Marlins floor Guthrie, O's, 10-4
Starter allows 6 runs, tying season high; Florida closes door vs. bullpen
All the excitement the Orioles generated in their first game back home lasted about as long as Matt Wieters' seemingly harmless fly ball in the second inning hung in the air before carrying into the left-field seats.
Aside from Wieters' three-run home run off Anibal Sanchez, the Orioles did very little right in their 10-4 loss to the Florida Marlins on Tuesday night before an announced 14,821 at sleepy Camden Yards.
Jeremy Guthrie had one of his worst starts of the season, putting his team into a four-run hole in the second inning and allowing six earned runs in the game. The bullpen made sure the Orioles had no chance to come back by surrendering three runs in the ninth inning with Matt Albers failing to retire any of the three hitters he faced.
The defense was again spotty, with second baseman Scott Moore failing to make a key play in the Marlins' four-run second inning and committing a run-scoring throwing error in the eighth.
And the offense managed a respectable 10 hits but went into a slumber in the middle innings against Sanchez when the outcome was still in doubt.
Throw all those elements together and you had a typical performance by these lowly Orioles, who fell to 19-51 after dropping the first contest of a nine-game homestand. They have lost nine of their past 10 games with the Marlins and are 5-17 against them all time.
Overall, the
Orioles have dropped 20 of their past 24 games and eight of their past 10 in a season that grows uglier by the day.
"Not a very good showing there the first couple of innings," said Juan Samuel, who fell to 4-12 as the Orioles' interim manager. "For some reason, Guthrie didn't look right, missing his spots. But he settled down after that. We just couldn't hold them. He just did not look good there the first couple of innings. I started to worry a little bit, but then he kind of settled down there and gave us some good innings."
All-Star shortstop Hanley Ramirez landed the big hit in the Marlins' four-run second with a two-run double. He finished 3-for-4 with three RBIs and is 9-for-17 (.529) with 14 RBIs in five games against the Orioles over the past two seasons.
Guthrie, who has lost five straight decisions to fall to 3-9, surrendered a season-high-tying six earned runs on seven hits and two walks over six-plus innings. He also drew the ire of both the Marlins and plate umpire Doug Eddings after he hit Jorge Cantu in the left side with the first pitch after Ramirez's double down the right-field line gave the Marlins a 4-0 advantage in the second.
There was no further incident, and Guthrie said he was not surprised by Eddings' warning.
"The situation probably looks bad," Guthrie said. "They get a few runs like that, and the ball gets away inside. It's not surprising. It doesn't affect the way I approach the game. I am still going to throw inside. It is still a part of my game. It wasn't a big deal."
After Cantu was hit, Guthrie retired 13 of the next 14 hitters he faced before he was chased by Gaby Sanchez's RBI double with no outs in the seventh that made the score 5-3. Ramirez followed with a run-scoring single off Jason Berken to finish Guthrie's line.
"I thought the location was better later in the game," Guthrie said.
"I made terrible pitches with the slider, especially in the inning that hurt me. I didn't really make great ones with it later on, so I just pretty much tried to quit throwing it. Pitch execution was definitely the biggest difference between the second and the other innings."
While Guthrie settled down in the middle innings, so did Anibal Sanchez, who was never in much trouble after the second. In that inning, Ty Wigginton hit a leadoff double (on his T-shirt givewaway night) and Adam Jones singled, putting runners on first and third with one out.
Wieters then jumped on Sanchez's first pitch and sent a high fly ball to left-center field. It figured to at least score a run on a sacrifice fly, but Chris Coghlan kept drifting back to the wall before his leaping attempt came up short.
It was Wieters' sixth homer of the season and his second consecutive three-RBI game. It was also the Orioles' first homer of three runs or more since Luke Scott's grand slam off Seattle Mariners reliever Brandon League on May 13. It was just their fourth homer of three runs or more all season.
"First and third, I was just trying to hit a fly ball," Wieters said. "The ball was carrying a good way tonight, so I thought I had a chance. [That] it carries out is a good feeling. I think that's going back to not trying to do too much, not trying to hit home runs. It's the double and home runs that carry, so just try to hit the ball to the gap and get the ball to carry."
Jake Fox, whom the Orioles acquired from the Oakland Athletics earlier in the day, did the same when he was called on to pinch hit for Cesar Izturis with two men on in the seventh and the home team trailing by three runs. Fox drove a pitch from Taylor Tankersley deep into right-center, but Marlins center fielder Cody Ross made the catch at the wall.
The Orioles were a few feet from tying a game that got hopelessly away from them when the Marlins scored one run in the eighth on Moore's throwing error and three more runs in the ninth off Albers and Frank Mata.
"After [Wieters] hit the home run, I thought we could stay in the game," third baseman Miguel Tejada said. "They get a chance, they get a couple guys on base and score a lot of runs."
Jeff Zrebiec
