Tommy Hunter

Orioles right-hander Tommy Hunter, the starter in Sunday's marathon in Boston, has been demoted to Triple-A Norfolk to make room for reliever Jason Berken. The Orioles needed bullpen help after the 17-inning victory against the Red Sox on Sunday. Hunter lasted just 4 1/3 innings and gave up eight hits, one walk and five runs. “Physically, I'm fine, but mentally …,” Hunter said moments after being told he was being demoted. Hunter is 2-1 with a 5.00 ERA in six starts. He has allowed nine home runs in 36 innings pitched.

KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- Don't let all the predictable denials fool you. The steady rain that postponed Game 3 of the American League Championship Series was just what the doctor ordered for an Orioles team that could use a little celestial intervention to cool off the sizzling Kansas City Royals. Who cares if it was a doctor of meteorology? The Royals have won six straight postseason games and seven straight overall dating back to the last day of the regular season, so anything that interrupts their biorhythms should be more than OK with the Orioles.

Not a lot of news coming out of pre-game interviews with the team and Orioles manager Buck Showalter. Some highlights: ** Tommy Hunter says he has an “itty, bitty bruise” on his pitching hand after barehanding a sharp comebacker yesterday. He's beating himself up for being “stupid,” but says his right hand feels OK. It wasn't really swollen, so the plan was for him to play catch today. Showalter said Hunter would get an X-Ray on the hand, but it seems like the Orioles dodged a bullet.

DETROIT -- As left-handed reliever Andrew Miller spoke to the media in the clubhouse hallway Sunday night after the Orioles' American League Division Series clincher in Detroit, he was interrupted by a bellow. "You did it, Andrew," said the excited voice. "You did it. " Miller smiled and shook hands with the giddy man to his right: Orioles executive vice president Dan Duquette, who acquired Miller in a July 31 nonwaiver trade deadline deal with the Boston Red Sox. Whether you're an Orioles fan or you just happen to run the organization, it's hard not to be pumped about what Miller has done in his two-plus months in Baltimore.

There was some real concern after Sunday's game in Toronto when right-handed reliever Tommy Hunter grabbed a hard comebacker with his pitching hand. But after preliminary X-rays, icing and some rest, Hunter described the injury as "an itty, bitty bruise" on Monday. He played catch at Nats Park before Monday's game and underwent another X-ray, which Orioles manager Buck Showalter said came out "clean. " "It's not too bad," Hunter said. "Just kind of feels like what a hitter would feel like after taking a ball off the ankle.

If the Orioles' 4-2, 18-inning, five-hour and 44-minute victory over the Seattle Mariners wasn't weird enough, consider the plight of reliever Tommy Hunteron Tuesday night/Wednesday morning. He picked up the win. And some bird excrement in the process. We're not joking. Hunter was in the bullpen, about to enter in the 16th inning, when one of many seagulls at Safeco Field, deposited some droppings on Hunter's hat. “I was minding my own business, not doing anything. I thought it was [reliever Luis]

The Orioles have dropped the first two games of their four-game series against the Twins here in Minnesota, and now the team will turn to right-hander Tommy Hunter to end the slide. Hunter has been recalled from Triple-A Norfolk, the team announced today. The Orioles will need to send someone down in a corresponding move yet to be announced. Hunter was 3-4 with a 6.11 ERA in 15 games (13 starts) with the Orioles this season. He's been sent to Norfolk twice before and is 2-1 with a 4.66 ERA there in three Triple-A starts.

SARASOTA, Fla. -  Orioles pitchers Jason Hammel and Tommy Hunter threw in separate minor league games Friday at Twin Lakes Park to get their work in, but the free-swinging Tampa Bay Rays Class-A hitters they faced didn't help. With the Orioles facing mostly American League East opponents and the Minnesota Twins - their first opponent in the regular season, Orioles manager Buck Showalter has sent some of his starting pitchers to the team's minor league complex to pitch so they won't get overexposed.

This is the third article in an occasional series about Maryland area athletes away from the game. Tommy Hunter still hears it a lot in the Orioles clubhouse. "Judo champ coming!" someone will sing out. "Here comes Judo Boy!" another player will say. "It definitely gets old," the veteran right-hander says with a weary smile. "I've heard it since I've been playing baseball. . . I roll with it. " Sure, as a two-time Junior Olympics gold medalist in judo, the 6-foot-3, 260-pound Hunter could get one of his wise-guy teammates in a wicked armbar or chokehold and end the needling in a heartbeat.

Even though he didn't get the win or even a quality start Sunday, pitcher Tommy Hunter kept the Orioles in the game en route to a 5-3 win over Kansas City. He had a high pitch count early, but finished out the 5th inning - and his start - at 97 pitches, exiting with the score tied at 3. "Tommy bent but didn't break," Orioles manager Buck Showalter said. "It wasn't one of his sharper outings, but he gave us a chance to win, didn't let it get away from him. " When Hunter has struggled this season, it has mostly stemmed from the home run ball.

The Orioles will only have two lefties in their bullpen for the American League Division Series that starts tonight at 5:37 p.m. against the Detroit Tigers, and Ubaldo Jimenez is a surprise addition to the roster. The Tigers don't have many left-handed bench options, so Orioles manager Buck Showalter apparently felt he'd rather have an extra right-hander that can provide some length in Jimenez. Infielder Jimmy Paredes made the cut. Outfielder/baserunning specialist Quintin Berry didn't.

