Are your brooms in reach?
Understandable if not. The Orioles have failed to close the deal in a potential sweep twice in the last two weeks. Their last sweep was June 17-19, a three-game set against Houston.
Sunday, the Orioles go for a three-game sweep of the Texas Rangers, thanks to a pair of nine-run outings by the offense. The Orioles have outscored the Rangers 18-1 on 29 hits in two games.
But including Saturday’s 9-0 win, pitching got the Orioles to this point.
Saturday, it was Daniel Cabrera who battled through a difficult first inning before shutting down the Texas hit machine for six innings.
“It was a scary moment when he loaded the bases,” third baseman Melvin Mora said. “He was able to handle that pretty good. He was overpowering. He can challenge their players, they’ve got some great hitters in Texas.”
It was Cabrera’s first scoreless outing of the season.
Cabrera looked untouchable for about four innings Saturday night. But he hit a wall in the sixth, when his pitch count began to balloon. Thanks to a nine-pitch at-bat that inning against Rangers ball-crusher Josh Hamilton, and his 26-pitch first inning, Cabrera’s bid for a complete game came up short.
Cabrera retired 16 of 17 batters from the second out of the game into the sixth inning.
But Cabrera would depart after six innings, giving way to recently-recalled right-hander Rocky Cherry — the organization’s best Rocky since Coppinger.
In the past few weeks, the Orioles rotation has shown flashes of brilliance in four-of-five slots. There was Jeremy Guthrie’s first career complete game, Garrett Olson’s near-shutout the next night, and Chris Waters’ eye-popping major league debut.
Cabrera rebounded after six rough starts, in which he went 1-3 with a 7.22 ERA since his complete game effort on July 2.
“My toughest call with him is reading whether or not he’s got command of the strike zone. You really can’t stray away from that thought process for very long,” manager Dave Trembley said. “ You’ve got to stay with him. You have to trust what he’s got, but you have to know your customers.”
The offense was more complete, even if for just one night.
Juan Castro even got into the act, going 3-for-3 with two runs scored before leaving the game in the sixth with a mild groin strain.
The top three in the batting order combined to go 6-for-11 with two home runs, six runs and eight RBIs.
Mora and Nick Markakis each homered to power the offense.
Kevin Millar chipped in with an RBI single, but also with the best nickname of the night, bestowed upon rookie left-hander Chris Waters, who starts Sunday’s series finale.
“Guthrie and Cabrera have done a nice job and that’s why we’ve won the first two games of this series so we’ve got to continue this tomorrow and hopefully H2O will take over, H2O being Waters,” Millar said with his trademark grin. “Hopefully he can repeat what he did in Anaheim and throw an eight-inning one hitter.”
