On a day that began with a focus on the farm system, Ryan Mountcastle provided a reminder that part of the Orioles' future has already reached the majors.
Hours after the Orioles acquired two prospects and three players to be named later by trading away starting pitcher Tommy Milone and reliever Mychal Givens, Mountcastle slugged his first two major league home runs in a 6-5 loss to the Toronto Blue Jays, with Teoscar Hernandez's walk-off, two-run single off Cole Sulser in the ninth spoiling Mountcastle's big day.
The Orioles (14-19) have lost all six of their matchups with the Blue Jays this season and have lost 11 of their past 13 games overall.
Both blasts from Mountcastle, who began the season as Baltimore's No. 5 prospect, provided the Orioles with the lead and represented the first showing of his prodigious power in the majors. He became the fourth Oriole with a multi-homer game within his first eight major league appearances and the first since Manny Machado in 2012.
With the Blue Jays playing their home games at Sahlen Field in Buffalo, New York, because of the coronavirus pandemic, Mountcastle's homers came in a stadium normally used in the Triple-A International League, where last year he was MVP while hitting 25 home runs with a .312/.344/.527 slashline.
That success also came with some plate discipline issues, as he struck out more than five times as often as he walked. Wanting him to improve those skills and train his outfield defense, the Orioles held him at their alternate training site in Bowie for most of the season's first month.
Those efforts have proven fruitful through Mountcastle's first eight games. He's batting .407 with a 1.188 OPS, drawing four walks to six strikeouts.
He put the Orioles on the board with a solo shot off Tanner Roark in the second inning that left the ballpark and went what Statcast projected as 420 feet. His teammates greeted him with the silent treatment as a fan outside the stadium collected the baseball. The Orioles eventually tracked it down for him.
Mountcastle singled the other way to lead off the fourth, but he was erased on a double play. When he came up next in the sixth, the Orioles trailed 3-2, with Pedro Severino standing on first base after scoring Renato Nunez with his first hit since suffering a hip flexor injury last week. Mountcastle then turned on a 1-1 sinker from Roark and again sent the ball out to left, giving the Orioles a lead for the second time.
