BALTIMORE -- For two-plus innings Friday night at Oriole Park, the Orioles and Giants engaged in bananas baseball. Not since 2004 had these two teams squared off in Baltimore, and inside the lines, they seemed determined to make up for lost time: combining for 14 runs, 14 hits and three errors not a third of the way through.

Then, things stabilized: Andrew Cashner rebounded from a 46-pitch first inning to complete five frames, Mychal Givens helped Baltimore’s ’pen string together four near-flawless innings of relief, and nobody scored again outside of Renato Nunez’s long solo home run in the seventh.

That was still enough to add up to a 9-6 win for the Orioles, who used a grand slam from Dwight Smith Jr. to erase a five-run deficit in the first inning, and then received a Trey Mancini homer in the second that, by the end of the night, stood as the game winner.

• Box score

“I loved the way they didn’t play the score, they played for themselves,” manager Brandon Hyde said. “It’s been a rough couple months. We’ve had so many tough losses, for us to be able to come back, take a serious blow in the top of the first and stay with it, stay together, I thought it was just awesome.”

Hyde was especially impressed with the work of his ’pen, whose season-long struggles crested over the past week or so. Their issues were notably absent Friday, when Givens, Paul Fry and Richard Bleier combined to hold San Francisco to a lone hit in relief of Cashner, who earned the win despite his rocky first inning.

On the offensive side, the contributors were multiple: Jonathan Villar reached base four times in four plate appearances, scoring twice; Nunez and Pedro Severino drove in runs ahead of Smith’s slam in the club’s six-run first; and Mancini’s two-run shot chased Drew Pomeranz, who took the loss after surrendering eight earned runs in 1 1/3 innings.

All told, it resulted in what Cashner called the Orioles’ “best comeback win of the year,” one that Hyde said “is up there from a character standpoint.” Let’s dive into a few key numbers that explain how it happened.

1

It was a night of career milestones for Smith Jr. and Giants outfielder Mike Yastrzemski, who hit their first career grand slam and home run, respectively. For now, let’s focus on Smith Jr., who was dropped to eighth in Hyde’s order Friday night amid a 3-for-24 skid.

It didn’t take Smith Jr. long to snap free. The left fielder tagged a 2-1 fastball from Pomeranz a projected 442 feet over the center-field wall. That turned a 5-2 deficit into a 6-5 Orioles lead.

“That first inning, they hit us in the mouth pretty good,” Smith Jr. said.

“As long as we answered with something, for us to take the lead there was huge.”

Smith Jr.’s longest career home run came with the added benefit of his father being present to witness it from the stands. A former big leaguer himself, Smith Sr. played 28 games for the Orioles in 1994 as part of an eight-year career also spent with the Cubs, Angels and Braves.

“I feel like every time he’s around, I do something,” Smith Jr. said. “He’s a good-luck charm. He was acting like he was at a football game tonight. That was pretty funny to watch on the big screen.”

66.7

The percentage of Cashner’s starts -- 8 of 12 -- in which the Orioles have scored at least six runs. That’s tied for the most among American League starters, and stands as a big reason why Cashner’s record improved to 6-2 while his ERA crept back up over 5.00 with Friday’s performance.

“It was probably one of the worst starts of my career,” Cashner said. “I never really got in a groove with anything. I was yanking my fastball. Breaking ball was short. My changeup was terrible. I kept telling myself to get through the fifth, save the bullpen as much as possible.”

That seemed like a tall order early on, after Cashner allowed five of his first six batters to reach, walking two and surrendering five hits in San Francisco’s five-run first. Given new life when the Orioles rallied in the bottom half, Cashner gave the lead right back on his first pitch of the second, coughing up a game-tying solo homer to Yastrzemski. But he needed just 63 pitches to navigate the next four innings, aided by a heads-up double play in the second and Keon Broxton’s lunging catch in the third. He didn’t strike out a batter for only the fourth time in 177 career starts.

"You give Cashner credit. He could have cashed it in,” Giants manager Bruce Bochy said. “That was some kind of competing on his side. He found a way to get five innings. We worked him hard but he found a way to get it done.”

703

That's the number of games Yastrzemski spent in the Minor Leagues before cracking the Giants’ big league roster this week, 663 coming in the Orioles system. Which is what made his arrival at Camden Yards on Friday such a strange homecoming, prompting Yastrzemski to “do a little looking around before the game, just kind of taking it in and letting it sink in.”

“Once that happened,” he said. “I was ready to play baseball instead of standing there in awe.”

The Orioles’ 14th round pick in 2013 was traded to San Francisco this spring for right-hander Tyler Herb, then he made the most of it. He tripled home the game’s first run, then lined Cashner’s first pitch of the second over the right-field wall, his first career homer tying the game at 6.

“Deep down, I always wanted to come here and hit one,” Yastrzemski said. “Always. Now it’s a reality, and that’s pretty special.”

6+

The number of years since two teams scored at least five first-inning runs in the same game, last accomplished by the Yankees and Red Sox on July 6, 2012. Both clubs sent at least nine men to the plate in the frame, marking the first time that’s happened in the first inning of a game since the Indians and White Sox did so on Sept. 5, 2017.