Orioles Stay Perfect on The Road, Down Halos 4-2 - N51_rob's Blog

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Orioles Stay Perfect on The Road, Down Halos 4-2

Posted on April 21, 2012 at 12:47 PM.

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Jim Johnson has been perfect this season, is leading the AL-Star Voting for closers as well

Anaheim, CA The Baltimore Orioles may be sad to know they will be back in Baltimore on Tuesday, which given how well they have played away from Baltimore could be terrible news. They once again won a game on the road their 8th in a row beating the Angels 4-2 despite a gutsy performance from Angles starter Scott Downs.

Down kept the Oriole hitters off balance all day with his mid 80's fastball and off-speed pitches. Despite his role as a reliever and coming into the game at about 75% of full rest Downs gutted out 5 innings allowing only 4 hits and 1 run. A solo home run by Nick Johnson down the left field line. "He did a really good job of keeping our hitters off balance. Guys were out in front of his pitched just rolling over on them all game." Buck Showalter would say after the game.

Brian Matusz continued his career resurrection with another strong outing. He went 6.1 innings allowing 2 runs (1 unearned) on 7 hits to record his 2nd win of 2012. "Brian really battled out there today. I wouldn't say he had his best stuff, but he made big pitches when he needed to. It was all determination today for him." Matt Wieters told reporters at his locker post game. Matusz had a chance to fall apart early, when following a Mark Trumbo double his defense let him down. Robert Andino fielded a grounder to 2nd and threw the ball into the dugout along the first base line. Trumbo scored and there was another runner at 2nd. Matusz was able to limit the damage allowing only one more run to score on a Howie Kendrick RBI (10) sac fly. Matusz was able to keep the dangerous Albert Pujols hit less thanks to a little make up defense from Andino in the 4th

Andino flashes the leather

Baltimore was still trailing in the 7th when Los Angeles elected to allow Kevin Jepsen to continue pitching after a scoreless 6th. Wilson Betemit and Mark Reynolds both singled to put runners at 1st and 3rd with no outs. Endy Chavez who was DHing worked a walk to load the bases. Mike Socsia has seen enough and brought in Hinsanori Takahashi to pitch to Robert Andino. Andino made up fro his earlier error with and RBI Sac Fly (that also moved Reynolds to 3rd) to tie the game at 2. Nick Johnson came up behind Andino and followed suit with a 2nd sac fly to score another run to give Baltimore a 3-2 lead. Kevin Gregg got the last two outs of the 7th in relief of Matusz for his 2nd hold, and Darren O'Day pitched a scoreless 8th despite allowing hits to the first two batters of the innings. With the Angles thinking comeback O'Day struck out Pujols, got Trumbo to fly out and Torrie Hunter to ground out to 3rd to end the thread. Jim Johnson pitched the 9th for his 6th save of the season. Los Angeles did get a runner to 3rd with two outs in the 9th when PH Kendrys Morales got a 2 out single that moved Kendrick to 3rd, but Johnson kept his scoreless innings streak going getting Peter Bourjos to hit a grounder back to Johnson for the game ending 1-3.

Game two will feature a match-up of Ervin Santana (1-1, 4.73) battling Wei-Yin Chen (1-0, 2.08). First pitch is scheduled for 9:05 pm est.

Highlights