"I don't think that at all," said Orioles manager Dave Trembley when asked whether his team looked flat after the 12-inning loss Tuesday. "If we would have been flat, we wouldn't have scored in the ninth at all. Period."
The Orioles stranded 10 base runners and were 2-for-10 with runners in scoring position, and were in a 5-0 hole by the end of the third inning.
Hill needed just 10 pitches to strike out the side in the first, but that dominance was nowhere to be seen for the rest of his outing. The left-hander hung an 0-2 changeup that Cody Ross pounded into the left-field seats for a two-run homer in the second. Two batters after an RBI single by Ramirez in the third inning, Hill left a fastball up that Dan Uggla drove over the wall in left field.
"I think it's just attributed to pitch selection that I was going with," said Hill, who hasn't gotten through five innings in four of his past six starts and now has a 6.03 ERA. "I think I was relying on the curveball a lot. A few times I shook off [catcher Matt Wieters], it was just bad pitch choices by myself. It's something to learn from and move on."
The score was already 6-0 when Ray, who was making his second appearance since his recall from Triple-A Norfolk, got himself in a bases-loaded jam in the eighth. Emilio Bonifacio hit a two-out RBI single and then Ramirez drove Ray's pitch over the scoreboard in left.
By then, the Orioles had seen enough of Ramirez, who was 6-for-13 with 11 RBIs in the series, and with the rest of the Marlins for that matter.
"In Philadelphia, we stayed away from the big inning," Trembley said. "Here, we didn't stay away from the big inning. The first game, they put up five late. Tonight, they put up five late. Those are the things that are hard to overcome."
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