This article is from the source 'washpo' and was first published or seen on . It last changed over 40 days ago and won't be checked again for changes.

You can find the current article at its original source at http://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/nationals/playoffs/three-run-double-by-delmon-young-gives-orioles-a-7-6-win-and-2-0-lead-over-tigers-in-alds/2014/10/03/ee67bd38-4b1e-11e4-891d-713f052086a0_story.html?wprss=rss_homepage

The article has changed 2 times. There is an RSS feed of changes available.

Version 0 Version 1
Three-run double by Delmon Young gives Orioles a 7-6 win and 2-0 lead over Tigers in ALDS Three-run double by Delmon Young gives Orioles a 7-6 win and 2-0 lead over Tigers in ALDS
(about 5 hours later)
BALTIMORE — Out in center field, the bullpen door swung open, and onto the field jogged Detroit Tigers reliever Joba Chamberlain, looking hairier and more grizzled than he did during his phenom days with the New York Yankees, all those years back. It was the bottom of the eighth, and the sellout crowd at Oriole Park at Camden Yards roared at the sight of one more hapless Tigers reliever. Chamberlain tipped his cap, sarcasm met with sarcasm. BALTIMORE — Out in center field, the bullpen door swung open, and onto the field of play jogged Detroit Tigers reliever Joba Chamberlain, looking hairier and more grizzled than he ever did during his phenom days with the New York Yankees, all those years back. It was the bottom of the eighth, and the sellout crowd at Oriole Park at Camden Yards stood and roared at the sight of one more hapless Tigers reliever, cheering for Chamberlain as if he were one of their own. Chamberlain playfully tipped his cap, sarcasm met with sarcasm.
Moments later, Chamberlain was slumping toward the visitors’ dugout, leaving behind a bases-loaded, one-out jam. And moments after that, pinch-hitter Delmon Young was smashing a bases-clearing double into the left field corner off Joakim Soria, lifting the Baltimore Orioles to a come-from-behind, 7-6 victory in Game 2 of the American League Division Series. Moments later, Chamberlain was slouching toward his dugout — the crowd roaring even louder — leaving behind a bases-loaded, one-out jam. And moments after that, pinch hitter Delmon Young was smashing a bases-clearing double into the left field corner off Joakim Soria — the volume now cranked to 11 — that lifted the Baltimore Orioles to a 7-6 comeback victory in Game 2 of the American League Division Series.
The Orioles now lead the best-of-five series, two games to none, and can clinch a berth in the AL Championship Series as soon as Sunday afternoon in Detroit. The Orioles now lead the best-of-five series two games to none and can clinch a berth in the AL Championship Series as soon as Sunday afternoon in Detroit.
If there were three more runs to be found out there in the lush grass and hard corners of Camden Yards, as Game 2 lurched toward its conclusion, Orioles Manager Buck Showalter was sure to find them. Sure enough, they were sitting right underneath Young, on the Orioles’ bench. If there were three more runs to be found out there in the lush grass and hard corners of Camden Yards, as Game 2 lurched toward its conclusion, Orioles Manager Buck Showalter was certain to find them. The Orioles had trailed 5-2, and later by 6-3, but were gaining on the Tigers. Sure enough, Showalter looked to his right and found those three runs sitting right underneath Young, on the Orioles’ bench.
With the Orioles down two, and with the go-ahead runs on base, Showalter sent Young into the game to pinch-hit for light-hitting third baseman Ryan Flaherty, and on Soria’s first pitch, Young blasted a line drive into the corner. The third baserunner, J.J. Hardy, slid home just ahead of the relay throw, as a crowd of 48,058 shook the ballpark. With the Orioles down two and the go-ahead runs on base, Showalter sent Young into the game to face Soria, a former all-star closer whom the Tigers were hoping could rescue their leaky bullpen down the stretch. He couldn’t do it then, and he couldn’t do it Friday.
The Orioles needed the eighth-inning heroics on a day when their starter, lefty Wei-Yin Chen, lasted just 3 2 / 3 innings, failing to make it out of a fourth inning that saw the Tigers tag him for five runs. The Orioles have an exceptional bullpen, but Showalter would be perfectly happy not to have to lean on it for an average of 14 outs per game, as he has in Games 1 and 2. Showalter’s move — the right-handed-hitting Young replacing the left-handed-hitting Ryan Flaherty to face the right-handed Soria — may have looked unconventional to anyone who doesn’t follow the Orioles.
Starter-turned-long-man Kevin Gausman temporarily stabilized a game that was starting to get out of hand for the Orioles in the middle innings, striking out five of the first 10 batters he faced and advancing to the eighth inning with the Orioles still trailing by just two. But Gausman finally petered out in his fourth inning of work, and before Showalter could get him out of there, the Tigers had tacked on an insurance run to push their lead to 6-3. But Showalter increasingly has come to view Young as his best late-inning pinch-hit option, regardless of the pitcher’s handedness. And with Flaherty, a light-hitting third baseman, due to hit with the bases loaded, it was a natural spot for Showalter to dust off the best weapon he had in reserve. Young, 29, has collected big postseason hits now in four different uniforms — with the Twins, Tigers, Rays and Orioles — in the past five years.
With a quick turnaround following Thursday night’s Game 1, some Orioles players slept in the clubhouse. Showalter found himself driving to the ballpark Friday morning at an odd time for him — rush hour — with streets that are typically empty at mid-day suddenly clogged with traffic. “He’s a professional hitter,” Showalter said of Young, the MVP of the 2012 ALCS for Detroit. “There’s not a lot you can hang your hat on, but you can hang your hat on a professional hitter.”
