BALTIMORE _ The Orioles came back from their nine-game southwestern road trip this week and unpacked something they don't usually find out there.
Momentum.
Trouble is, that's not something that has spent much time in Baltimore this season and it did not survive long Thursday night. The Toronto Blue Jays, who showed up with a little positive mojo of their own after a series sweep in Kansas City, hammered out five home runs on the way to a 11-2 victory before an announced 9,716 at Camden Yards.
Orioles starter Asher Wojciechowski was coming off a pair of very strong performances, but the Jays took care of his momentum with home runs by Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and Randal Grichuk. Reliever Jimmy Yacabonis tried to hold things together in the middle innings, but allowed a game-breaking three-run shot to catcher Dan Jansen in the sixth.
Guerrero added a second homer off rookie Dillon Tate in the eighth to drive in his fourth run of the game and collect his 16th RBI in his past five starts. Left fielder Billy McKinney capped the home run barrage with a two-run shot in the ninth.
The game might have been more competitive, but the Orioles came up empty after loading the bases with no one out in the third inning and made too little of a first-and-third, no-out situation in the fifth.
For the first few innings, Wojciechowski seemed to settle into the same groove that allowed him to stifle the Red Sox on one hit over seven innings 10 days ago and follow that up with a 7 1/3-inning, three-hit performance against the Angels last Friday.
He struck out four of the first 10 batters he faced and allowed just a walk and a hit over that span before rookie Cavan Biggio's two-out single in the third brought Guerrero to the plate for the second time.
Guerrero, who made his major league debut to much fanfare April 26, came into the game batting .409 in his previous six games against the Orioles, and kept right on swinging. He homered to give the Jays their first lead, added an RBI double off Yacabonis to cap Toronto's breakaway four-run rally in the sixth and went very deep to left in the eighth.
It was a big day all around for the heralded Blue Jays kiddie corps. Biggio had two hits and scored two runs and leadoff hitter Bo Bichette chimed in with an RBI single in the fourth.
The Orioles scored an average of nearly six runs per game during their nine-game road trip, but Jays starter Trent Thornton obviously wasn't impressed. He allowed just one run on five hits over six innings and worked around the two promising Oriole threats.
After the last three hitters in the O's lineup reeled off consecutive singles to load the bases with no one out in the third, Thornton got Jonathan Villar to pop out to short and Trey Mancini to ground sharply into a double play. When the Orioles put runners at the corners with no outs in the fifth, he struck out Stevie Wilkerson and allowed his only run on a soft RBI groundout by Villar.
There were some offensive highlights. Hanser Alberto reached base three times and was right in the middle of every Orioles scoring opportunity. He raised his batting average to .315 but actually dropped from fourth to fifth in the American League batting rankings because Boston Red Sox outfielder Xander Bogaerts passed him with a four-hit performance against the Tampa Bay Rays.
Chris Davis also had a multihit game with singles in the third and fifth innings and Mancini launched his 25th home run of the season with an eighth-inning shot off reliever Jason Adam.
