BALTIMORE -- The Orioles took the long way toward salvaging a series split on Sunday, hanging on to secure a 6-5 win over the Blue Jays, despite some late-inning drama at Oriole Park.

Don’t look now, but even after their sluggish start to August, the rebuilding Orioles are still playing their best baseball of the season. Baltimore is 10-7 over its past 17 games heading into Monday’s series opener against the Yankees, the start of what will be a two-week litmus test opposite three of the American League’s top teams.

• Box score

The Orioles got there Sunday by taking advantage of a bevy of free passes and several defensive miscues, and in doing so, put themselves on the right side of the type of mound struggles that have befallen them so often this season. By capitalizing on the season-high nine walks drawn against Toronto pitching, Baltimore flipped the script for at least an afternoon.

Run-scoring hits from Trey Mancini and Jace Peterson helped, as did critical relief stints from Branden Kline, Richard Bleier and Shawn Armstrong, the latter of whom worked around two infield singles in the ninth for his fourth save. Arguably the most pivotal sequence, though, came in the first, when Anthony Santander rescued opener Jimmy Yacabonis from a bases-loaded, one-out jam by turning a would-be sacrifice fly into an inning-ending double play.

“I tried to anticipate the play, I had it in my mind before it happened,” Santander said, through team interpreter Ramón Alarcón. “It was an unbelievable experience.” 

All told, it combined to make a winner of rookie righty Tom Eshelman, who survived five-plus innings to earn his first Major League victory. As has become custom in the Orioles' clubhouse, Eshelman received a beer shower for reaching the milestone. 

“There was a lot of stuff being thrown around,” said Eshelman. “Glad to be a part of it and have it done to me.”

It wasn’t the cleanest, it wasn’t the prettiest, but it was a team win, the type the Orioles are slowly growing more accustomed to. Here are three questions for the club going forward.

Is the bullpen better? Can it stay that way?
Statiscally yes, though the numbers get skewed by a couple blowouts gotten away. The unit’s 4.88 ERA since mid-July isn’t great, but it’s more workable than the 6.10 mark it posted prior to that.

But ERA doesn’t tell the entire story, especially since the Orioles have used two openers and two de facto bullpen days in that span. More telling is how they’ve blown just two late-inning leads since the All-Star break, getting saves from three different relievers -- Mychal Givens, Paul Fry and Armstrong -- in the process. Fry is in the midst of a particularly strong stretch, the lefty unscored upon in eight of his last nine appearances.

"We’re getting some experience and some guys are improving,” manager Brandon Hyde said.

What role suits Yacabonis?
There are essentially no set roles in Baltimore's ‘pen, given the inconsistency and near-constant turnover that Hyde has been forced to navigate through all year. But it’s worth asking if there is one that best fits Yacabonis, who has struggled to find consistency while bouncing between various assignments this season.

The frustrating part for the Orioles is they believe Yacabonis possesses the stuff and gumption to be dominant, as several flashes -- his season debut in New York, for instance -- have proved. Too often though, “There are other nights when the innings kind of blows up on him and he has a tough time recovering,” Hyde said.

Indeed, 75 percent of Yacabonis’ runs allowed are wrapped up in five nightmarish appearances. He owns a 3.27 ERA in his other 22.

A reliever-turned-swingman, Yacabonis’s ERA is nearly identical (7.04) in four games as an opener as it is (7.18) as a reliever. His strikeout rate ticks up considerably in relief, though.

“I’m just trying to trust the process with these guys, be ready to go in whatever role and whenever they give me the ball,” Yacabonis said. “It’s not really a decision for me to make. I’m trying to make myself comfortable when I get out there and just pitch, just try to get outs.”

Is home run history coming?
A week ago, the Orioles found themselves rare beneficiaries of baseball’s homer-happy climate, which has proliferated this season often at their expense. By homering at least twice in 10 consecutive games, the Orioles became the first team ever to accomplish that feat, despite an offense built more around speed than power.

They now find themselves on the flip side of some similar history. By coughing up homers to Bo Bichette and Cavan Biggio on Sunday, Baltimore has now allowed multiple homers in nine straight contests. That ties the all-time record, held previously by the 2016 Astros.

They’ve now allowed 218 total through 111 games, putting them within shouting distance of the all-time single-season record with nearly two months still to play. The 2016 Reds set the current mark of 258. At this pace, the Orioles would break that by the end of the month. 

“It’s pretty annoying,” Hyde said. “But it’s kind of where we are."