’ bats nearly as well. Tampa Bay racked up seven hits against him in the first two innings and Bradish’s command slipped from there. With a runner on first and two outs in the third, Bradish walked three straight hitters to bring manager Brandon Hyde out of the dugout to pull his right-hander after he threw 26 pitches in the inning and 76 total.
“Just a bad day,” Bradish said. “A bad day to be a starting pitcher in Baltimore today.”
It was the shortest outing by an Orioles starter this season and Bradish’s shortest — excluding a planned two-inning start before the playoffs last year — since April 25, 2023, when he went 2 1/3 against the Boston Red Sox. Still only six starts into his season after undergoing platelet-rich plasma injections to treat a partially torn ulnar collateral ligament in his elbow this winter, Bradish has pitched past the fifth inning just once thus far but carries a 3.18 ERA.
“I just felt like they put really good at-bats against him, honestly,” Hyde said. “A lot of foul balls, thought the stuff was good. I thought he got tired there in the third. But I thought the stuff was good. The pitch count was up, it was a lot of deep counts, a lot of foul balls. He grinded, I just thought they took really good at-bats off him.”
Yet the Orioles’ bullpen, like it has many times this season, picked its starter up. Five relievers — Jacob Webb, Dillon Tate, Cionel Pérez, Yennier Cano and Keegan Akin — combined to pitch 6 1/3 scoreless innings to allow a back-and-forth game with three ties in the first three innings to become a rout for Baltimore. In games their starter has failed to complete five innings, the Orioles’ bullpen has posted a 3.51 ERA this season. Excluding their April 12 loss to the Milwaukee Brewers in which Jonathan Heasley allowed six runs in relief, that ERA drops to 2.67.
“I think this clubhouse is awesome because guys pick each other up,” said Webb, who recorded seven outs and did not allow a hit in relief of Bradish to earn his first win of the season. “Maybe our starter didn’t have it that day or he’s not feeling on his A-game. I think that’s the beneficial part of having a good clubhouse is that guys are willing to step up and take care of things.”
The Orioles’ offense set the tone for the day in the first inning when Mountcastle and Santander hit back-to-back home runs for an early 3-0 lead. After Mountcastle drove in a pair of runs with his two-out swing, Santander blasted a cutter from Rays starter Taj Bradley over the flag court in right field for the Orioles’ first Eutaw Street home run since he did it Aug. 24, 2023. Santander’s 10 career Eutaw Street homers rank second in franchise history behind Chris Davis (11).
After a three-run response by the Rays in the second inning, highlighted by a two-run triple off the bat of Yandy Díaz, Westburg shook off any concerns over his injured hand/wrist with his ninth homer of the year. The Rays jumped ahead with two more runs in the third, but the Orioles plated three more in the bottom half of the frame on an RBI single by Westburg, an RBI double by Kyle Stowers and a sacrifice fly courtesy of Jorge Mateo. Mountcastle provided some insurance with his second home run in the fourth.
“It was just a good team approach,” Westburg said. “I think we were spitting on [Bradley’s] splitters and cutters down and when he made a mistake in zone and up we put some good swings on the ball.”
Having already picked up a 3-1 win in the opener Friday night, the Orioles extended their streak of avoiding series losses against the American League East to 19 — the longest such streak in team history. The Orioles are 41-19 against the division over that span, which dates back to April 24, 2023. They’re 11-3 against division opponents this season, best among AL East clubs.
Baltimore will look for the sweep Sunday when Cole Irvin faces Zack Littel in the series finale.
Rays at Orioles
Sunday, 1:35 p.m.
TV: MASN2
Radio: 97.9 FM, 101.5 FM, 1090 AM
