SEATTLE -- If this had been April or even May, the Orioles may have just gone down quietly. The momentum shift would have been too much to overcome. A resilient win likely would not have been in the cards.
But it’s June, and Baltimore may be back. More signs of that arrived Thursday afternoon.
The O’s used back-to-back home runs from Adley Rutschman and Gunnar Henderson in the sixth inning to notch a 4-3 victory over the Mariners, completing a three-game sweep at T-Mobile Park. The Orioles (25-36) have won a season-high six in a row as they head to Sacramento to continue their West Coast road trip vs. the A’s on Friday.
“I feel like we’re making strides in the right direction of getting back to what we know we can do,” Henderson said.
One sequence across the fifth and sixth innings may have been the most impressive of the season.
Seattle went ahead, 3-1, in the bottom of the fifth on a two-run homer by Cal Raleigh, his MLB-high 24th of the season. If Baltimore was going to win, it would need to do so in comeback fashion for the 10th time this year.
The O’s wasted no time. Jackson Holliday drew a leadoff walk against Mariners starter Bryan Woo in the top of the sixth. Then, Rutschman followed with a game-tying two-run homer -- his seventh of the season and his second in as many games. Three pitches later, Henderson also took Woo deep, belting a go-ahead solo home run to right field, his eighth long ball of the year.
But the Orioles still needed a shutdown inning. And they got one from right-hander Zach Eflin, who came back out for the bottom of the sixth and worked a 1-2-3 frame to cap his 88-pitch quality start (three earned runs allowed over six innings with a season-high seven strikeouts).
It was the type of performance Baltimore orchestrated so often in 2023 (when it went an American League-best 101-61 and won the AL East) and early in ‘24 (91-71, AL Wild Card). The players are drawing upon those experiences while facing atypical adversity.
“This group's won a lot of games in the last two years. You don't win that many games if you're a quitter,” interim manager Tony Mansolino said. “So these guys haven't quit. They didn't quit earlier in the year. They kept competing, it just didn't go our way. They're continuing to do what they've done all year, and today, it was nice. Get the sweep and battle back the way that they did against good pitching.
“I'd like to say I’m surprised, but I'm not, because we’ve seen it for a couple years.”
If the O’s plan to keep the momentum going, they’ll need Rutschman and Henderson -- the team’s two core stars -- to step up at big times, like they did Wednesday (which they hadn't been doing amid the disappointing start).
After entering June with a .203 batting average, Rutschman is heating up. The 26-year-old is 7-for-13 (.538) over the first three games of the month. He collected three hits in both the opener and the finale in Seattle.
“He’s been having great at-bats. He’s been getting on base,” Henderson said.
As for Henderson, the 23-year-old shortstop’s OPS has gone from .674 at the start of May to .750. More production should be coming for the youngster who placed fourth in AL MVP Award voting last season.
“It’s funny, you look up at the scoreboard and kind of where he’s at with his numbers and there’s a feeling of like, ‘What’s wrong with Gunn?’ But then as it kind of goes on and you look up, he’s actually doing just fine, he’s doing great,” Mansolino said. “He’s probably about two weeks away from putting himself in the MVP ballot area.”
The O’s, who previously swept a three-game series vs. the White Sox in Baltimore last weekend, have won nine of 11. They are 10-8 since Mansolino became interim manager on May 17, when Brandon Hyde was dismissed.
There’s still work to do. But the Orioles are in a much better spot now than they were on May 24, when they fell to 16-34, a season-worst 18 games below .500.
“I understand we dug ourselves a big hole, but you can always climb out of it,” Eflin said. “It’s a 162-game season. None of us have lost confidence. None of us have gone home depressed or anything. We’re here to win every single game that we have. ...
“We’re just bought into winning every single day, and nothing’s really changed from us from the start of the year. We’re just winning now and we’re having fun and you can start to kind of feel it. It’s an addiction, and people are starting to feel it.”