Wei-Yin Chen takes 1st loss as Orioles fall to Stephen Strasburg homerun

WASHINGTON — Wei-Yin Chen wasn’t fooling anyone with his breaking ball, least of all Stephen Strasburg.  Chen gave up a home run to Washington’s starting pitcher and didn’t make it out of the fifth inning in Baltimore’s 9-3 loss to the Nationals on Sunday.

The defeat ended the Orioles’ five-game winning streak and nine-game road run. Baltimore scored the game’s first three runs but got only two hits after the second inning — both in the ninth.Chen 4-1 yielded six runs and eight hits in 4 1-3 innings and absorbed his first major league loss. The Taiwan native was vying to become the first Baltimore starter to begin his Orioles career with five straight wins since Jimmy Key in 1997.

“This is baseball. Sometimes you have a good day, sometimes you have a bad day,” Chen said through a translator. “Definitely, I had a terrible start today.”The lowlight was Strasburg’s first major league home run. The hard-throwing Strasburg 4-1 is better known for his pitching, but he singled and scored in the third inning before hitting an 0-2 pitch over the left-field wall and into the Washington bullpen in the fourth.“I just realized pitchers can hit here, and I made a big mistake here and threw a bad pitch,” Chen said.

Orioles manager Buck Showalter said, “He hung a breaking ball. That’s what most people do who are big and strong like their pitcher is. I bet you could find a few pitchers who would hit that pitch out of the ballpark. He put a good swing on it and it carried out.”Chen’s problems extended beyond his dealings with Strasburg.“He made a lot of mistakes with his breaking ball today,” Showalter said. “That was pretty much the difference.”Despite the loss, the Orioles went 4-1 on a swing through Kansas City and Washington and remain atop the AL East.

via Wei-Yin Chen takes 1st loss as Orioles fall to Stephen Strasburg, Nationals 9-3 – The Washington Post.