Fueled by three home runs, the visiting Baltimore Orioles salvaged the final game of a three-game series by holding off the Tampa Bay Rays 5-3 on Sunday.
Jackson Holliday, Ryan O’Hearn and Alex Jackson went deep for the Orioles, who ended a four-game skid. Gunnar Henderson added a two-run double.
Trevor Rogers (3-1) went six innings and allowed just five hits and two runs. The Baltimore lefty walked two and struck out three.
Yandy Diaz went 2-for-4 with a run for the Rays. Danny Jansen homered and scored twice, and Junior Caminero had two hits and one RBI.
Holiday gave the Orioles a 1-0 lead after he deposited Rays starter Ryan Pepiot’s second pitch of the game over the fence in right-center. The second baseman also played a pivotal role in a three-run third inning, which began with Jackson homering against his former team. He worked a walk after facing an 0-2 count and scored on Henderson’s two-bagger that made the lead 4-0.
Pepiot (6-8) went six innings. He gave up six hits and a walk while striking out eight. However, half of the hits off the righty were longballs, which led to him giving up five earned runs, one off his season worst.
The Rays scratched a run across in the ninth off Baltimore’s Felix Bautista, but had a chance for more as the Orioles closer was erratic in making his first appearance since July 10. Taylor Walls singled to score Jansen.
Bautista walked three and eventually loaded the bases to give Caminero a chance to walk it off for the Rays. However, the righty recovered after going down 3-0 to get the All-Star slugger on strikes and lock down his 19th save of the season.
Tampa Bay center fielder Chandler Simpson entered Sunday with the longest active hitting streak at 18 games, but he saw it snapped after going 0-for-5. That included a first-pitch pop-out in the ninth inning off Bautista as the potential tying run.
Sunday’s game featured a rain delay of two hours, 36 minutes after the sixth inning.
–Field Level Media
