BALTIMORE — With the sparseness of fans at Camden Yards, an almost every-game occurrence in the Orioles’ rebuild, the boisterous fan club that made the trip down from New York could be heard on almost every out recorded by George Kirby.
Of course, they’d make their presence known in a packed visiting stadium.
They were particularly vocal and celebratory after each of his eight strikeouts.
But as the rookie right-hander walked off the mound following his sixth inning of shutout pitching, they serenaded his stellar performance and his pending first MLB win as only they knew how.
“Hip, hip … Jorge!!!”
“Hip, hip … Jorge!!!”
“Hip, hip … Jorge!!!”
With eight runs of support in the first three innings, but really only needing one given his performance, the Mariners’ top pitching prospect notched his first career big league win in his team’s 10-0 rout of Baltimore.
On a deodorant-testing, shirt-stick-to-your-back Tuesday evening at Camden Yards, Kirby delivered his best outing in his brief big league career to earn that much-awaited win. He pitched six scoreless innings, allowing just four hits with a walk, a hit batter and eight strikeouts. He threw 94 pitches with 62 strikes. That included 11 swings and misses and 15 called strikes. He had just eight three-ball counts and didn’t allow a hit on any of them.
It was the sort of performance that had been building over his previous four starts.
The only inning he allowed multiple base runners was the first inning. He hit Trey Mancini with one out and then issued a two-out walk to Austin Hays to bring the recently-called up Adley Rutschman to the plate. Rated as the No. 1 overall prospect in baseball, Rutschman is a switch-hitting catcher with power potential. Kirby disposed of him with nasty intent, throwing an unhittable slider to Rutschman’s back foot for a swinging strike three.
From there, Kirby found a rhythm and cruised through the next five innings despite allowing a base runner to reach in four of them.
It was easy for Kirby to be in attack mode given the ridiculous run support.
Facing a bullpen start from the Orioles, the Mariners racked up 13 hits on the night.
They grabbed a 1-0 lead in the first inning when Julio Rodriguez ripped a double off the new and deeper left-field wall to score Ty France from first base.
Seattle opened it up in a three-run second inning that featured Taylor Trammell, driving in his first of four runs on the night with a ground ball off the second base bag. Seattle tacked on four more runs in the third inning with a Cal Raleigh delivering a two-run single and Ty France adding an RBI single.
