Bundy gives O's 'a Major League start'

BALTIMORE -- Dylan Bundy sprung from the first-base dugout and hopped some chalk, beating his catcher and seven other teammates onto the field at Oriole Park. Alone on the mound, he peered toward home plate and into a brave new world: the eighth inning. It’s a place no Orioles starter this season had seen before.

This was late in Saturday’s 3-0 win over the Rays, which Bundy spent pitching brilliantly. Back on the home bench, Brandon Hyde beamed. The skipper had already watched Bundy breeze thrice through Tampa Bay’s lineup, the righty rolling toward his first victory of the year in dominant fashion. When he was through, he’d outdueled Yonny Chirinos and led Baltimore to its first shutout of the season.

“That was a Major League start,” Hyde said. “That was really enjoyable.”

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And one of the best of Bundy’s career, at that. By holding the first-place Rays to three hits over 7 1/3 innings in a tidy two-hour, 19-minute affair, Bundy snapped a personal nine-start winless streak dating back to 2018. His last experience in the eighth came last June 11 against the Red Sox, a 23-start stretch over which Bundy pitched to a 7.04 ERA.

Saturday’s effort shaved Bundy’s 2019 ERA more than a run, to 5.30. Now the Orioles hope it’ll go a ways toward buoying a rotation that entered play with a collective 5.68 mark, 29th among Major League clubs.

“That’s what we needed, we need to make that more and more of a habit,” catcher Austin Wynns said. “This is great to build off for his next start.”

Bundy and Hyde both expressed a similar sentiment, Hyde saying, “I hope he builds on tonight and continues to pitch well the rest of the year.” Bundy characterized it as continued progress, citing improved fastball command during his past three starts. But unlike each of those, the big hit never came. Bundy didn't allow a runner to advance past second base and twice elicited soft contact to squash potential threats.

The righty threw 62 of his 96 pitches for strikes and, for the second consecutive home start, didn’t allow a home run. Bundy, who allowed an MLB-high 41 home runs last year, hadn’t done that in the same season since August 2017. He received a standing ovation from the announced crowd of 15,241 for his efforts.

“I felt like I was throwing all pitches to all parts of the plate, mixing it up on them, keeping them guessing,” Bundy said. “It’s all about rhythm and tempo. You want to keep that rolling and attack the hitters.”

Pitching with a lead for most of the night, Bundy did exactly that.

Jonathan Villar doubled and scored in the first and plated another run via a forceout in the third. Dwight Smith Jr. pummeled a 429-foot solo home run to center for insurance in the fourth, his sixth of the season. All the runs came against Chirinos, who started in place of scheduled opener Ryne Stanek in a last-minute change due to the threat of inclement weather.

But the weather held out to allow Bundy to spend the evening dealing in a fashion Hyde said he has been “begging our guys to do” -- by commanding his fastball off the plate with an eye toward opening other zones for his secondary pitches. Bundy struck out only four, but he generated enough weak contact to give credence to Hyde’s assessment. He induced nine groundouts, just two that surpassed Statcast’s 95 mph exit velocity “hard hit” threshold.

One particularly weak Willy Adames dribbler, against reliever Shawn Armstrong in the eighth, briefly threatened the Orioles’ shutout hopes. But Adames was ruled out via interference after Armstrong threw the ball up the first-base line, erasing the inherited run the error would’ve scored. Mychal Givens recorded his third save to shore up Bundy’s first win since last Sept. 13.

“It looked like the first one, two, three innings, we had some pitches to hit,” Rays manager Kevin Cash said. “After that, he got really nasty. He started getting to the edges, threw to the top of the zone. Everything had it going. His performance was really impressive.”