Yennier Cano wins 13-pitch battle as O's hold on to beat Halos

ANAHEIM – Yennier Cano was in a dogfight.

Pitching in relief of starter Tomoyuki Sugano in the bottom of the eighth inning, Cano left a sinker up in the zone that Angels outfielder Jo Adell turned on for a line drive base hit. Jorge Soler, pinch-hitting for Kyren Paris, walked on six pitches. Zach Neto came up to the plate, representing the winning run.

Cano needed to make something happen. A double play would’ve been ideal, but he’d take a strikeout, too. But Neto, a rising star in Anaheim, wasn’t going to make it easy on him.

Neto was patient, laying off Cano’s first two pitches: both sinkers low and outside the zone. He managed to foul off a fastball before Cano missed way outside with another sinker to fall behind in the count 3-1.

From that point on, he went all-in on his sinker. Neto whiffed on one to make the count full, after which he fouled each sinker off. Pitch after pitch, the two remained in a stalemate with momentum – and the game – on the line.

Then, on the 13th pitch of the at-bat, Neto bit on one. He chased a sinker just under the zone, swinging just over it for the third strike.

“He’s a tough at-bat,” Cano said of Neto. “He was protecting the plate, but he was also trying to get a good hit, maybe even a home run. He has a good swing, he’s probably one of the best I’ve faced so far this season. But it was a good thing I was able to come back from three balls to strike him out.”

Cano was pulled immediately after, his job done. Keegan Akin replaced him and drew a flyout from Nolan Schanuel to end the inning and officially escape the inning with the lead -- en route to a 4-1 win to snap the Orioles’ five-game skid, their longest losing streak of the season.

“Things have not gone our way this year,” manager Brandon Hyde said. “Any way right now -- we played really good baseball tonight. … I thought we took good at-bats. We didn’t score a ton of runs, but I thought our at-bats were really competitive. I thought our guys were really into it, and you could hear that. It’s been a grind for all of us, players included, staff and everybody. We want to play better baseball, so to kind of hold on the way we did … that was huge.”

Cano’s moment was made possible because of how aggressive the Orioles’ bats were from the jump. Gunnar Henderson set the tone Friday when he located the second pitch he saw – a 77.6 mph changeup at the bottom of the zone from Angels starter Kyle Hendricks – and absolutely crushed it, sending the ball flying a Statcast-projected 400 feet for a solo shot to give the Orioles an early lead.

The O’s kept the momentum going in the next inning, when Ryan O’Hearn and Tyler O’Neill -- the latter making his return from an IL stint due to neck inflammation -- each drew walks to leadoff the second. Jackson Holliday drove O’Hearn in on the very next pitch with an RBI single up the middle. Emmanuel Rivera soon followed suit with a base hit of his own that scored O’Neill to put Baltimore up 3-0.

Another layer that might’ve made Cano’s night more pressing: He had a rough outing the night before in Minnesota. He faced three batters, walked two of them, and gave up two earned runs on 18 pitches in the Orioles’ 5-2 loss to the Twins.

He was in a similar hole on Friday, but he put his faith in his sinker.

“I have confidence in that pitch,” Cano said. “What I needed in that moment was to look for a double play to get out of the inning, but I wasn’t it throwing it well against him. He kept fouling it off. It’s my best pitch, and I utilized it 100%.

“I had faith in it, and I was able to punch him out.”

Hyde didn’t love the fact that his reliever got into a 13-pitch standoff, but he’ll live with the result for now.

“He made a huge pitch there 3-2,” Hyde said. “Yenny had a tough day yesterday. It wasn’t going his way tonight, either. He’s not a guy who doesn’t have command. A little bit of a hiccup the last couple of days. We expect Yenny to be back to himself soon, but he had a huge punchout in a big spot.”