BALTIMORE -- What do you get when you add two walk-offs with a one-run win?

The Orioles’ first three-game sweep in nearly a year.

That’s what was accomplished with Wednesday night’s 2-1 victory over the Rangers at Camden Yards as the O’s rattled off their first three-game sweep since they turned the Nationals into sellers before the Trade Deadline last July 23-25. 

The finale win over Texas was a stark departure from the previous two games, which ended with two straight walk-offs necessitated by late bullpen hiccups. Instead of clutch heroics, it was a nimble victory on the back of Spenser Watkins’ deepest start of his career (6 2/3 innings) and Jorge López’s bounce-back save -- a pair of arms who sported far different bouts of confidence than they did in 2021.

“Good teams win in different ways,” manager Brandon Hyde said. “We have gotten better.”

That’s clear. Wednesday’s victory was the Orioles’ fourth in a row, tying a season high. It was their 21st in 38 games at home and the 39th overall in their 83rd game (39-44) of the season. It took the 2021 O’s 125 games to reach 39 wins.

“Our pitching has really, really improved,” Hyde said. “Look at our bullpen tonight. After Watty, who was awesome, [Bryan Baker], Cionel [Pérez] and Lopey put up zeros, so we have definitely improved on the mound. We got some position players that are starting to get into their third, fourth year, and we got a few good veterans around.”

By pure pedigree standards, the Orioles entered this series with the Rangers boasting the bottom three-fifths of their rotation. But two of those starters -- Watkins and Dean Kremer -- are riding a newfound confidence that Baltimore didn’t see from them last season.

Kremer’s streak of three consecutive scoreless outings ended on Monday, but the team earned a victory. Watkins, who pitched into the seventh inning for the first time in his career, now sports a 1.02 ERA and a 0.849 WHIP in three starts since his return from the injured list.

They’ve both aided a Baltimore rotation that’s logged a 2.52 ERA over 19 games since June 16 -- the best mark in the Majors in that span.

“It's awesome,” Watkins said. “Any time you can push yourself is a fantastic feeling. I'm more so grateful for being given the opportunity to give the team a chance to win. I wanted to hold the ball as long as I could and eat as many innings as I could.”

They, along with Ryan McKenna’s hustle single in the second that scored two runs (one on an error), set the stage for the Orioles’ staunch bullpen to pick itself up from its own bruises. Just a day prior, the O’s became the first team in AL/NL history to allow a game-tying or go-ahead homer in the seventh, eighth and ninth innings of a game and still go on to win.

López was a microcosm of the revival. He entered last weekend in Minnesota without a home run allowed and just two blown saves on his resume, and he is a strong candidate to earn a trip to the All-Star Game in Los Angeles in two weeks. The closer entered play on Wednesday after yielding three homers and five runs across his previous three outings.

López got his swagger back with his 14th save of the year in the series finale -- in spite of a deep drive near the right-field pole off the bat of Brad Miller in the ninth inning that surely sent some shivers down spines in the home dugout.

"Some struggles, I know, are going to happen,” López said. “But it's a better feeling when you come back."

That’s the story of the Orioles’ 2022 season writ large, a campaign of competitiveness made sweeter by the struggles endured in years past. The imminent Trade Deadline on Aug. 2 will be telling how this team sees itself for the remainder of the season, though it’s overwhelmingly likely still going to be sellers.

Nevertheless, days like Wednesday and weeks like this one were hard to come by for the 2021 O’s. It took that club 125 games to reach 39 wins last season only because it came on the back end of a historic 19-game losing streak. No such skid has surpassed six this season.