Duel, as usual, goes to Ortiz

BALTIMORE -- Jamie Walker had the stats ready. As soon as the matchup was mentioned, he knew how well David Ortiz had done against him in the past, with the numbers coming off his tongue as if he had to get the bitterness out -- and fast. An unsightly 5 for 9 with three home runs for a startling 1.556 slugging percentage.

Yet when the lefthanded reliever had the lefthanded slugger down two strikes last night, he thought there might be a chance. But Ortiz didn't build a reputation in the late innings of tight games by going down easily. So, after the two quick strikes, it went as follows: foul, ball, ball, foul, foul, ball, foul, foul, hit.

Ortiz took a breaking pitch -- slider or curve, Walker said he wasn't sure, just that it was "[expletive]" -- and dumped it just in front of left fielder and former Red Sox Jay Payton on the 11th pitch of an at-bat both epic and impressive. The single scored Wily Mo Peña from second base, sent Kevin Youkilis to third, and highlighted a three-run rally that led to a 6-1 Sox win over the Orioles at Camden Yards, ending a two-game skid.

"I'm never happy when I give up a hit," said Walker in a Tennessee drawl tinged with anger. "I'm pretty much a hornet. But I went after him, and the last thing I want to do is walk him to load the bases. I mean, you can't walk these guys. Every one of them can go yard. So I just went after him being aggressive, and I know he's aggressive. He won that battle, but tomorrow's a new day."

Though he dropped a few expletives into his postgame remarks, Walker appeared resigned to the fate of the reliever, even a lefthander, against Ortiz in a crucial situation. It's not as if Walker's the only one he's victimized. Far from it.

Besides, Walker felt he got away with one earlier in the at-bat, a hanging slider that Ortiz let go by for a first-pitch strike. Not that that made things much better for Walker. Especially after acknowledging that allowing the inherited runner to score gave the loss to starter Daniel Cabrera, who kept the Sox in check for much of the evening.

"He's an RBI guy," Walker said of Ortiz. "He got an RBI off me. It cost Daniel an earned run, and it probably cost us the game."

It did. With Cabrera having battled nearly pitch for pitch with Curt Schilling before tiring in the seventh and allowing back-to-back walks to Peña and Youkilis, it was up to the bullpen -- for which the Orioles broke the bank in the offseason -- to keep the game in check long enough for their offense to respond.

But Walker couldn't. His pitch, whatever it was, didn't break enough.

"He tried to throw a breaking ball," Ortiz said. "Fastballs most of the time. That was a tough pitch to hit.

"I'm the kind of hitter, I get better the deeper I go in the count."

But hit it he did. And though it wasn't one of his booming slams toward the fences, it landed in short left for one of the softer hits Ortiz will collect.

No matter. It was the at-bat and the result that counted.

"David's at-bat was tremendous," manager Terry Francona said before echoing his designated hitter. "The deeper he got into the count, it looked like the more dangerous he got."

Because when a reliever, especially one giving up such numbers to Ortiz, gets the Red Sox' designated hitter into that kind of hole, he needs the out.

Or else.

"I was [ticked] off I had him 0-2 and I end up going to 3-2," Walker said. "When I have a hitter like that 0-2, I've got to bury him."

Amalie Benjamin can be reached at abenjamin@globe.com.