Cole Irvin pitched seven shutout innings and Adley Rutschman and Ryan Mountcastle hit back-to-back solo home runs as the Baltimore Orioles defeated the Oakland Athletics 7-0 on Saturday.
Gunnar Henderson added a two-run homer as the Orioles cranked up their power numbers after a slight decline in that area. It was his third homer in four games and ninth for the season.
Irvin limited the Athletics to four hits while striking out five without a walk. Mike Baumann and Dillon Tate each pitched an inning to complete the five-hitter.
Irvin (2-1), a left-hander, followed last Sunday’s outing at Kansas City when he went 6 2/3 shutout innings on four hits.
The long balls for Rutschman, Mountcastle and Henderson came after the Orioles, who had been one of the top slugging teams in baseball for the first month of the season, had gone three consecutive games with only one homer in each of those games.
JP Sears worked 6 1/3 innings for the Athletics, allowing seven runs on eight hits. He struck out eight and issued his only walk in the seventh.
The outcome evened the count going into Sunday’s series finale.
No player in the game had more than one hit until Henderson’s homer in the seventh.
The Athletics had difficulty generating any offense. They didn’t have a base runner until the fourth inning, and then they hit into double plays in the fifth and seventh frames.
Sears (1-2), also a left-hander, was perfect through three innings before Gunnar Henderson led off the bottom of the fourth with a single.
That hit sparked a three-run rally. Anthony Santander’s double drove in Henderson and consecutive singles from Jordan Westburg, Cedric Mullins and James McCann resulted in two more runs.
There were two outs in the fifth when Rutschman smashed his third home run of the season and Mountcastle followed with his third of the year. Rutschman, a switch-hitter batting from the right side, sent his shot into the stands beyond left field.
The Athletics were trying to produce their second three-game winning streak of the season.
