BALTIMORE _ Dylan Bundy followed up his best start of the season with one that clearly illustrated how his good ones have become the anomalies.
Bundy's fastball averaged 89.8 mph, the lowest average fastball velocity of any start in his major league career, and aged slugger Albert Pujols deposited two 89-mph Bundy fastballs into the left-field seats to help the Los Angeles Angels to a 7-2 win over the Orioles before an announced crowd of 21,106 at Camden Yards on Saturday.
It's been years since Bundy was living in the mid-90s with his fastball, with those days ending when he joined the rotation full-time beginning in 2017. The days of the high-90s _ when Bundy was the fourth overall pick in the 2011 draft _ were gone sooner, mostly thanks to years of elbow injuries.
But this is something else entirely. His velocity has been inconsistent, if not gradually dropping, for years. This was just the second time in Bundy's major league career that he averaged under 90 mph with his fastball, though, and the Angels (19-20) were aggressive against it from the start.
They swung at his first three pitches _ all fastballs _ and put them in play for a single, a fielder's choice, and a hard line drive. The 39-year-old Pujols took one for a ball before Bundy left one high and inside, and Pujols turned on it for a home run.
Bundy stayed away from the fastball well after that to settle in, using his slider and change-up over 50 percent of the time after that.
The Orioles (13-26) quickly erased the deficit from Pujols' first home run of the game with a two-run home run by Dwight Smith Jr., his seventh of the season. But Pujols got a 2-0 fastball in nearly the same place in his next at-bat and did what Hall of Famers do with such pitches.
That made eight of Bundy's 11 home runs allowed this year on the fastball; 30 of the 52 home runs he's allowed since the start of 2018 have come on fastballs. That's tied with New York Yankees left-hander J.A. Happ for the most in baseball during that span.
Before Bundy gave way to the bullpen _ and watched as Gabriel Ynoa pitched a lengthy three-run sixth before 3 1/3 innings of one-run relief by Branden Kline and Jimmy Yacabonis _ the 26-year-old right-hander came out for a fifth inning that was almost exclusively fastballs.
He didn't really command them well, and at one point, with a 2-0 count, pitching coach Doug Brocail came out for a visit. He spent most of the inning around 88 mph before jumping up to 91.8 mph for his final batter, Mike Trout.
Bundy left having allowed three runs on four hits with two walks and two strikeouts. The two home runs were killers, and made his ERA 5.31.
Trout usually crushes the Orioles, but took a rare 0 for 5 on Saturday _ just his 17th time in 1,101 major league games with at least five at-bats and no hits. He struck out with the bases loaded in the sixth inning, and looking in the ninth inning against Kline and Yacabonis, respectively.
