BALTIMORE — Brandon Hyde’s Orioles had only just pulled ahead, narrowly, when decision-time arrived.
Andrew Stevenson was on third base for the Washington Nationals with two outs and slugger Juan Soto coming up to face Jorge López in the always-eventful fifth inning for the Orioles starter.
Instead of tempt fate with López, Hyde called on reliever Paul Fry, who needed just one pitch for Soto to chop to third. From there, the Orioles bullpen held and their lead built to an eventual 6-1 win over the Nationals before an announced 17,022 Friday night at Camden Yards.
Managing the Orioles (32-64) on this march to 100 losses means sometimes following your gut in moments like that, and other times following the data, and the erratic results that come from an erratic bullpen make it hard to judge whether those calls were correct. In other instances, Hyde can’t do either just because he’s trying to keep the pitching staff intact.
Fresh from Thursday’s day off and with another looming Monday, Hyde had the opportunity to be aggressive with his bullpen usage Friday and was rewarded for it.
Fry struck out all three Nationals he faced in the sixth to continue his spell of success outside of the ninth, and after Cole Sulser put two on in the seventh, Tanner Scott got a quick out to end it before striking out two in a scoreless eighth.
Dillon Tate’s perfect ninth inning came under much less stressful circumstances than it could have thanks to Pat Valaika, who entered the game with two home runs this season but had one in the fifth and one in the seventh to build the lead.
In between, Ramón Urías scored Trey Mancini on a fielder’s choice and came around himself on a sacrifice fly by Pedro Severino.
The Orioles’ scoring began in the fourth inning when, after López allowed a solo home run to Josh Bell, Cedric Mullins doubled and scored on a double by Austin Hays and Urías singled to score Hays with two outs.
López allowed a run on four hits with three walks and two strikeouts in 4 2/3 innings.
