Here’s a cliché that’s a cliché for a reason: Baseball is played on grass, not on paper. Tonight was the only matchup in this Orioles-Mariners series featuring two starting pitchers with ERA’s north of five: Cade Povich, a slim lefty as capable of racking up strikeouts as of getting blown up by hitters versus Emerson Hancock—whom I think, if you and I were at trivia together, I could convince you was a forgotten Founding Father—who entered this with a 5.69 ERA and a Statcast page full of ugly blue peripherals.
So, of course, we got a pitchers’ duel, a 2-1 game when the starters left in the sixth inning that turned into a tight 3-2 Orioles win.