Appearances can be deceiving, if you’ll forgive the cliché. But a lot of things happened on Saturday that didn’t feel like they were supposed to.
Cleveland’s stringy fireballer Triston McKenzie boasts a 2.65 ERA and the second-lowest WHIP in baseball. (When you look at the guy, it doesn’t seem to make sense, either.) The Birds managed only three hits against him in seven innings. Yet three of those hits were of the “gone yard” variety, and so improbably, Baltimore pinned five runs on McKenzie before he went to the showers, his worst outing of the year.
And even though Tyler Wells was yanked after 61 pitches and just four innings—and even though Keegan Akin picked today to put up one of his worst outing of the season (2 IP, 2 H, 2 ER, 1 BB)—the bullpen nursed a one-run lead through four innings to close out the win.