BALTIMORE -- The Orioles were unsuccessful in their attempt to be walk-off winners on Friday night. Things went much differently on Saturday night.
Dylan Beavers’ walk-off RBI single in the bottom of the ninth inning lifted Baltimore to a 3-2 victory over Atlanta at Camden Yards. The O’s bounced back from Friday’s 7-6, 10-inning loss and recorded their ninth win in 12 games while improving to 12-6 in July.
The Orioles (51-54) are only 2 1/2 games back of the third American League Wild Card spot with seven games to play ahead of the Aug. 3 Trade Deadline.
Brandon Young was again stellar, as he tossed 6 1/3 innings of one-run ball for his third straight quality start. The 27-year-old right-hander continued his breakout season by lowering his ERA to 3.13, and Baltimore is now 14-3 in the 17 games in which he’s started.
Christian Encarnacion-Strand continued his hot start to his O’s career with an RBI single in the third -- his ninth RBI over his first six games for the club -- and Gunnar Henderson swatted his 18th home run of the season in the sixth. However, the Braves’ Ozzie Albies led off the eighth with a game-tying home run off righty Rico Garcia to knot the contest at 2.
The winning rally in the ninth began with a one-out double by Jackson Holliday off Atlanta right-hander Didier Fuentes. Holliday then moved to third on a warning-track flyout to right-center field by Colton Cowser.
That set the stage for Beavers, who knocked the first pitch he saw from Fuentes past a diving Albies on the right side of the infield and into right field.
The Orioles have four walk-off wins this season, with the previous three all coming from May 24-30. It was the third career walk-off hit for Beavers, who had a walk-off RBI single last Sept. 10 vs. the Pirates and a walk-off home run last Sept. 25 against the Rays.
Beavers has hit in the leadoff spot only four times in his 86-game MLB career, with two of those occurrences resulting in him recording a walk-off hit -- both last Sept. 25 and Saturday.