TORONTO _ Dylan Bundy smacked his right hand against the glove on his left in celebration. It was not the last pitch of what might be his last start of 2019, but it was the Orioles right-hander's most important.
Staring at the possibility of another troublesome sixth inning in a year full of them, Bundy got Toronto Blue Jays phenom Vladimir Guerrero Jr. to ground out with two on and end a one-run frame, keeping the large lead the Orioles' batters supplied him intact. Bundy remains a candidate to start the Orioles' season finale Sunday at Fenway Park, but Tuesday's seven-inning outing in Baltimore's 11-4 victory could certainly be an exclamation point on a season in which such performances have been few and far between for the 26-year-old.
Bundy lowered his season ERA to 4.79 and has a 3.99 mark since the start of August. Orioles manager Brandon Hyde believes those numbers don't fully tell the story of Bundy's season.
After another sixth-inning run scored against him Tuesday, Bundy's ERA in the frame is 9.42. Before the game, Hyde opined that Bundy's woes in the sixth are the result of the decisions he's often faced in that inning of either extending Bundy or asking for extra outs from a bullpen that has struggled throughout the year. On the season, 42.8% of the base runners Bundy has left behind for the bullpen have scored; entering Tuesday, the major league average was 32.2%.
"I feel like he had some bad luck," Hyde said. "One thing we've just been horrible at this year is coming in and giving up runs, inherited runs, and I feel like any time I took him out in that sixth, seventh range, we would give up his runs, so his line would always look worse than he threw."
Bundy left nothing to chance Tuesday. He retired eight straight Blue Jays (64-94) to open the game before Derek Fisher's solo shot in the third, the 300th home run the Orioles (52-106) have allowed, with an RBI single by former Oriole Breyvic Valera in the sixth being the only other blemish. He completed seven innings on 86 pitches, seemingly due to return for the eighth if not for a long wait after the Orioles tacked on three more runs in the top half.
