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Rogers Best Start Of Season Carries Orioles To Win Over Dodgers Trevor Rogers cruised through six innings at Dodgers Stadium Saturday night allowing one harmless hit and two total baserunners.
Thats a sentence I didnt expe Jun 20, 2026; Los Angeles, California, USA; Baltimore Orioles center fielder Leody Taveras runs to third during the second inning against the Los Angeles Dodgers at Dodger Stadium.
Mandatory Credit: William Navarro-Imagn Images | William Navarro-Imagn Images Trevor Rogers cruised through six innings at Dodgers Stadium Saturday night allowing one harmless hit and two total baserunners.
Thats a sentence I didnt expect to ever write, especially with Shohei Ohtani back from paternity leave.But that was the case and Rogers out-pitched Yoshinobu Yamamoto and the Orioles bounced back from Fridays gutting 9th-inning meltdown with a 3-2 win, nearly giving it away with two more terrible fielding miscues in the end.
The first six games of this road trip were going to challenge an Orioles lineup that has really struggled on the road with this level of quality starting pitching.And while this wasnt an overwhelming offensive output it was a splendid showing against a Cy Young candidate like Yamamoto.
Rookie catcher Samuel Basallo shined with two-strike base hits, Leody Taveras had quality bats after falling into a two-week funk and Blaze Aleander continued his ridiculous 45-game tear with a two-run hit down the third base line and they worked counts and pushed Yamamoto aside after six innings ."Bases loaded there just trying to get a good pitch to hit," Alexander said on the MASN broadcast after the game.
This was the first time in a long time he truly looked like the starter who dominated for the second half of last season.
He avoided hard contact and got way more swing and miss than he had been, striking out six.He did this by again avoiding what has been his feature pitch throughout his career and he threw his four-seam fastball which has been pounded this season- around 60 percent of the time and the Dodgers could do nothing to mitigate it.
Rogers gave up almost no hard-hit balls and racked up 13 whiffs and was working with more sustained velocity than has been the norm.One of those very few squared-up balls came off the bat of Miguel Rojas to dead centerfield with two outs in the seventh, but it stayed in the park.
Rogers seems to work well with Basallo, who got a critical challenge correct for a called strike and also threw out a base stealer early in the game to help the starter settle down.Basallo continues to play more regularly than anyone could have expected and that will remain the case for a while.Starting catcher Adley Rutschman took a glancing throw from a second baseman off his side of his helmet the other night and is now on the seven-day concussion IL; third catcher Sam Huff remains on the roster and outfielder Michael Siani was recalled to take Rutschmans roster spot.
The Orioles publicly questioned the toughness of their 21-year-old catcher, Basallo, who was supposed to be eased into MLB given how little he caught in the minors.A rookie skipper who implied Basallo, at this stage of his career, must learn to play through more nagging injuries and nicks, stoutly defended the veteran catcher before the game.Were going to support the out of Adley and make sure hes okay and take it day to day and see how he feels, Albernaz told reporters.
Basallo is signed long-term and Rutschman has one year remaining on his deal after this season and the entire industry believes there is no chance he is re-signing in Baltimore to bring the winning run to the plate.Leody Taveras dropped an utterly routine flyball to score a run and extend the game.
before Cano struck out Kyle Tucker.
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