Umpire adds injury to insult for Zach Britton

Zach Britton’s season debut last night didn’t go nearly the way he wanted it to.

First, he allowed a monster home run to Michael Saunders on the second pitch he threw. However, he settled down somewhat, getting through the rest of the first inning, the second, and the third while scattering a couple singles.

Still, Britton did the typical Oriole pitcher “give a lead right back” act, laboring through the bottom of the fourth after a Matt Wieters two-run home run had staked him to a 2-1 lead. To his credit, despite throwing 36 pitches and allowing two singles, a double, and two walks in the frame, he held the M’s to just two.

In Saunders’ at bat that inning, Britton looked to have locked up the big lefty for strike three on two separate occasions, only to end up walking him. At that point, I tweeted that the “ump not doing us any favors.” A bit of foreshadowing…

Zach then set down Seattle in order in the fifth, and was still in line for a “quality start,” if he could get through the sixth without allowing another run.

Unfortunately, that wasn’t in the cards.

Leading off the sixth, Justin Smoak hit a broken-bat liner that fell in front of Nolan Reimold in left field for a single (a play on which Nolan may or may not have been dogging it).

Then a strange thing happened. On the MASN broadcast, Zach Britton was shown grimacing and walking around the mound. Buck Showalter came out to see if Britton was alright. At this point, O’s fans watching were wondering what happened, and we had to assume that Britton somehow hurt himself on the pitch.

After a few moments though, we saw what really happened.

Home plate umpire Alan Porter threw a ball at Britton, and hit him square in his throwing shoulder.

Zach could be seen mouthing a certain four-letter word to voice his displeasure.

(Still waiting for video and/or GIF of the incident…so far the internet is letting me down.)

Update: Here it is, c/o our friends at Baltimore Sports Report

After Britton took some tosses to shake it off, his bad luck only got worse.

The next hitter, Jason Bay, hit a sharp grounder to Manny Machado at third. Machado made a diving stop, and on the kind of play we’ve come to expect from him, appeared ready to fire to second to start the 5-4-3 double play.

Instead, the 20-year-old fumbled the ball out of his glove, and both runners were safe.

Robert Andino then executed a sacrifice bunt (eliciting a call of “looks like he worked on his bunting in Spring Training” from Jim Palmer, something all O’s fans were thinking), and then the wheels fell off…but not before another stroke of rotten luck.

Brendan Ryan singled to push the M’s lead to 4-2, and Seattle had runners on first and third with one out. Saunders then came up, and Britton got him to ground to second base. Unfortunately, because his bat broke as well, the ball wasn’t hit hard enough to turn the double play. Instead of being out of the inning down 4-2, another run scored and Saunders was safe at first.

An RBI triple by Kyle Seager (who I already hate) made it 6-2, but Britton toughed it out and managed to get the next guy to at least get through the sixth inning.

It was a rough night for Britton, but he was absolutely snakebitten by some bad luck.

Getting hit in the pitching arm by a ball thrown by the home plate umpire was a pretty perfect metaphor for Zach’s night.