Machado belts 6th HR, shows off slick defense

BALTIMORE -- Red-hot Manny Machado extended his team lead in homers to six, going deep for the third time in two games with a fourth-inning solo blast in Friday's 3-1 win over the Indians.
"Honestly, it's just a matter of just kind of staying short. It's tough, I'm not a big free swinger at 3-0," said Machado, who hit his first career homer in that count off Trevor Bauer. "I never make good contact with it, you try to get too big and try to do too much and that's the tradition. But I think I'm feeling pretty good with my swing, staying in the zone, trying to stay under control. And it was a helluva pitch. I look back at it and it was a helluva pitch and I was just trying to make some good contact with it."
For Machado -- who homered twice in Thursday's game in Detroit -- it kept up his recent dominance against Cleveland. In 29 career games against the Indians, he has eight homers, 10 doubles and 19 RBIs. The shortstop, who has an eight-game hit streak, leads the Orioles with 15 RBIs.
"I thought Manny's home run [turned the momentum]," manager Buck Showalter said. "[The sense was] this game is tied and we had a pitcher on top of his game, so let's go."
Machado also impressed with his glove, snagging José Ramírez's two-out chopper up the middle in the top of the seventh with a diving stop. He then turned and flipped the ball from his stomach over to second base to get the out and prevent a run.

"I'm just glad that I had front-row seats to that play," Orioles reliever Richard Bleier said. "[I] turned around like, 'Aw, that ball's up the middle.' [And then I was] like, 'Oh wow, that was an incredible play.'"
Machado said it all came down to timing things and having a good sense of the clock and who was running.
"I anticipated going up the middle a little bit there," he said, "and that, at the end of the day, it was just staying in the zone and knowing how much time I had."