Many critics were saying it was do or die for Jason Berken last night. I never felt that way, especially after Rich Hill‘s 2.1 inning performance the night before.

If it truly was do or die, Berken did. He surrendered a two run homer in the first inning to Mark Teahen, but pitched five scoreless innings after the shot. Berken went six innings, gave up six hits, two earned runs, and three strike outs. He even left the game with a chance to get his second win of the year.

Adam Jones tied the game up at two in the bottom half of the first with his 16th homer of the year. Jones has homeruns in back to back games and continues to dominate his numbers from last season. He now has six more homers in 2009 than he did in all of 2008.

In the sixth inning, Nolan Reimold got on base with a single and was later driven in by Matt Wieters to give the Birds a 3-2 lead.

But, Willie Bloomquist tied the game at three in the 8th inning with a solo homerun off Jim Johnson.

The tie would hold up through 11 innings, the O’s brought Danys Baez in for two innings of work in extras and he surrendered the go ahead run to John Buck, who is hitting just .223 on the season.

Baltimore couldn’t capitilize in the bottom half of the inning and fell for the second straight time to Royals.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 R H E
KAN 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 1 4 10 0
BAL 2 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 3 11 1