Friday, with its 12:07 p.m. start and blue-gray sky, was the kind of day when, once upon a time, there might have been a rush on the clubhouse stash of “greenies” — but in this day and age, the players had to rely on black coffee and Red Bull instead. Young stepped in against Soria and whipped his bat around at the first pitch he saw, a tumbling, 79-mph slider, smashing a liner into the corner. Two runners scored easily, and the third, Hardy, slid home just ahead of the relay throw as the ballpark shook and vibrated beneath a delirious crowd of 48,058.
The sun had barely achieved its mid-day apex when Chen came bounding out of the Orioles’ dugout behind his eight teammates — and ran straight into the swing-path of the Oriole Bird mascot trying to rile up the fans with a giant orange flag. Luckily, Chen only took the flag’s fabric to the face, and not the pole, so he was able to recover with a lurching step or two and make it safely to the mound. “We look at each other in the dugout after he gets a big hit,” shortstop J.J. Hardy said, “and we're like, ‘How does he do that, after not seeing a live pitch for five or six days, and then just come in and hit a pitch like that down the line?’ It's unbelievable.”
The way Chen breezed through the first three innings, allowing only one hit, it appeared his encounter with the flag would represent his closest brush with danger all day — well, save for the screaming liner off the bat of Ian Kinsler that Chen speared for the third out of the third inning. Suddenly, all the events and strategic twists Showalter and the Orioles had perpetrated to keep this game close came into sharper focus. There was that perfect 8-4-2 relay — Adam Jones to Jonathan Schoop to Caleb Joseph — from the center field wall in the top of the eighth to cut down Miguel Cabrera at the plate with what would have been the Tigers’ seventh run.
But then came the fourth, which began with Chen holding a 2-0 lead and cruising, and ended with Chen in the dugout and Gausman mopping up the mess. The first five Tigers hitters of the inning went like this: single, double, single, homer, homer. The homers belonged to J.D. Martinez, a three-run shot to left, and Nick Castellanos, a solo blast to right that came on the first pitch following a mound visit from pitching coach Dave Wallace. Presumably, Wallace did not tell Chen to groove a belt-high fastball, but perhaps the message was lost in translation. There was the sequence of patient, grinding at-bats that wore down Tigers starter Justin Verlander after five-plus innings, allowing the Orioles to get into the unspeakably soft middle of the Tigers’ bullpen.
Justin Verlander, the 2011 AL Cy Young Award winner, strode to the mound Friday hoping that another prolific October could make up for his unsightly regular season, when he led the league in earned runs allowed and made it through eight full innings only twice. He retired the game’s first eight batters until Jonathan Scoop singled with two outs in the third, and Nick Markakis followed with a drive off the roof of the grounds crew’s shed in right that — following a replay review — was ruled a home run. There was the impossible, 5-4-3 double play — a diving Flaherty to Schoop to Steve Pearce — that beat a lumbering Cabrera to first.
Jim Leyland, the former Tigers manager, would occasionally walk out to the mound in key spots, look toward the bullpen and tell Verlander, “I don’t have anybody down there better than you” — then turn and walk back to the dugout. And there was, perhaps most of all, the 32 / 3 innings of relief — some of them dazzling innings — from Kevin Gausman, the baby-faced starting pitcher relegated to long-relief duty in this series. Gausman’s performance, which included five strikeouts, bridged the gap between lefty Wei-Yin Chen, who failed to make it out of the fourth inning in a dud of a start, to the back end of the bullpen.
Given the awful state of this year’s Tigers bullpen, nobody needed to tell Verlander that Friday afternoon, and current manager Brad Ausmus rode his horse as long as he could — sending him back out for the sixth inning, following a laborious fifth, to face the middle of the Orioles’ order, with his pitch-count already at 95 and his lead a perilous 5-3. Showalter may not enjoy asking his exceptional bullpen to secure 28 outs in a matter of roughly 24 hours — as he did in Games 1 and 2 these past two days — but it is comforting to know that his bullpen can do that if needed.
But when the first batter of the sixth, Nelson Cruz, singled sharply to center, Ausmus came out to pull Verlander, who appeared to make an unsuccessful plea to stay in. That left 12 outs for the Tigers’ bullpen to lock down. The same cannot be said for poor Brad Ausmus, Showalter’s Detroit counterpart, who has been given possession of a rusty, cracked gas canister of a bullpen — the type that can be hidden for long stretches of a regular season but that leaks fuel all over the place under the rising pressure of October.
They got the first seven before the trouble began, right about the time Chamberlain lumbered into the game. The way the Orioles’ crowd cheered him, it was as if they knew what was about to come. And the way Chamberlain answered the cheers with a doff his cap, it was as if he knew, too. And in the end, lo and behold, they were all correct. When Ausmus pulled Verlander one batter into the sixth, he knew he needed 12 outs from his bullpen to carry home what was, at the time, a 5-3 lead. Ausmus got the first seven of those outs — coaxing two scoreless innings from starter-turned-reliever Anibal Sanchez, whose recent ribcage injury precluded a longer stint — before the trouble began.
That trouble, as it turned out, began right about the time Chamberlain lumbered into the game. He was once a phenom, then a failed starter, then an ace reliever, then just another guy looking for steady work. The way the Orioles crowd cheered him when he appeared at the bullpen gate, it was as if they knew what was about to come.
The way Chamberlain answered the cheers with a doff of his cap, it was as if he knew, too. And in the end, it all came to pass: a fastball that dinged Jones, giving him first base. Consecutive singles by Nelson Cruz and Steve Pearce. Soria’s entrance and, immediately, a five-pitch walk to Hardy.
And then there came Young, the professional hitter. If anyone doubted what would come next, they didn’t doubt for long.