Jackson Holliday blasted a wall-scraping home run off Dodgers ace Yoshinobu Yamamoto in the ninth inning on Sept. 6, the lone hit the Orioles had against the right-hander and starting a miraculous comeback.
Holliday — like the rest of the Baltimore lineup — had been dominated to that point by one of the best pitchers in all of baseball. Yamamoto had become the most recent ace to carve up Orioles hitters.
Orioles outfielder Dylan Carlson explained that hitters need a balanced approach against high-end starters.
“When you face guys like this, sometimes the key’s to be aggressive, sometimes the key’s to wait it out,” Carlson said. “And sometimes when you are aggressive, you still foul it off, so it’s always the game, back and forth … it’s just who’s more stubborn at executing their plan that day.”
Carlson is just 26 years old but has been in the big leagues since 2020. He has played in big-time postseason games against elite starters like Max Scherzer and Zack Wheeler.
This year for Baltimore, Carlson has faced Detroit’s Tarik Skubal and Boston’s Garrett Crochet, the top two candidates for the American League Cy Young Award. He went a combined 2-for-6 against them, a strong mark considering the duo’s dominance.
Skubal and Crochet had two starts apiece against Baltimore. Skubal threw 13 shutout innings against the Orioles, while Crochet allowed two runs in 14 innings. Among all left-handed starters, those two are top-three in fastball velocity and are tied for the best Stuff+ mark (116).
Both Skubal and Crochet were more dominant in their first outings, allowing fewer baserunners with more strikeouts than the second time out. Baltimore still struggled the second time around against each, but it fared slightly better because Orioles hitters were more aggressive in the zone.
Carlson noted it’s not as simple as looking for a specific pitch to identify and do damage on. Fouling off pitches and extending at-bats is also an option.
“One of the things with those types of pitchers is you got to build up pitch counts,” interim manager Tony Mansolino said after Crochet’s start Aug. 28. “You’ve got to try to get them out of the game as soon as you can.”
Crochet’s Aug. 28 start was the Orioles’ best performance among the four opportunities against Skubal and Crochet. Mansolino said Orioles hitters did a good job creating traffic — they just ultimately couldn’t execute with runners in scoring position.
They had one such opportunity against Yamamoto, whom Mansolino described as “electric.”
Dylan Beavers and Samuel Basallo, the most inexperienced hitters in Baltimore’s lineup, each drew walks to start the third inning. Then, Coby Mayo chased a curveball for a strikeout and Holliday grounded into a double play on the first pitch he saw.
All four of those players have less than two years of major league experience. Beavers and Basallo have yet to have a full month in the big leagues.
The Orioles will continue to run out lineups without extensive experience. Formulating a plan against those top arms “definitely helps steer people in the right direction,” Carlson said. Mayo noted how the prep work should remain fairly similar regardless who’s starting.
The Orioles faced another premier arm in Shohei Ohtani on Sept. 5. He threw less than four innings in his ramp-up from Tommy John surgery, quickly reaching 70 pitches. The Orioles registered at-bats of at least five pitches nine times.
The lone walk Baltimore generated against Ohtani came courtesy of Holliday, who also started the game with a six-pitch out. He welcomed the challenge against Ohtani, and he’s scheduled for another such opportunity against likely National League Cy Young Award winner Paul Skenes on Sept. 10.
“In the big leagues, every single at-bat is a grind, all these guys are incredible at what they do, but whenever you get to face the game’s best it has an extra gear of competitiveness,” Holliday said. “You want to go out there and succeed.”
Photo Credits: Kenya Allen and Colin Murphy/PressBox