BALTIMORE _ For a second straight night, the Orioles bats came alive late for an improbable come-from-behind win to stun the visiting Pittsburgh Pirates, 9-6, in 11 innings.
Two innings after he tied the game with a pinch-hit, two-run home run with two outs, rookie Trey Mancini hit a three-run home run to end the game in the 11th.
Mancini ultimately had plenty to do with erasing the 6-1 deficit the Orioles carried into the eighth inning.
Center fielder Adam Jones hit a one-out home run into the Orioles' bullpen to start their comeback in earnest. It reignited an inning later with a leadoff walk in the ninth inning from designated hitter Mark Trumbo.
Trumbo went to third on a double down the left-field line by second baseman Jonathan Schoop and scored on a pinch-hit sacrifice fly by outfielder Joey Rickard to make it a 6-3 deficit. Schoop scored on a double just inside the left-field line by shortstop J.J. Hardy to score the Orioles' fourth run, and Mancini won an eight-pitch battle with closer Tony Watson for a two-run home run to tie it at 6 in the ninth.
Brad Brach and Mychal Givens kept the Pirates off the board in the 10th and 11th, respectively, to set up Mancini's 11th-inning heroics.
On Tuesday night, they erased a 4-1 deficit with three home runs and won a 10th-inning single by Trumbo. Wednesday's comeback resulted in their sixth walk-off win of the year, and improved the team's record to 9-1 in extra-inning games.
Miley has been running counts full all year, and mostly getting away with the high pitch counts and dangerous situations that spring from them. The Pirates didn't let him Wednesday.
Miley faced just 18 batters in what was his shortest healthy start of the season, and six of them went to 3-2 counts as the Pirates chased Miley in the third inning with a 4-1 deficit.
Entering the game, Miley had gone to a league-high 57 full counts, according to Baseball-Reference.com's Play Index, an average of over five per game. He reached that in 2 2/3 innings Tuesday, and unlike many of his earlier starts where he had high pitch counts but limited the damage, the Pirates got to him when they had chances.
He stranded two runners who singled in a 23-pitch first inning, and after a pair of singles around a strikeout to open the second, two runs scored on a double down the left-field line by second baseman Max Moroff, the No. 9 hitter in the lineup. They tacked on two more on a double down the right-field line in the third inning by backup catcher Elias Diaz.
A two-out walk to Moroff on his sixth full count of the night was all manager Buck Showalter was ready to watch, and Mike Wright came on to relieve Miley after 83 pitches and just eight outs recorded. He ultimately ceded four runs on eight hits with a pair of walks and four strikeouts, raising his ERA to 3.27 on the season.
In the home half of the second inning, the Orioles managed to get on the board without the benefit of a base hit.
First baseman Chris Davis and Trumbo each walked off Kuhl, and Davis went to third on a fly ball to center field by Schoop. That put him in position to score on a sacrifice fly by left fielder Hyun Soo Kim.
Wright successfully got out of the third inning to strand a pair of runners, then settled in to allow just one hit in the ensuing 3 1/3 innings of relief, lowering his ERA to 5.40 on the year.
He gave way to newcomer Edwin Jackson in the top of the seventh inning.
Jackson gave the Orioles 2 2/3 innings of relief in his debut, allowing two runs on three hits (including a home run) with a pair of walks and a strikeout. Left-hander Richard Bleier recorded the final out of the ninth inning.
