The Orioles have rediscovered their home run stroke. Now, they just have to get a few runners on base to make their big swings count.
They hit three solo homers Thursday night, but that was not enough to dig the Orioles out of a four-run hole and complete a sweep of their three-game series against the Texas Rangers at Oriole Park.
Newly acquired starter Wade Miley allowed four runs on eight hits in five innings in his Orioles debut and the Rangers survived three middle-inning homers to score a 5-3 victory before 28,762 on a warm August night with — believe it or not — playoff implications.
The Rangers (63-46) and Orioles (61-46) came into the game with three victories each in the seven-game season series, so both teams were playing for the head-to-head playoff tiebreaker in the event that they finish with the same record.
"I was impressed with the way our guys pitched against them," manager Buck Showalter said, "because that's a tough lineup to go through and stay engaged in the game as we did for three games. It's the type of thing we're going to have to do to get where we want to go. … I'm proud of the way we presented ourselves against one of the best teams in the league and maybe in both leagues. They've got a lot of weapons."
Miley (7-9), who was acquired Sunday before the nonwaiver trade deadline, allowed a home run to Jonathan Lucroy in the second inning and another single run in the third when Delino DeShields led off with a double and came around to score on a pair of groundouts. The Rangers added two more runs in the fifth on softly hit RBI singles by Ian Desmond and Carlos Beltran.
The Orioles didn't touch Rangers starter A.J. Griffin until the bottom of the fifth, when Mark Trumbo hit a long home run. Pedro Alvarez followed immediately with his 16th home run. Hyun Soo Kim also homered in the game, but the Rangers added an insurance run in the eighth and held on to reclaim the best record in the American League.
"Griffin did a good job of not putting people on base," Showalter said. "Did we draw a walk tonight? That's probably the difference. I thought our guys pitched pretty well. [Those] guys have so many different looks as starters, [Yu] Darvish, [Cole] Hamels, Griffin. It's an adjustment every night."
Dual debut dinger
When Lucroy homered off Miley in the second inning, it was Lucroy's first home run as a Texas Ranger and it was the first one surrendered by Miley as a member of the Orioles. Both were traded right before Monday's deadline and were playing in their first series with their new teams.
More on Orioles' back-to-backs
In the fifth inning, Trumbo and Alvarez provided the Orioles with their 12th set of back-to-back homers this season. Trumbo regained sole possession of the major league home run lead with his 31st homer. Alvarez hit his 16th of the year in just 232 at-bats. He is second on the club — behind Trumbo — in home run frequency, hitting one every 14.5 at-bats.
Kim's home cookin'
Kim has been swinging a very consistent bat since he settled into a regular role, but it took him until Thursday night to hit his first home run at Camden Yards. He had struck out looking in his first two at-bats of the game, but turned on a pitch from Griffin and drove it deep into the right-center-field bleachers for his fourth homer of the season. Kim also singled in his final at-bat to raise his batting average to .335.
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