O'Hearn has 'at-bat of the year' to ignite 3-HR rally

Blanked through 7 innings, O's break out for 5-run 8th inning to win series

May 25th, 2024

CHICAGO -- The Orioles’ offense could not get anything going against Erick Fedde and the White Sox for seven innings on Saturday afternoon. But it didn’t take much longer for Baltimore's deep lineup to remind everyone how lethal it is.

The Orioles hit three homers in a five-run eighth inning, rallying for a 5-3 win at Guaranteed Rate Field. The blasts from , and came in a five-batter sequence.

“That was a fun inning,” manager Brandon Hyde said. “That game -- offensively, for us, sucked for seven [innings]. We didn't do anything offensively.”

That’s a credit to Fedde, who’s having a strong season (2.80 ERA, 11 starts) and has been dominant at home (0.95 ERA, six starts). The Orioles tallied just three hits -- all singles -- and three walks off him in his 6 1/3 innings pitched.

Reliever Jordan Leasure took over in the seventh, and in the eighth issued a one-out walk to Adley Rutschman. That set the table for O’Hearn.

“O'Hearn, for me, set the tone there [that inning],” Hyde said. “That might be the at-bat of the year.”

O’Hearn worked a 2-0 count against Leasure, taking a curveball inside and a four-seam fastball off the outer half of the plate. He fouled off the next five pitches, two of which, an 87 mph slider and a 95 mph four-seamer, were around eye level.

Those are normally pitches O’Hearn doesn’t want to be swinging at. But in that spot, it’s about staying alive to battle for another pitch.

“I tell myself not to be in swing mode. It’s like, I know I'm swinging at balls,” O’Hearn said. “But I'm also just up there competing and trying to put the ball in play with two strikes.

“When you swing at a ball at your head and catch up to it, it also gives you a little bit of like, ‘Oh, OK, I’ve got more time than I think.’ And then you get a medium-speed pitch in the middle, it puts you in a good position to do damage.”

Leasure hung a slider on the eighth pitch of the sequence, and O’Hearn hit it a Statcast-projected 384 feet to right field for a two-run homer, cutting Baltimore’s deficit to 3-2.

“The amount of foul balls -- and [him] hanging in there and hitting a two-run homer really gave us a spark,” Hyde said. “Because we had nothing going.”

The White Sox called on Michael Kopech for a potential five-out save after O’Hearn’s homer, but the O’s were all over Chicago’s closer. Ryan Mountcastle greeted him with a single down the right-field line, and Santander followed by crushing a go-ahead two-run blast to right-center field. Two batters later, Jordan Westburg provided insurance with a solo blast to right.

“Stuff-wise, it felt like it was coming out fine,” Kopech said. “I didn’t execute when I needed to, paid the price.”

The trio of long balls marked the Orioles’ first three-homer inning since June 1, 2022, against the Mariners. Mountcastle, Ramón Urías and Trey Mancini pulled the feat against Sergio Romo in the sixth inning that day.

The sequence backed a good outing by Albert Suárez, who stretched out to 80 pitches in his first start since April 28 and threw four scoreless innings.

“Just a total pro on the mound,” Hyde said. “Incredible outing by him.”

Later, Dillon Tate threw 2 1/3 scoreless innings and struck out four. Hyde said Tate, who was recalled from Triple-A Norfolk on Friday, “won us the game on the mound.”

The Orioles’ offense had a frustrating series in St. Louis this week, scoring just eight runs in their three-game sweep to the Cardinals. But they entered Saturday averaging 4.96 runs per game, ranked fifth in the Majors.

This series is much more a reflection of what everyone is accustomed to seeing, and Saturday a reminder of how good Baltimore’s lineup is.

“We know we have a good offense and what we're capable of,” O’Hearn said. “We also know that we can put up runs fast. Get a couple guys on base, a couple homers, like how it happened today. I think there were some hard-hit balls. Fedde pitched well and got us out of our plan a little bit and got us to swing at some pitches outside the zone.

“To finally break through like that and get that come-from-behind win, it just gives you all the confidence in the world knowing how good our offense is and how fast we can put up runs.”