Rodrigo Lopez loses another one, his 18th loss.

Lopez came in during the 4th inning after Hayden Penn injured himself. Penn pitched the first 3 innings, giving up 2 runs on 4 hits and 3 walks. Lopez came in and pitched pretty similar. His line was 3 innings pitched, 2 runs, 3 hits, and 5 strikeouts. LaTroy Hawkins gave up another run the next inning on 2 hits to make the lead insurmountable. Brian Burres pitched a perfect 8th to round it out. It looked like Penn was favoring his back before being taken out of the game. Don’t expect to see too muchof Rodrigo from here on out to protect him from losing 20 games.

The hitting had pop again last night, but they were all solo shots again. Jay Gibbons hit his 13th. Ramon Hernandez hit his 21st. And Corey Patterson hit another one for his 16th. He also had a single in the game. Kevin Millar went 4 for 4 in the game. Miguel Tejada and Jeff Fiorentino had the other hits. Nick Markakis went hitless. I need him to go on a tear in these last 5 games and finish over .300….

Markakis watch: 0-3 (.296)

Tonight, Kris Benson (11-11, 4.49) faces off against the Yankee’s young ace Chien-Ming Wang (18-6, 3.57). Go O’s.