BALTIMORE — Before opening their latest homestand with a matchup against the National League East-leading Atlanta Braves on Friday night, the Orioles welcomed franchise icon Boog Powell to throw out the ceremonial first pitch in recognition of his birthday Tuesday. The game at Camden Yards was the Orioles’ first at home since Powell, a two-time World Series champion and four-time All-Star in a 14-season stretch with Baltimore that began six decades ago, turned 80.
By the contest’s end, the Orioles’ losing streak was a fifth of the way there. Atlanta provided Baltimore’s 16th consecutive defeat, 3-0, in a game that matched the script of many of its predecessors: The Orioles, who own the major league’s worst record at 38-83, fell behind early and never seemed particularly capable of catching up. Although the final score marked the Orioles’ closest game in eight days — and their first time holding an opponent under five runs during the streak — Braves starter Max Fried cruised to a four-hit shutout on 90 pitches.
The streak is the longest by an American League team in a decade, with the 2011 Seattle Mariners dropping 17 straight.
Left-hander Keegan Akin allowed a leadoff single to open the second, and Atlanta catcher Travis d’Arnaud, freshly signed to a two-year extension, followed with a home run. Akin retired the next four Braves with three strikeouts before Jorge Soler took him deep, as well.
That was the final run Akin allowed in pitching into the sixth, benefiting when Adam Duvall’s deep fly ball with two batters on stopped at the warning track for the final out of the third. The out marked the first of seven in a row for Akin before an error by shortstop Richie Martin and a walk of d’Arnaud, but Dillon Tate stranded both then got the first two outs of the seventh, the latter coming on a diving catch from left fielder Austin Hays. The outing lowered Akin’s ERA as a starter this season to 8.87.
But even as the Orioles’ bullpen kept the game close from there, Baltimore’s offense offered little opposition against Fried. A two-out double from Trey Mancini was all that kept him from facing the minimum through four innings, needing 40 pitches to do so. The Orioles taxed Fried for 18 pitches in the fifth, nearly twice as many as he required in any preceding frame, but he followed with a sixth-pitch sixth, nine-pitch seventh and 10-pitch eighth.
Richie Martin grounded out on the first pitch of the ninth, then Fried struck out Cedric Mullins on four pitches. On the second pitch of his at-bat, Ryan Mountcastle hit a hard grounder to the left side, but third baseman Austin Riley dove to snag it and threw him out at first, completing the shutout and extending the streak.
When Tate took the mound with two Braves on base, it marked the seventh time in 10 appearances he had inherited multiple runners. All but one of the previous 14 had scored, in addition to six of his own runs, in that span.
But Tate stranded them both. Left-hander Paul Fry, who had struggled with 11 walks and 13 earned runs allowed over his previous three innings, came on to get the final out of the frame, and despite allowing a double to Braves slugger Freddie Freeman, he left him at second and got through the eighth unscathed for his first scoreless outing of more than one inning since Aug. 2 — the Orioles’ last win.
Left-hander Tanner Scott, whose ERA had risen by a run over his past six appearances, worked a scoreless ninth.
