The 2024 Orioles and Mariners are both good teams, but they’re built differently. Seattle has a superlative stable of pitchers, but these days their offense is ice-cold. The Orioles hit home runs in bunches, but lately their injury-plagued pitching staff hasn’t been quite as sharp: a 3.73 June ERA isn’t bad, but it’s nearly a run higher than their excellent 2.82 mark in May.
Despite that, for most of Tuesday’s series opener these two teams looked almost like mirror images. Each trotted out a onetime top pitching prospect in Grayson Rodriguez and George Kirby, respectively, each of whom threw 6 1/3 innings, flashing an overwhelming fastball, sneaky breaking stuff and good command.