With offense scuffling, Gonzalez takes loss

HOUSTON -- Miguel Gonzalez, who allowed a trio of homers on Wednesday night, still pitched well enough to win.

But with the Orioles' offense struggling, those solo shots were enough to hand the righty his fourth loss of the season, a 3-1 defeat.

"Miguel was good, he made three mistakes all night," manager Buck Showalter said. "Not much margin for error, and you can say that about a few nights. I'm the first one to tip my hat to a young pitcher. You can see why they are so excited about [Astros starter Lance McCullers]. It's just that we have figured out a way to beat those guys in the past, and that's something we have to do a better job with."

Gonzalez put up his second consecutive quality start with nothing to show for it, striking out eight and going 6 2/3 innings. Two of the homers he allowed were hit by Chris Carter, in the second and fifth innings, and George Springer went deep in the sixth for Houston's third run.

"I take one pitch from the whole game, and it was a slider to Springer," Gonzalez said. "We did some other things, we played some defense, the rest is not going our way right now, but things are going to change."

The Orioles have scored just two runs in Gonzalez's last 18 2/3 innings. How do they plan on turning this thing around?

"We know we still have 100-plus games left. We can't let that get to us," Gonzalez said. "It's part of baseball. We can't look back to what we are doing wrong. Forget about that and just move on."

Added Showalter: "It's very easy to start beating up on people, and I'm certainly not going to. This is a challenging time, and this too shall pass. But you want it to happen yesterday. Our guys are a very easy target right now for people, and I won't be a part of that."