After the Orioles beat the Astros on Friday on the back of Anthony Santander’s late-inning grand slam, one question was on my mind: Was this the sign that the team was about to emerge from 2.5 months of playing .500 baseball? For the first half of Saturday afternoon’s game against Houston, the answer seemed to be no. Then, just as suddenly as on Friday night, the O’s loaded the bases in the sixth inning and Jackson Holliday cleared them to fuel a 3-2 victory.
The game was well on the way to being a hard luck loss for starting pitcher Albert Suárez, now the ERA leader for the Orioles starting rotation.