Chen Delivers and Cools the Hot A's; Wheeling and Dealing...

The Orioles needed a win on Sunday to not lose any further ground in the Wild Card race, and they got from a superb performance on the mound by Wei-Yin Chen, plus a Matt Wieters three run homer.


When all was said and done, the Orioles defeated the Oakland Athletics, 6-1, on a wonderful Sunday afternoon in Baltimore.

They avoided a three game streak against a very hot Oakland team, and at 53-49, remain 2.5 games behind in the wild card hunt. The Orioles are 7.5 games behind the Yankees in the American League East.

Chen was star of the game, as he pitched a masterful game, perhaps one of better starts by an Oriole in a longtime. The only real downer to Chen’s outing was that he didn’t get past the sixth inning, despite striking out 12 Oakland batters and dominating them. He walked four, and upped his pitch out to over 100 before the sixth inning; therefore, he got pulled.

Chen’s feat made a bit of history as he set a record for the most strikeouts by a Taiwanese-born pitcher and the most by an Oriole since July 2007 (set by Erik Bedard). He got some major help by the Baltimore offense as they jumped on Oakland starter Travis Blackley in the fourth inning as they plated four runs in the frame – off an Adam Jones RBI-double and a Matt Wieters three-run homer, his 13th.

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