NEW YORK -- Dylan Bundy has been the Orioles' most reliable starting pitcher all season, and even without his best stuff in Friday night's 8-2 loss to the Yankees, he put his team in position to win.
Still, it was a few mistakes to three Yankees hitters that cost him the game.
Bundy was relieved after six innings of three-run, five-hit ball. But two home runs to lead off two innings -- after he fell behind in the count both times -- did him in before the Orioles' bullpen allowed five more runs to score.
"First two innings I was a little rusty," Bundy said. "I felt like with my fastball command, [I was] not getting in on some guys that I need to. Then I got in a groove after the second inning."
The groove lasted until the sixth inning. With the score tied at 2, he threw a 2-1 changeup that caught too much of the plate, and Aaron Hicks belted it into the stands for a go-ahead home run.

"I got him out the previous at-bat with a changeup, so I think he was kind of looking for it," Bundy said. "It was a quality pitch, but it wasn't down enough where I wanted it, so he was able to get to it."
It wasn't so much the sixth-inning homer from Hicks, who hit two on the night, that was the problem, but it was Bundy's rocky second inning, which he started with a 2-0 lead.
That lead was cut in half three pitches into the frame when Starlin Castro hit a barreled home run to right-center field on a 2-0 fastball that found the middle of the plate.
"What pitch was it, a fastball?" Bundy said. "What was it, [2-0] count? There you go, a behind-in-the-count heater. It was probably middle-middle and a ball he can hit."

Bundy fell behind, 2-0, to the next hitter, Gary Sanchez, who rocketed a 115.2-mph double off the center-field wall. Sanchez scored on a Chase Headley sacrifice fly to deep right field to tie the game.
"It was the home runs that got him," catcher Caleb Joseph said. "He would've liked to have put a zero up there after we scored two runs [in the top of the second], but I thought he did a nice job."