“The first walk-off home run of your career,” asked MASN’s Ben Wagner. “How does it feel, Colton?”
“It feels wet.”
Yesterday’s weather was soggy, and on Sunday, after the Orioles’ unexpected Game 1 walk-off win and a Gatorade shower, home plate was a little soggy, too. Staring at a 3-2 hole with future Hall of Famer Kenley Jansen on the mound for Detroit in the ninth inning, the Birds rallied in unexpected fashion, earning their first walk-off of the season, courtesy of Colton Cowser’s three-run bomb.
For both offenses, runs and loud hits were precious today, and before the ninth-inning comeback, it looked like the difference-maker for Detroit was going to be a pair of unearned runs coming off a 32-mph Spencer Torkelson squibber that Pete Alonso made an error on. Fortunately, Cowser’s 440-foot bomb erased those mistakes, absolved Alonso of his fielding mishap, and took starter Brandon Young off the hook for a loss he didn’t deserve.
Let’s talk about Young first. This was all good news for a guy who’s always on the fringes of the Orioles rotation, and for the Orioles themselves, who could really use some stability from their starters, even—especially—if it comes from their No. 5 guy.
Facing a Detroit lineup that’s lost seven—oops, now eight—in a row, Young looked just fine. Actually, we do often damn the guy with faint praise, but he looked really good. His two-seam sinking fastball had movement. His splitter—remade, per the MASN broadcast—features an additional 7” of break. He jammed both righties and lefties with his fastball inside. After Young landed a perfect fastball on the corner in the third, Ben McDonald said, from the MASN booth, “He’s got spot control today.”
Young had just one bad inning in an otherwise superb performance. After rolling through the first and second innings on just nine pitches apiece, and dancing around a two-out double in the third, Young conceded two runs in the fourth, neither earned. He left up a high fastball that Kevin McGonigle punched past a diving Jeremiah Jackson to lead off the inning. Bad defense compounded the mistake. Designated hitter Dillon Dingler hit a humpback squibber toward first that Pete Alonso let bounce, thinking he’d go for the double play. Instead, the ball squirted past him, and his throw to second was hasty enough that Jackson muffed it. All the runners were safe. Then, a sac fly, single, and another sac fly scored them both. While none of the runs were charged to Young, it was 2-0 Detroit, and the big righty looked ruffled.
But to his credit, he didn’t unravel, and he managed to hold on for some length. He tossed an easy fifth, navigated around two two-out singles in the sixth—one just in front of a diving Tyler O’Neill, making you wish we had nimble outfielders—and came back out after 80-plus pitches to get two outs in the seventh, both on swinging strikeouts.
It was a really impressive day for Young, who lowered his ERA to 3.47, and makes my take the most obvious in the world when I say we should look forward to his next start.
The fact that Young left with the score 2-1 in the seventh and on the hook for a loss, however, tells you just how little the O’s had done against Framber Valdez. Despite Valdez’s struggles recently, today his stuff looked just fine, especially his hook, which he used to great advantage to keep the O’s off-balanced for six innings in which he struck out five. O’s hitters were wearing their frustration at not timing up Valdez’s breaking stuff.
The box score showed a goose egg for the home team until the sixth, in fact, when Valdez hung a curveball against Gunnar Henderson—here it is, right down the chute, and here is Gunnar, blasting it onto the flag court.
After that, Valdez was out, and the Orioles still needed to find one run or more from inside the couch cushions.
But after Tigers fastballer Will Vest tossed a shutdown seventh, and the O’s Keegan Akin allowed a third Tigers run in the eighth, it felt like the momentum was going all the wrong way.
There was some poor play, but also some silly luck involved in the Tigers’ third run. Akin annoyingly walked the leadoff hitter, then Matt Vierling’s little duck snort to right put runners at the corners. Detroit pinch-hit the No. 1 pick in the 2020 draft (ahead of Heston Kjerstad) Spencer Torkelson, and the slugger responded with a 37.2-mph nubber to first. Pete Alonso had no play on it, and the third run scored. From the booth, Ben Wagner called it a “very meager RBI” for Torkelson, and McDonald lamented, “The Orioles just can’t catch a break.” It was deflating, indeed.
The Orioles’ search for runs turned up one more in the eighth. Jeremiah Jackson hit a leadoff two-bagger off new reliever Kyle Finnegan, moved to third on pinch-hitter Colton Cowser’s slow roller, and made it 3-2 on Taylor Ward’s ringing RBI single. But Baltimore came up short after that: Gunnar Henderson walked on a 3-2 pitch, then Adley fought off a few two-strike pitches plus a failed challenge by Detroit, but he flew out. Detroit went to future Hall of Fame closer Kenley Jansen, who got Pete Alonso to fly out for the fourth time today. Alonso’s frustration was appreciable.
Could the O’s produce a comeback in the ninth against the future Hall of Famer? By now, you know they could. Here’s how it went. With one out, the pinch-hitting Jackson Holliday worked himself a walk off Jansen and stole second. Nicely fouling off a few, Leody Taveras got aboard by free pass, too. Jeremiah Jackson had himself a two-on, one-out situation. But he popped it up, which felt like it could be it. Unless you had massive confidence in Colton Cowser, which I didn’t. As moos echoed through the stadium, Holliday and Taveras pulled off the double steal. Helpful, but ultimately not necessary. Jansen threw two cutters down the middle, then a sinker. Cowser connected, and the crack off the bat left little doubt:
Cowser’s first walk-off homer of his career, and the Orioles’ first walk-off win of the year. The O’s have played some bad baseball this year, and so has Cowser, but as they say in a different sport, on any given Sunday, any team can win. The Orioles now have a two-game win streak, and pick up again in just a few hours for Game 2, starting at 6:05. Let’s go for the series sweep!
