Pitch

It took reliever Chris Ray all of two innings to get over the disappointment of his 2009 debut. As he sat in the dugout Monday after allowing a two-run homer to the New York Yankees' Hideki Matsui and issuing a walk to Jorge Posada, Ray watched Dennis Sarfate induce a clutch double play and Cesar Izturis extend the Orioles' lead with a two-run homer. "After that, I had already forgotten what happened," Ray said. It was the first appearance since July 2007 for the former closer, who missed all last season after having ligament-reconstruction surgery on his right elbow.

Uehara excels The Orioles' Koji Uehara saved his best performance for last this spring against the Washington Nationals in Norfolk, Va. Uehara dominated in six innings, allowing just one hit - a two-run homer that Ryan Zimmerman golfed around the left-field foul pole. Uehara retired 10 straight to start the game, walked Nick Johnson and allowed Zimmerman's homer before setting down the final eight. He struck out three, throwing 73 pitches, including 15 of 20 first-pitch strikes. Afterward, the club presented him with a cake to celebrate his 34th birthday.

Eaton gets through 4 Adam Eaton, a favorite for one of the Orioles' available rotation spots after being released by the Philadelphia Phillies this spring, allowed two runs (one earned) in four innings in a loss to the St. Louis Cardinals in Jupiter, Fla. Eaton gave up three hits and a walk and recorded a first-pitch strike on 11 of 15 batters. After allowing both runs in the first inning, he retired the final eight Cardinals hitters he faced. Orioles manager Dave Trembley was satisfied with the outing but wasn't handing a rotation spot to Eaton yet. "He's got to keep pitching," Trembley said.

Seattle -- Orioles interim manager Dave Trembley's plan in the eighth inning last night was for Danys Baez, who had already pitched 1 1/3 innings, to get one more out and then hand the ball over to left-handed specialist Jamie Walker to face Ichiro Suzuki with nobody on base. But that backfired when Yuniesky Betancourt smacked Baez's first pitch to the wall in left field for a leadoff double, leaving the Orioles' bullpen with a mess that it couldn't clean up. They were one pitch away before Chad Bradford issued a bases-loaded, two-out walk to Adrian Beltre to score the winning run in the Orioles' 6-5 loss to the Seattle Mariners before an announced 28,550 at Safeco Field.

Nasty stuff Erik Bedard extended his scoreless-innings streak to five yesterday by blanking the Florida Marlins until Hayden Penn replaced him in the fourth. Bedard allowed one hit, a leadoff single by Josh Willingham in the second, and struck out four. Bedard has retired 15 of the 16 batters he's faced in two starts. "I felt OK," he said. "I was locating and throwing all my pitches for strikes." Scraping for runs Neither team scored until the seventh inning, when the floodgates opened.

Hard as it might be to believe with the snow and ice accumulating outside our windows, pitchers and catchers will begin their spring toils this week in Florida and Arizona. And that means it's no longer freakish to begin preparing for your fantasy baseball drafts at the end of next month. Spring training is a time of great intrigue for fantasy obsessives. Most of us already know how we'll value the top half of the player pool, but questions surround the bottom half. Will rookie X win that starting job he deserves?

DETROIT -- A day after both benches cleared following a verbal altercation between Orioles shortstop Miguel Tejada and the Detroit Tigers' battery of Jeremy Bonderman and Ivan Rodriguez, both sides said there was no lingering animosity. "I'm not mad at anybody ... but there is no doubt in my mind that [Gary] Sheffield was thrown at on purpose," Tigers manager Jim Leyland said. "I don't have any ax to grind with anybody from Baltimore. I love Sam Perlozzo. He's a good guy. I don't know Tejada that well, but Tejada is a great player and personality.

The blueprint on how to beat the New York Yankees has been missing from the Orioles? vault for so long. No matter what they tried, no matter how hard they battled, the result was usually frustration. But on two consecutive nights here, the Orioles appeared to have discovered something. Get a gritty outing from a rookie starter, get several big outs from the resurgent bullpen, get enough lutch hits froman offense that is finding ways to beat teams on a nightly basis, and suddenly the Yankees don?

ANAHEIM, Calif. -- Jaret Wright still couldn't say definitively that he will throw another pitch in the major leagues. But that thought alone continues to drive him while he rehabilitates a chronically bad shoulder that has kept him away from the Orioles since his last start on April 29. "I still want to play really badly," said Wright, who was 0-3 with a 6.97 ERA for the Orioles when he went to the disabled list for the second time this season....

Key at-bat With two on and two out in the seventh, Orioles left-handed relief specialist Jamie Walker entered the game to face David Ortiz. After falling behind 0-2 in the count, Ortiz battled back, fouling off five pitches. On the 11th pitch of the at-bat, Ortiz blooped a ball into short left field and it fell just in front of a charging Jay Payton, giving the Red Sox a one-run edge. Boston, which got four walks in the inning, tacked on two more runs. In rhythm Red Sox starter Curt Schilling continued his strong season, giving up a run and five hits over seven innings.

