For about a week, Colton Cowser’s colorful energy and Jordan Westburg’s robotic stoicism were forced apart, Westburg freshly in the majors as Cowser pushed to join him. Wednesday, the pair of top Orioles prospects reunited in a big league ballpark Wednesday.
“I gave him a little bit of a hard time already today; he gave me a hard time as well,” Cowser said before his major league debut. “So we’re back to normal.”
Perhaps what the pair showed in the sixth inning of a 6-3 victory over the New York Yankees will be the Orioles’ new normal. Cowser’s first hit with Baltimore, a left-on-left RBI single, put a scuffling Orioles offense on the board. Westburg, in his eighth major league game, followed with a line drive past left fielder Jake Bauers’ diving effort, his first career triple plating two before he raced home himself on Adam Frazier’s grounder.
The four-run frame was a welcome outburst for an Orioles team that had dropped six of seven games to fall to 50-35. It also provided support for right-hander Dean Kremer, who struck out 10 — three beyond his previous career mark — while allowing two runs over seven innings. Kremer also set a career high and matched the team’s season high by inducing 18 swings-and-misses, 14 coming on 24 swings against his four-seamer and cutter.
Both runs Kremer allowed came in the fifth, the only inning he didn’t strike out at least one Yankees batter. Josh Donaldson homered to begin the frame, making Kremer one of four pitchers to allow 20 home runs this season. Orioles right-hander Tyler Wells is also among them, marking the third time in franchise history multiple pitchers surrendered at least 20 home runs in the first half of the season.
After Isiah Kiner-Falefa singled with one out, Kremer seemed to get a double play. But second baseman Adam Frazier bobbled the ball before flipping to shortstop Gunnar Henderson, whose rushed throw sailed over first baseman Ryan O’Hearn and into the camera well, where it struck a YES Network cameraman. The game was delayed more than 15 minutes as medical professionals tended to Pete Stendel, who raised an arm to the crowd when carted off the field.
When play resumed, Kyle Higashioka singled Volpe home to give New Yorka 2-0 lead. But an Orioles offense averaging 2.6 runs per game over the past week soon started stringing hits together. With one out in the sixth, Cedric Mullins doubled, his first extra-base hit in 38 at-bats since coming off the injured list. Aaron Hicks, a former Yankee who has been booed relentlessly in the series, followed with an infield single.
It put runners on the corners for Cowser, the organization’s No. 2 prospect who lined out at 108 mph in his first at-bat before grounding out in his second. Facing left-hander Nick Ramirez, he whacked a two-strike breaking ball into right field to produce his first hit and RBI. Cowser then scored behind Hicks on Westburg’s go-ahead triple.
Westburg making it home on Frazier’s grounder proved vital in the eighth when Volpe hit the first home run off All-Star Orioles reliever Yennier Cano this year, with the opposite-field shot clearing Yankee Stadium’s short porch with a projected distance of 343 feet. An infield single followed, but Cano retired the next two batters before manager Brandon Hyde turned to All-Star closer Félix Bautista for a four-out save.
After he recorded the first, the Orioles capitalized on the short porch themselves, with Ryan O’Hearn — like Cowser, a product of Sam Houston — hitting a two-run home run that Statcast tracked as clearing the fence in only Yankee Stadium and Houston’s Minute Maid Park. Bautista struck out two around a walk in the ninth for his 23rd save.
The victory provides the Orioles a chance to salvage a split in the four-game series after falling in the first two games. It also ensured they will leave the last of their two trips to New York in second place in the American League East.
This story will be updated.
Orioles at Yankees
Thursday, 7:05 p.m.
TV: MASN
Radio: 97.9 FM, 101.5 FM, 1090 AM
()