Santander strikes again in surging O's sweep

Up and over Anthony Santander climbed, ahead of Mike Trout, Eddie Rosario, Kyle Seager and Nelson Cruz -- four of the American League’s top run producers bested. When Santander walked off the field after the Orioles’ 11-4 win over the Phillies on Thursday, he sat only behind Aaron Judge on the league’s RBI leaderboard, having driven in a run in seven straight games and having led the O’s to their first five-game win streak in three years.

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Who? The Orioles are getting that question a lot these days, as they’ve spent the first third of this 60-game sprint of a season defying expectations and winning at a pace equal to that of a contender. They may still be rebuilding, in a long-term sense. But there is no denying the way players like Santander continue to assert themselves, not only as big league regulars, but as difference-makers.

"He is taking such good at-bats,” manager Brandon Hyde said. “I feel like he hits three balls on the nose a night."

The latest example came Thursday, when the switch-hitting Santander’s bases-clearing double in the top of the fifth chased Phillies starter Jake Arrieta and proved the deciding blow as Baltimore swept Philadelphia at Citizens Bank Park. The O’s didn’t sweep a single series in 2019. They’ve got two this year already, in six official tries, as well as one of the AL’s top offenses by a variety of metrics. It’s a unit Santander has been pacing from the No. 2 hole since Opening Day.

“I’m very impressed with these young players. They are quick to make adjustments, and they want to get better,” said José Iglesias, whose two-run double provided insurance in the seventh. “They want to improve their game, and the results are showing. … I see hungry players with a lot of talent who want to get better.”

In that vein, the Orioles are quick to point Santander, the former Rule 5 Draft pick who emerged as a middle-of-the-order threat by hitting 20 homers last season. He has four homers, a slugging percentage of .548 and 19 RBIs in 18 games this season. He sits one behind Judge, who is currently nursing a lower-body injury, for the AL lead in RBIs.

Santander's efforts were part of a season-high 11-run attack Thursday that made a winner of Thomas Eshelman who, in his second start in place of the inactive John Means, held his former organization to two runs over five innings for his first win of the season. The O’s also got a two-run double from Iglesias, and late homers from Pedro Severino and Rio Ruiz to ensure Arrieta his first career loss against the team that drafted and developed him more than a decade ago.

But the outcome was assured when Santander rifled an Arrieta sinker off the right-field wall, a half-inning after the Phillies jumped ahead on J.T. Realmuto’s two-run homer. With the hit, Santander became the first Oriole to drive in a run in at least seven consecutive games since Jonathan Schoop in 2017. That was, coincidentally, also the last time they won five games in a row and swept a series on the road.

“That’s why I love Tony, because he is line to line, and he can stay on the ball so well,” Hyde said. “That was a huge hit for us. Jake was throwing the ball really well. He had his sinker going, and I thought it was going to be a tough night for us because of the movement on his fastball. He was in a nice rhythm, and we were battling at-bats. His pitch count was fairly low. Then the fifth inning came, and suddenly, we started taking great at-bats off him.”