Orioles right-hander Chris Tillman pitched to catcher Matt Wieters during the 2008 season at Double-A Bowie. He threw to him again this season at Triple-A Norfolk. And when Tillman debuted for the Orioles in July, Wieters, the franchise's most hyped phenom in two decades, had already been in the major leagues for two months. Yet, the quiet Wieters who Tillman knew so well in the minors dissipated with each big league game, replaced by a more confident, more vocal force behind the plate.

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. - -Nearly two months since his last pitch of a promising rookie season was lined off his left shin, Brad Bergesen still hasn't been able to run. He no longer walks with a limp, but on certain days when he spends a lot of time on his feet, he feels some minor soreness in his leg. "I know the difference between pain and injury," Bergesen said in a phone interview late last week. "Most players have some type of pain, something that just hangs around that they can play through.

TORONTO - -In another season of consistent failure, the Orioles hit a new low Wednesday night by reaching a season high with their 7-3 loss to the Toronto Blue Jays. It marked their seventh consecutive defeat, their worst skid in a 2009 season that has been futile for months. The Orioles (60-92) have been swept twice this year in a three-game series by the Blue Jays (69-83) and finish the season 1-8 at Rogers Centre. They must win at least three of their final 10 games to avoid their first 100-loss season since 1988.

Officially, the Orioles played nine innings against the Tampa Bay Rays and their rookie right-hander Wade Davis in a 3-0 defeat Thursday night. The first inning, though, was the only one that mattered. Davis, a heralded prospect making just the third start of his major league career, loaded the bases with no outs in the first, but the Orioles couldn't get the ball out of the infield and failed to score. They never had much of a chance after that as Davis retired 25 of the final 28 batters he faced on his way to a shutout that doubled as his first big league win. He allowed three base runners to start the night and three more for the rest of the game.

It's starting to appear that Brad Bergesen's promising rookie season will come to a premature end. Bergesen, who hasn't pitched since taking a line drive off his left shin July 30, still hasn't progressed to throwing off a mound, and it now looks doubtful he'll be able to cover enough ground to return to the Orioles' rotation before late next month. That will force the Orioles to decide whether it's worth it to have Bergesen (7-5, 3.43 ERA) come back to make just one or two starts. "The throwing program got delayed, and the calendar is starting to work against us right now," president of baseball operations Andy MacPhail said.

Seconds before Orioles closer Jim Johnson reared back to throw a ninth-inning, two-out fastball that would undo an entire night's worth of hard work, Melvin Mora had one thought running through his head: Call timeout! Mora noticed that Cleveland Indians first baseman Andy Marte had opened his stance just a hair and was going to try to crank the next pitch over the left-field fence. In that instant, Mora wanted to freeze frame his pitcher and walk to the mound. He would tell Johnson to relax, take a deep breath and bust Marte inside.

MINNEAPOLIS -- Chris Ray's return to effective late-inning relief started with his getting healthy again. It continued with the realization that he could no longer blow fastballs by everybody. "When I was in college and my early years of pro ball, I was able just to throw it by guys," said Ray, the Orioles' closer before he had ligament-reconstruction surgery on his right elbow in August 2007. "Now, I'm working more on pitching to contact. I'm not trying to go out there and strike everybody out like I had been in the past.

MINNEAPOLIS - -There might not be enough time left in the season for Jeremy Guthrie to achieve the number of wins he had hoped for before the year began, or to get his ERA down to a number with which he can be satisfied. But if Guthrie continues over the next month to pitch the way he has in his past two outings, the Orioles will feel much better about their 2010 rotation and the right-hander's position near the top of it. Guthrie held the Minnesota Twins to just a run over seven innings, and the Orioles salvaged one game of the three-game set with a 5-1 victory Wednesday in front of an announced 28,446 at the Metrodome.

MINNEAPOLIS - -His back still sore, Orioles center fielder Adam Jones was unavailable for Monday night's game against the Minnesota Twins, and it's possible he might not play in the series. "My back hurts, so I've just got to deal with it," said Jones, who had mild mid-back spasms and was pulled from Sunday's 5-4 win over the Chicago White Sox before the bottom of the first inning. Jones saw a doctor and received treatment Monday, and he was in no mood to discuss his condition. He did say he felt considerably better and estimated he would be out of the lineup "for a couple of days, probably."

When the Orioles' rotation of the future is considered, David Hernandez is usually forgotten. The right-hander with the mid-90s fastball is perceived as a back-end starter at best and, oftentimes, he's penciled in as a reliever on the Orioles' eventual dream team. Yet on a balmy night at Camden Yards, with thousands wearing free T-shirts bearing the name of Brad Bergesen, another of the club's rookie starters, it was Hernandez who delivered a key, convincing performance in a 3-2 win over the Oakland Athletics and their heralded young right-hander Trevor Cahill.