Shutouts are a drink best served ice cold.

I’m a craft beer lady, through and through. Give me basically anything but an IPA, DIPA, or TIPA with a silly name and I’m hooked. Fortunately, I live in the smallest state in the country and the craft beer community is as tightknit as they come — not to mention getting to any of your favorites doesn’t require that much time (although Rhode Islanders will tell you anything longer than 20 minutes away requires a packed lunch).

Despite not being that far from any of them, I still prefer a particular one right around the corner from where I live – Moniker Brewery.

Moniker has practically become my second home. It’s the first place I take people when they come to visit me and they all but have a Fuzzy Distance (Hefeweizen) freshly poured for me every time I walk in the front door.

This past weekend a new patron decided to visit the brewery, presumably to try a flight.

That’s right, the patron was a bird and at this point I’m wholly convinced that they got lost on their way back down from Boston and is actually the entire Baltimore Orioles team.

Whether it was George Kirby’s filthy sliders or the Seattle offense’s ability to find every gap in the infield, the Mariners made Baltimore look downright lost at sea tonight.

Kirby’s got them in stitches pitches

For George Kirby, tonight began looking a bit like his previous two starts where he gave up a combined 16 hits and 9 earned runs against Oakland and Boston. Fortunately for him, and the merry band of Elon friends and family that we’ve grown to love, it didn’t stay that way.

Despite Baltimore holding the 27th lowest walk rates in the league at 7.5%, Kirby gave up a walk only four batters into his inning. That walk turned out to be his only one of the evening and was immediately followed with a much better outcome — an inning-ending strikeout (which is totally better).

From there on out Kirby focused on brewing up the right combination of pitches to get seven more batters to strikeout. You know what goes very well with a crisp craft brew? Sliders.

From my calculations and also the help that my glasses are giving me so I can actually, you know, see, Kirby threw his slider about a quarter of his outing.

This is a much tastier chart. Those four little red dots in the lower right corner are all sliders, accounting for 4 of the 8 pitches that punched out some Orioles (sorry, PETA). Here’s an example of one that made Cedric Mullins a wee bit dizzy.

Kirby ended his night with a respectable 6.0 IP, 4 H, 0 ER, 0 R, 8 Ks. Atta Georgey.

Offense wins games (turns out)

We all know that one brewery that consistently churns out one really, really good pilsner or IPA (lol, not for me) or stout, but for whatever reason cannot make anything else come anywhere near the caliber that their top beer is at. Their best beer carries them as far as it can go, but in the end it doesn’t have the support of anything else on the line to really make the brewery a success story.

Sound familiar?

Mariners fans should know by now the silly little trope that comes with each good pitching performance by a member of our starting core.

If only the offense could give any support.

We would’ve had it if we could even score two runs.

Just because our SP pitched a shutout doesn’t mean we have to let the other SP have one, too.

Tommy Gilligan-USA TODAY Sports

Luckily, LUCKILY, this was not that game. I’m not sure what got into the team, but anyone whose reading this that knows what it’s like to have to get a good supportive sports bra knows that for whatever reason the Mariners splurged and went with a nice one.

In review, the Mariners:

• Had 10 runs off 13 hits
• Hit 3 doubles before the Orioles recorded their 5th out of the day
• Taylor Trammell had FOUR RBIs
• All but one starter had at least one hit (sorry, J.P.)
• Batters 5-9 accounted for 9 of the 10 runs on the night

And they did this all without a single home run. Just some good ‘ole small ball.

Tommy Gilligan-USA TODAY Sports

Additional notes (of honey, do I taste honey?)

Whether he’s eating, sleeping, breathing, smiling, laughing, or goofing around, the world is watching Julio. The 21-year-old fluorescent bulb that has shone brightly in the clubhouse the moment he walked in attracts eyes wherever he goes, so it’s only fitting that he had three of the more exciting moments of the game today.

#1 Robbed (who’s Rob?)

Did this hit score the first run of the game? Yes. But was it a home run? Ask any ballpark that isn’t Camden Yards and the answer would be yes. But Julio lost the luck Olympics when he tried to go yard toward the brand new billion feet of outfield at this field.

#2 Gotcha

Need I say more?

#3 Colored outside the lines

As Megan Corcoran so elegantly put it on Twitter, “baby’s first ejection!”

Closing time

With the first game of the series in the books the Mariners can confidently say they hopped off the plane at B-W-I with a dream and a cardigan an appetite to win. Tonight was fun, hopefully their opponent won’t get so lost on their way to the ballpark before the next game, though.