After snapping a 14-game losing streak on Tuesday, the host Baltimore Orioles will go for a series win against the Minnesota Twins on Wednesday.
The Orioles, who have lost 21 of their last 24 games, held off the Twins for a 7-4 win on Tuesday and will look to stay perfect in June.
“Last two weeks obviously were not great,” Baltimore’s Trey Mancini said. “It was just a really strange streak. Most of those games we were in, and whether things didn’t bounce our way, we were all pressing. … Tonight, we let it all go. It’s June 1, kind of a natural reset for us. We all decided to forget about May and come out strong in June.”
Right-hander Matt Harvey (3-6, 6.84 ERA), who has lost his last five starts, will pitch what amounts to a bullpen session on Wednesday. Working on three days’ rest, he will work 1-2 innings before the bullpen takes over.
Harvey has allowed 23 earned runs in 17 2/3 innings (11.72 ERA) over his past five outings while allowing 33 hits. Last time out, he gave up five runs on five hits in three innings against the Chicago White Sox.
“The last two starts, I’ve felt like I had much better stuff than I even had at the beginning of the season,” he said. “It’s one of those things that is extremely frustrating, when you have good stuff but you aren’t locating as well as you need to be and aren’t keeping runs off the board.”
Harvey is 1-1 with a 7.59 ERA in two career starts against the Twins.
Twins right-hander Randy Dobnak (1-4, 6.49) will make his third start in place of the injured Kenta Maeda. In his last start, Dobnak allowed six runs on nine hits in a loss to the Kansas City Royals.
Dobnak, who tossed six shutout innings against the Indians in his first start in place of Maeda, was in control until a two-out walk in the fifth led to a three-run inning for the Royals.
“I hate walking people,” Dobnak said. “It’s almost like every time I walk someone, something bad’s going to happen.”
The 26-year-old Dobnak has never faced the Orioles.
Pedro Severino and Maikel Franco homered, and Bruce Zimmermann pitched into the sixth inning in the Orioles’ win on Tuesday night. Minnesota had won 16 consecutive games vs. Baltimore, the best ongoing winning streak by one MLB team vs. another.
Mancini had two hits and drove in two runs for the Orioles, who were 4-for-7 with runners in scoring position after going just 5-for-64 over their past eight games.
Nothing has been easy of late for the Orioles. Cole Sulser, the fifth Baltimore pitcher, worked around a pair ninth-inning baserunners Tuesday for his first save of the season.
Kyle Garlick and Willians Astudillo homered for Minnesota, which went 2-for-11 with runners in scoring position and left 11 runners on base.
Twins catcher Mitch Garver, who left the game with a bruised groin in the first inning after getting hit by a foul tip, was taken to a nearby hospital for evaluation by a team trainer. Manager Rocco Baldelli said it is “probably unlikely that Mitch is going to be catching anytime soon.”
In addition, outfielder Rob Refsnyder, who ran into the wall in center field on Monday, was a late scratch and continues to be evaluated.