John Means threw his signature change-up, then grimaced and dropped his head. He knew instantly that his pursuit of a second no-hitter, similar to the ball off Andrés Giménez’s bat, was gone.
The two-out dwelling run within the seventh inning marked the primary hit Means allowed in his third begin again with the Orioles after final yr’s Tommy John elbow reconstruction, and it offered the one run the Cleveland Guardians scored in Baltimore’s 2-1 victory.
Means’ pitch depend seemingly would have prevented him from ending the feat, as he did May 5, 2021, towards the Seattle Mariners for the Orioles’ first solo no-hitter since 1969. Saturday’s begin marked Means’ longest since that recreation.
He adopted Giménez’s dwelling run, on his season-high 89th pitch, by inducing a popout one providing later. And with a left-handed hitter opening the eighth, supervisor Brandon Hyde gave Means another batter. Hyde mentioned earlier than the sport he wouldn’t put Means in an “unsafe situation,” however with the Orioles (96-59) taking part in their sixteenth of 17 straight video games, he acknowledged size was a lot desired.
Means offered that and extra, with a third-inning stroll and a fifth-inning hit batter accounting for the one base runners towards him earlier than the house run. A groundout to 3rd baseman Ramón Urías, who caught a lineout at shortstop to finish Means’ no-hitter in 2021, finalized Saturday’s brilliance.
Yennier Cano obtained the ultimate two outs of the eighth, and Cionel Pérez pitched an ideal ninth as Baltimore ended its three-game dropping streak. The victory dropped the Orioles’ magic quantity to clinch the American League East to 5, with the Tampa Bay Rays rallying for a walk-off victory over the Toronto Blue Jays earlier Saturday.
Anthony Santander drove in each of Baltimore’s runs with hits within the first and sixth innings, giving him six RBIs within the collection towards his former group. The Orioles wasted many alternatives early, however Means ensured that didn’t matter.
This story will likely be up to date.
Orioles at Guardians
Sunday, 1:40 p.m.
TV: MASN2
Radio: 97.9 FM, 101.5 FM, 1090 AM
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