Baltimore Orioles crushed by Oakland Athletics 5-2 – MLB Update
Baltimore Orioles were crushed by Oakland Athletics 5-2 at the Oriole Park at Camden Yards in Baltimore, Maryland on Friday, April 27 in the opening game of their three match series of the 2012 Major League Baseball regular season.
Nick Markakis provided the Orioles with the perfect start, hitting a sacrifice fly to left to score the first run but the Athletics continued to fight hard and they took 3-1 lead in the second, thanks to Kurt Suzuki and Eric Sogard who displayed some high quality hitting skills.
Athletics’ starting pitcher Brandon McCarthy allowed pitched seven strong innings to win his first start of the season. McCarthy will be looking to continue his excellent form in next two games as well.
"Any time we can go out and get a few early and then hopefully the pitcher settles in and does his job, the game moves faster and kind of puts you in a positive mind set early," McCarthy said.
"No, but he did, didn't he? That is awesome," Sogard said of McCarthy. "McCarthy pitched an unbelievable game. A shaky start with the one run, but shut them down after that."
"We did maximize our offense today with the number of hits we got and that's the type of team we need to be," Oakland manager Bob Melvin said.
Orioles will be disappointed with their performance in a game that proved to be fairly one sided at the end. Despite having number of scoring opportunities, Buck Showalter and his men failed to make their opponents pay.
Baltimore made a poor start to their regular season campaign but they have definitely raised the level of their game play in the last couple of weeks. Thrashing Toronto Blue Jays 3-0 in their previous three game series, it seems the Orioles have learnt their lessons. Showalter will consider his side slightly unlucky as Orioles could have won the game with little bit more luck on their side.
Despite losing to the Athletics, they are 12-8 in their 20 games and it will be interesting to see if they can bounce back in the final two games to cheer up their fans and well wishers.
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