Harvey cools A's bats, wins 3rd start in a row

Any lingering doubts about Matt Harvey's abilities on the mound may have evaporated on Saturday afternoon, when the veteran right-hander had arguably one of his best starts as a member of the Orioles. Backed by some early run support, Harvey threw a solid 5 2/3 innings as the Orioles beat the Athletics, 8-4, at the Oakland Coliseum to secure at least a winning series to start the road trip.

Harvey has had his share of struggles over the past five years because of injuries or ineffectiveness on the mound, but through five starts this season he appears to be a guy the Orioles can rely on every fifth day.

“Both [Harvey and John Means] both dominated the last two days,” teammate DJ Stewart said. “It’s fun to play behind those guys.”

Harvey came to the realization that he can no longer blow hitters away with his fastball, which used to clock in at 97 to 100 mph earlier in his career. These days, he's throwing a lot of sinkers and offspeed pitches. The fastball is still efficient, however, as it registered as high as 95 mph on Saturday.

“It’s putting the work in during the offseason, putting the work in between starts and really just trusting it,” Harvey said. “The last couple of years, I’ve been fighting so hard to get back to blowing fastballs by people.

“Throwing 97 to 100, I’ve come to grips that it’s not going to happen right now. I’m not saying it’s never going to happen. I hope it does. If it doesn’t, I have to go out there and compete with what I have.”

Saturday marked the third consecutive start in which Harvey has given Baltimore at least five innings, and the victory was his third straight.

At first, it looked like Harvey might have been in for a long day, needing 24 pitches to get through the first inning. It didn’t help that Mark Canha led off with a single and Ramón Laureano reached first on a walk with one out, but Harvey managed to get out of trouble when he retired Mitch Moreland and Matt Chapman on groundouts.

Harvey settled down after the first, navigating the middle innings without much resistance and making it into the sixth. After retiring the first two hitters he faced in the frame he allowed a single to Chapman and an RBI double to Seth Brown before being replaced by right-hander Cole Sulser, who allowed an RBI single to Tony Kemp.

The first-inning groundout from Chapman hit Harvey on his pitching thumb, though he insisted that he wanted to stay in the game. He'd say after the game that he was feeling a bit of pain in that thumb.

“That was a veteran performance," said manager Brandon Hyde of Harvey's outing. "He is so competitive and I love how our guys feed off that."

In terms of run support, the Orioles gave Harvey more than enough to win his third consecutive decision, plating six runs in the third inning against A's lefty Jesús Luzardo. Austin Hays highlighted the scoring with a two-run single that plated a third run on a defensive miscue.

"I thought we really had good at-bats that inning. We capitalize on a couple of their mistakes [on defense]. It was nice to see the line moving,” Hyde said.

Baltimore added two more runs in the sixth inning when Stewart hit a two-run homer off right-hander J.B. Wendelken.

With the victory, the Orioles improved to 13-14 and need a win on Sunday to reach .500. For Hyde, it’s too early to talk about reaching that type of goal.

“It’s 28 games in 162,” he said. “I just want to see us continue to get better, try to win every series we can. I like the way we are competitive against good clubs and playing well. … 28 games really doesn’t mean anything over the course of a six-month season.”