TORONTO - We've reached the final game of the regular season, and we still don't know the Orioles' opponent in the American League Division Series. Both the Detroit Tigers and the Kansas City Royals lost Saturday night, so Detroit goes into the final day of the regular season with a one-game lead. If the Royals win and the Tigers lose today, the teams will play a Game 163 on Monday to determine the AL Central winner.  Before you ask, we also still don't know the start time for the first two games of the ALDS at Camden Yards.

After the Orioles drained bottles of champagne inside the home clubhouse of Camden Yards, leaving behind not a dry spot in a room littered with corks and empty beer bottles, they ran toward the dugout for a postgame party that Baltimore had long awaited. They celebrated their first American League East division title in 17 years Tuesday night after their 8-2 win over the Toronto Blue Jays with their hometown fans at Camden Yards. Their coronation as newly recrowned kings of the AL East came in front of a sea of orange -- an announced 34,297 -- entirely on its feet, standing as right-hander Tommy Hunter closed out the game with a grounder to first base.

BOSTON -- Orioles right-hander Miguel Gonzalez is continuing to show he deserves a postseason start while his team has seized its biggest lead in the American League East in 35 years. Yes, 35 years -- before any member of the Orioles' current active roster was born. With their 4-0 victory over the Boston Red Sox on Monday night, the Orioles (84-59) have taken a 10-game divisional lead for the first time since Sept. 22, 1979, a season in which the Orioles lost to the Pittsburgh Pirates in a seven-game World Series.

The Orioles tried to give Ubaldo Jimenez some work in a pressure-free situation Sunday afternoon, allowing the struggling right-hander to work the ninth inning with a seven-run lead. But Jimenez would last just five batters after loading the bases and walking in a run. He issued three walks and allowed a double to Brian Dozier, allowing four of the five batters he faced to reach base. After he left the mound to a chorus of boos from the hometown crowd at Camden Yards, he was charged with two more runs when Tommy Hunter gave up a two-run single that suddenly created a tense situation and a save opportunity for Zach Britton.

The beating the Orioles put on the Chicago White Sox bullpen Monday night - five runs in the eighth inning off three relievers with ERAs over five - was born of the same offseason strategy that the Orioles took with their bullpen. Both teams traded away their proven closers - Jim Johnson from Baltimore, and Addison Reed from Chicago. Both tried to essentially piece it together with what they had. Only one succeeded. The Orioles success in that department, and the lack of it in Chicago, is a big reason why the White Sox, who like the Orioles are in the top-10 in offense in several categories, are seven games under .500 while the Orioles are flying high, 7.5 games ahead of Toronto and two games behind the Los Angeles Angels for the best record in the American League.

Now that the Orioles' bullpen has returned to the conventional seven-reliever setup, roles will be magnified for each reliever. That goes for right-hander Tommy Hunter, who allowed back-to-back homers in the sixth inning of Wednesday's game against the Red Sox before the Orioles rallied in a five-run ninth for an 8-5 win at Fenway Park. Hunter, who was the first Orioles pitcher to take the mound after a 43-minute rain delay, actually started the inning strong by striking out the first two batters, including outlasting third baseman Will Middlebrooks on an 11-pitch at bat. But after striking out Middlebrooks, Daniel Nava and Jarrod Saltalamacchia both homered on 96-mph fastballs.

Orioles right-hander Tommy Hunter denied any frustration in the wake of Friday's 2-0 loss to the Tampa Bay Rays, in which he pitched one of his better games of the season but was handed a tough-luck loss because his teammates' bats had yet to arrive in Tampa Bay. The Orioles were 0-for-7 with runners in scoring position and are hitless in their past 22 at-bats with runners in scoring position. They stranded 10 base runners on the night and struck out 11 times. Most nights those statistics will lead to a loss.

Chris Davis, who was batting .193 in 99 games through Sunday, didn't start Monday against New York Yankees left-hander Chris Capuano. But after third baseman Manny Machado injured his right leg during an at-bat in the bottom of the third inning, Davis entered as a defensive replacement at third base to start the top of the fourth. The left-handed-hitting Davis' struggles this season have been well-documented, but Orioles manager Buck Showalter said he also wanted to get Steve Pearce a start.

Perhaps it was fitting that the first leadoff home run in Nick Markakis' career would stand as the game-winner Sunday in a 1-0 pitchers' duel victory over the Seattle Mariners at Camden Yards. In his nine years with the Orioles, Markakis has been both a consistent contributor and someone who often has been overlooked while flashier players take center stage. “He is probably the epitome of consistency,” Orioles reliever Tommy Hunter said. “If you can wrap it up and put it in a bottle and give it to somebody - whatever he does on a daily basis - you'd be a rich man. He's a big-time part of this team, part of this organization and he just continues to play baseball.” A first-inning solo homer normally would go unnoticed over the course of a game, but Markakis' shot onto the right-field flag court on the sixth pitch from Seattle right-hander Hisashi Iwakuma became more crucial as the afternoon played out. It was the only run Iwakuma or Orioles starter Chris Tillman would allow in an old-fashioned pitchers' duel.