Baltimore – Zach Eflin continues to be a problem for the Tigers.
Making his sixth start after coming back from a lat strain, the 6-6 right-hander dominated the Tigers for six-plus innings helping the Orioles even the series with a 10-1 win at Camden Yards.
“We didn’t have great swings against him,” manager AJ Hinch said. “We chased. We made soft contact and couldn’t get the ball off the ground. It was definitely his night against our lineup.”
In three career starts against the Tigers, he’s allowed three runs in 18.1 innings.
The Tigers managed two singles off him for six innings, one by Riley Greene, who, like Eflin, grew up in Oviedo, Fla., and attended Hagerty High School.
They finally put him on the ropes in the seventh, when it was still a 2-0 game, but couldn’t knock him out.
BOX SCORE: Orioles 10, Tigers 1
With one out, Spencer Torkelson reached on a broken-bat single and Wenceel Perez followed with another soft-liner.
Colt Keith then came within a couple of feet of putting the Tigers in the lead. He crushed a 1-0 changeup and hit it 360 feet to right field. The ball banged off the top of the out-of-town scoreboard.
Torkelson scored and the Tigers had runners at second and third.
The Orioles had lefty Keegan Akin warming. Hinch sent up righty-swinging Dillon Dingler to pinch-hit for Jake Rogers. Orioles’ manager Tony Mansolino stuck with Eflin.
Dingler hit a hard ground ball to third baseman Urias who threw out Perez at the plate.
Mansolino then brought in Akin and Hinch countered with righty Jahmai Jones.
Jones stuck out. Inning over. Tigers’ one and only serious threat, over.
Eflin brings a six-pitch arsenal to the battle and he effectively kept baseballs off the barrel of Tigers’ hitters. He mixed his off-speed mix – changeup, sweeper and curveball – with an assortment of well-placed cutters, sinkers and four-seamers.
“Early on he showed he was going to mix his pitches,” Hinch said. “He threw four pitches to start the game and they were all different pitches. Kind of an indication he was going to mix and match.”
The Tigers put 20 balls in play with an average exit velocity of 84 mph and hit 10 ground-ball outs.
The night wasn’t as smooth for Tigers’ starter Casey Mize, but he was impressive in a different way, soldiering through 5.1 innings with seven strikeouts. There was traffic on the bases in every inning (eight hits and two walks), but he never buckled.
“I thought that was some of the best stuff he’s brought into a game, with his velo and the splitter was effective,” Hinch said. “It was just a lot of pitches early and some deep counts. They made him work but I thought he battled really well.”
The only damage was a first-pitch, two-run homer by Ramon Urias in the third inning. The Orioles decided to attack first pitches in that inning. Cedric Mullins ripped a first-pitch four-seamer inside the bag at first for a double.
Urias hit the next pitch, a first-pitch sinker, on a line over the wall in left-center.
“Sinker down and in, 95 mph, bottom rail,” Mize shrugged. “Sometimes hitters can drop the (bat) head on the ball and lift it out. That’s what he did. Tip the cap, there.”
It looked like the Orioles would break the game open a couple of times, especially in the fourth, when they had runners at the corners and nobody out.
Mize, again, just dug a little deeper. He struck out Ramon Laureano with a splitter and Mullins with a dotted 97-mph sinker.
The inning ended with Urias grounding out to Keith at third base. It was Keith’s first chance in his first big-league start at third.
“I think it’s the best my stuff has been since coming off the IL,” Mize said. “But just too many mistakes that led to a lot of traffic. I feel like I made some big pitches to get out of that. But I made some mistakes over the heart of the plate that they were able to get some base hits on.”
The Orioles blew the game open against the Tigers’ bullpen. It was an especially rough night for Beau Brieske, who was charged with five of the seven runs the Orioles scored in the eighth.
“Sometimes the middle and miss combo is rough,” Hinch said.
Ryan O’Hearn snapped an 0-for-10 with a two-run single and Jordan Westburg followed with a three-run homer.
“The sinker to Westburg went across the entire plate and into his sweet spot,” Hinch said. “Long at-bats, lot of balls in the dirt. He’s having a hard time putting away hitters. It’s been tough for him. We have him a little blow and didn’t use him for a little bit.
“But the execution continues to be missing.”
The Tigers (44-25) will look to take the series Thursday night with ace Tarik Skubal on the mound.
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