DETROIT - - In this, the Orioles' decade of darkness, the 2009 season has been brightened intermittently with the belief that hope is on the horizon.
In that regard, perhaps no night this year has signaled that potentially promising future more than Tuesday's 8-2 beating of the Detroit Tigers in which the Orioles' top draft pick from 2008 threw unhittable changeups and sliders to the club's 2007 top pick.
"This is one that everybody should take a great deal of pride in for a long time," Orioles manager Dave Trembley said. "This is just the start of things."
Making his major league debut, 22-year-old left-hander Brian Matusz tossed five solid innings, and the Orioles (45-61) ended a four-game losing streak by beating the hottest pitcher in the American League and his new first-place club.
Matusz (1-0) became the Orioles' sixth starter to make a big league debut this season and fifth to win it. In those games, the team is 6-0.
The five victorious debuts - by Koji Uehara, Brad Bergesen, Jason Berken, David Hernandez and Matusz - are the most by one club in one season in modern baseball history (since 1900). The 1888 Chicago White Stockings, who eventually became the Cubs, had six pitchers win their major league debuts.
"That's when they started baseball," quipped Orioles rookie catcher Matt Wieters, "so everybody was debuting."
If Matusz, Wieters and the new breed of Orioles are to energize this moribund franchise, Tuesday was a solid indication of rebirth.
Signed last August as the fourth overall pick out of the University of San Diego, Matusz rocketed through the system, posting an 11-2 record and 1.99 ERA in two minor league levels this season before debuting Tuesday.
"I'm not going to lie, I was pretty nervous out there," said Matusz, who allowed one run on six hits and three walks in five innings. "I was definitely a little bit nervous, but once I got that first strike across to that first hitter, I relaxed a little bit."
Mixing four pitches including a fastball that reached 94 mph and a devastating changeup, he threw first-pitch strikes to 18 of the 24 batters he faced. He had five strikeouts, including his first against Detroit's all-world slugger Miguel Cabrera.
His most important, however, came in the fifth, when he had runners on second and third and one out and threw consecutive third-strike sliders to escape damage.
