In a long season, there are ebbs and flows, Orioles manager Brandon Hyde said Monday afternoon, and a 15-game road losing streak is a flow the Orioles aren’t enjoying.
That’s why he was out of the dugout arguing what proved to be a pivotal call two batters into the game and eventually was ejected for it: The margins are fine, and this one swung another in his opponents’ favor.
Cleveland scored three times in a first inning that featured a replay-changed hit-by-pitch call on what would have been a third strike, and that big early inning helped dump the Orioles to a club-record 16th straight road loss in Cleveland on Monday.
Of course, the actual difference in the game was their own doing. Cleveland’s fourth run came in a sixth inning that began with an error on first baseman Ryan Mountcastle, putting leadoff man César Hernández on, a passed ball against Pedro Severino moving him to second, and a dropped foul ball by second baseman Stevie Wilkerson, extending the at-bat that ended in a run-scoring double by José Ramírez.
Orioles starting pitcher Dean Kremer settled in well after that 27-pitch first inning and went on to face the minimum from the second through the fifth when the Orioles unraveled in the sixth.
He struck out two in 5 2/3 innings, allowing four hits with a pair of strikeouts in his return from a second minor league assignment of the season. His ERA is down to 6.65.
