By Dave Sheinin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, April 7, 2000; Page D1

BALTIMORE, April 6 – Three games into the 2000 season, the Baltimore Orioles have done something they could not do all last season. With a 6-2 victory tonight, the Orioles won a series from the Cleveland Indians. They did so in ways they seemed incapable of last season, using clutch hits and solid bullpen work to compensate for pedestrian starting pitching.

Catcher Charles Johnson blasted a three-run homer off Indians starter Charles Nagy (0-1) in the sixth inning – Johnson's third homer in the last two games – to break a 2-2 tie, and shortstop Mike Bordick followed with a homer.

Third baseman Cal Ripken got the winning rally started in the sixth with a one-out single that ricocheted off the third-base bag, the 2,993rd hit of Ripken's career. First baseman Will Clark, who is batting .667 (6 for 9), then singled to bring Johnson to the plate. When Nagy left a 2-2 split-fingered fastball over the plate, Johnson ripped it into the seats in left-center.

The satisfaction of a hard-earned series win – against an Indians team against whom the Orioles went 1-9 in 1999 – was tempered after the game by the news that closer Mike Timlin likely will go on the 15-day disabled list Friday with a strained abdominal muscle, a condition that began in the last two weeks of spring training and has failed to respond to treatment. Timlin will see a doctor Friday for a second opinion, but Manager Mike Hargrove said he expects Timlin to be sidelined.

The Orioles would call up another relief pitcher, most likely right-hander Gabe Molina, from Class AAA Rochester, and move right-hander Mike Trombley into the closer role. Trombley, whom the Orioles signed as a set-up man this winter, saved 24 games for the Minnesota Twins last season and pitched a perfect ninth inning in Wednesday night's victory.

If Timlin indeed goes on the disabled list, the Orioles would not have a reliever in their bullpen who was with the club last Opening Day.

That, apparently, is a good thing. Last year's bullpen blew 20 saves in the first half of the season. So far in three games, this retooled collection of relievers has yielded four hits and no earned runs in 7 1/3 innings. Tonight, left-hander Buddy Groom pitched three innings of one-hit ball for his first save since 1997.

"You've gotta love this bullpen," second baseman Delino DeShields said. "They shut down the best lineup in the league."

Johnson's sixth-inning homer, which gave him eight RBI in the last two games, made a winner of right-hander Pat Rapp (1-0), who was making his Orioles debut. Originally signed as a number five starter, the journeyman Rapp found himself in the number three spot by the end of spring training by virtue of an elbow injury to Scott Erickson and the spring struggles of Jason Johnson, who was sent to Rochester.

Typically, Rapp's performance tonight was more gritty than pretty. Rapp threw a slew of pitches (106) in a relatively short span (six innings) and walked a bunch of batters (five), but for the most part managed to pitch his way out of trouble.

The biggest sequence came in the top of the fifth, when the Indians loaded the bases with nobody out and Roberto Alomar, Manny Ramirez and Jim Thome coming to the plate. Alomar struck out looking on an outside fastball, Ramirez tapped back to the mound to start a 1-2-3 double play and Thome never got out of the on-deck circle.

"That's why the good Lord made Advil," Hargrove said of Rapp's laborious methods. "I get as frustrated as anybody else watching him. But that [escape] was huge. You could feel the momentum switch."

Orioles Notes: Left-handed pitching prospect Radhames Dykhoff, slated to pitch at Rochester this season, was claimed off waivers by the New York Mets. The Orioles had placed him on waivers in order to drop him from the 40-man roster and make room for Jose Mercedes, who will be activated on Sunday for his first start.