Orioles aim to keep rolling vs. Giants

The Baltimore Orioles can clinch their first series win in more than a month when they host the San Francisco Giants on Saturday.

The Orioles took the opening game 9-6 on Friday night and will send right-hander David Hess (1-6, 6.71 ERA) out for the middle game in the series. Their last series win came April 22-24 against the Chicago White Sox.

Hess, who will face the Giants for the first time in his career, is looking for his first win since April 1 and has allowed four earned runs or more in six of his past nine starts. In his most recent outing, he gave up five runs (four earned) on nine hits in 5 2/3 innings of a no-decision against the Colorado Rockies on Sunday. He struck out Nolan Arenado twice and Trevor Story three times.

"That's a confidence boost to me," Hess told MLB.com regarding his work against the pair of hard-hitting Rockies. "Those are two guys that are really good, quality hitters, so to go out there to get that result was really big in the situation it happened in as well."

Hess, who bounced back from a disastrous May 21 outing against the New York Yankees in which he gave up nine runs on eight hits over five innings, has given up 18 homers, tied for the major league lead, over 11 games.

San Francisco right-hander Shaun Anderson (0-1, 4.80 ERA) will make his fourth major league start and first against the Orioles on Saturday.

Anderson, 24, has gone five innings in each of his first three outings. In his latest start, he took the loss after allowing six runs (four earned) and nine hits against the Arizona Diamondbacks on Sunday.

"They're a really aggressive team," Anderson told MLB.com. "I made some bad pitches early, and they got to them."

Most of the damage was done in the first two innings, when the Diamondbacks scored five runs.

"Anderson was up today early," manager Bruce Bochy told reporters after the game. "Along with the hits, the mistakes he made, now you throw in bad defense, and that's a recipe for what happened today."

The Giants' first game at Camden Yards since 2004 got off to a fast start Friday night as the teams combined for 11 first-inning runs. The Orioles rallied from a 5-0, first-inning deficit to win their eighth home game in 29 tries.

Dwight Smith Jr. clubbed his first career grand slam for the Orioles in a six-run bottom of the first, and Trey Mancini and Renato Nunez also homered.

"It's been a rough couple of months," Orioles manager Brandon Hyde told reporters. "We've had so many tough losses. For us to be able to come back and take a serious blow in the top of the first to stay with it and stay in the game and continue to take good at-bats and stay together in the dugout, I thought it was just awesome."

Starting pitchers Drew Pomeranz of the Giants and Andrew Cashner combined for 90 first-inning pitches.

"That's hard to take for us," Bochy told reporters regarding the first inning. "That's been an issue for us, and we go out and have our biggest first inning. You'd like to enjoy it for a little while. It lasted about 10 minutes. That's frustrating for the guys."

Mike Yastrzemski, who spent six seasons in the Orioles' minor league system before he was traded by Baltimore on March 23, homered and tripled in his first two at-bats for San Francisco, which has lost eight of nine.

--Field Level Media