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DETROIT — Joey Ortiz can joke about it now.
In his first at-bat as a member of the Orioles, his soft liner appeared to be heading for the left field grass before Detroit Tigers outfielder Akil Baddoo charged in, dove and robbed the infield prospect of his first base knock.
“Welcome to The Show,” Ortiz figured.
But in the fickle way of baseball, Ortiz was on the receiving end of a bit of fortune in his next plate appearance. He fell down 0-2 in the count, fouled off two pitches, took two borderline changeups for balls and then hacked a bouncer that just snuck over first baseman Spencer Torkelson’s lunging glove for a two-run single.
“The game always pays you back,” Ortiz said. “It’s circular.”
In that way, Ortiz began his account for Baltimore, and he continued with a sacrifice fly that kick-started the Orioles’ five-run seventh inning. With three RBIs in his debut, Ortiz played a key role in Baltimore’s series-opening 7-4 victory against the Detroit Tigers, in which the Orioles battled back once again. And Ortiz became the second Oriole to record three RBIs in his debut, joining Don Baylor in 1970.
The Orioles trailed by two runs entering the seventh, then turned on the jets, piling on with an RBI triple from Cedric Mullins and the second home run of Anthony Santander’s season. In the dugout after, Santander sat with his hood pulled up over his head to protect from the Detroit chill, but there was warmth in his laughter as he spoke with co-hitting coach Ryan Fuller.
Moments earlier, Santander sent that two-run homer into the left-field seats at Comerica Park. For all the merriment in the Orioles’ dugout, it felt like the knockout blow for the Tigers, leaving Santander’s bat at 107.2 mph. They can look so lackadaisical for six innings, and then at the flip of a switch, these Orioles find a way to make everything change.
This is who the 2023 Orioles are.
Look away from a game for long enough and risk missing the late-inning surges of offense that have become commonplace, with the 24 runs scored in the seventh inning of Baltimore’s 25 games this season the most of any single frame thus far. It provided some breathing room — just enough of it — for Félix Bautista to walk the bases loaded in the ninth and then strand them all, part of the 15 runners the Tigers left on base.
With a win Thursday, the Orioles have won 13 of their last 16 games and maintain their place near the top of the American League.
“Our guys are definitely battling and it’s fun to have comeback wins,” manager Brandon Hyde said, before joking that it’s “OK to have a big win once in a while, also.”
The five-run eruption covered for the first start of right-hander Kyle Gibson’s Orioles tenure that ended before completing five innings. He left with two runners on in the fourth and three runs, eight hits and two walks against him after 102 pitches. Right-hander Mike Baumann stranded both of those inherited runners to keep Baltimore within one run, but it was an uncharacteristic evening for Gibson.
“Thankfully, Mike came in and really picked it up for me that inning,” Gibson said. “Offense really picked it up there in the second half of the game. Just after an ugly four innings overall, the team turned it around, and wow, really good last five innings and a big win for us.”
In each of his first five starts, Gibson left the game with the Orioles in the lead or tied. He earned wins in four of those games. And last week against the Tigers, Gibson racked up 11 strikeouts, tying his career high.
The command showed in that start, and his others, wasn’t there Thursday. He issued a two-out walk in the third that proved costly, leading to a double from Kerry Carpenter and a two-run single from Eric Haase. Another run came home earlier, when Baltimore turned a double play with bases loaded in the second.
Even without command of his four-seam fastball and cutter, Gibson played a large part in Detroit hitting 1-for-14 with runners in scoring position. Gibson would’ve leaned more on his slider and curveball, the two pitches he felt he had the feel for, but “I really never felt like I had them respecting the fastball to the point where the slider was going to be that effective repetitively.”
But even without Gibson’s best stuff, the Orioles found a way back into the game.
They did it despite left-hander Cionel Pérez hitting a batter and walking another two in the sixth to continue what has been a major regression from last season. Pérez has run into trouble this season with his four-seam fastball location, missing over the middle of the zone. On Thursday, he couldn’t find the zone at all.
“I just — he’s searching a little bit right now,” Hyde said of Pérez. “I’m trying to find spots for him to try to find it, but we’re playing such close games every single night. ... We need C. We need him to get that confidence going.”
While right-hander Bryan Baker allowed one of the inherited runners from Pérez to score, the Orioles stayed within reach through Ortiz’s two-run single in the fifth. Ortiz’s seventh-inning sacrifice fly uncorked the offense from there.
Mullins dropped in a triple, Adley Rutschman drove in a run, and then Santander was laughing in the dugout, having just watched his first blast since April 15 push Baltimore to a lead the Tigers couldn’t quite catch.
andy.kostka@thebaltimorebanner.com
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Andy Kostka is an Orioles beat writer for The Baltimore Banner. He previously covered the Orioles for The Baltimore Sun. Kostka graduated from the University of Maryland and grew up in Rockville.
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