BALTIMORE -- Baseball is a stats-happy game, but the numbers don’t always tell the whole story.

Look at the numbers from Boston’s series opener with the Orioles Tuesday night. The Red Sox finished with 11 hits -- four for extra bases -- and put runners on base in eight of the nine innings. Baltimore finished with just seven hits.

So how did the Orioles pull out an easy 7-1 win? It’s all about timing.

The Red Sox missed on a number of scoring chances. They finished just 1-for-10 with runners in scoring position. The Orioles? They went 3-for-5 and left only three.

Ballgame.

“We had a lot of opportunities,” Cody Ross said. “We just couldn’t figure out a way to push runners across. Tough one tonight.”

Wei-Yin Chen (11-7) got the victory for the Orioles, giving up one run in six innings plus one batter. But Chen gave up nine hits and repeatedly found himself pitching from the stretch as the Red Sox were causing trouble.

They got two on with two outs in the third and couldn’t convert. Carl Crawford tied the game with an RBI single in the fourth, but Boston then left Dustin Pedroia at third in the fifth. The Red Sox stranded two more in the sixth and left the bases loaded in the seventh as Baltimore reliever Darren O’Day came on for Chen and made some very good pitches at the right times.

“We couldn’t get the big hit,” Pedroia said. “The ball [wouldn’t] bounce our way. Good for them. We just want to give ourselves an opportunity to try to put at-bats together and win the game. We didn’t do that.”

The Orioles did it plenty -- mostly with the long ball off Red Sox starter Josh Beckett. Omar Quintanilla hit a leadoff homer on the first pitch in the bottom of the third for a 1-0 lead. After Crawford had tied it in the fourth, Mark Reynolds put the Orioles on top for good when he blasted Beckett’s second pitch of the fifth for a homer.

After Boston’s missed opportunity in the sixth, the Orioles blew the game open in the bottom of the inning. Matt Wieters hit a ball that appeared to bounce off or near the plate and way up in the air near the mound. By the time it came down, J.J. Hardy had scored to make it 3-1.

Chris Davis then hit a seeing-eye single to center for a 4-1 lead. Mark Melancon came on for Beckett, and Reynolds belted his first pitch for a three-run homer. The Orioles didn’t get many chances in this game. But when they got them, they didn’t waste them.

“We had our opportunities,” Red Sox manager Bobby Valentine said. “[Chen] got out of four innings without us cashing in.”

Home runs are something that caused Beckett trouble earlier in the season and have reared their head once more. He allowed five of them in his first start at Detroit and nine in his first five, but then didn’t give up one from May 16-Aug. 8.

But Beckett gave up three round-trippers in his last start and two more tonight. That’s five in two games, something he obviously wants to avoid.

He gave up six runs on six hits in 5 1/3 innings and pitched effectively most of the night. But the two solo homers hurt, as did some bad luck in the sixth. Valentine said that’s the best he’s seen the right-hander throw in a while. Still, he got tagged with the loss and dropped to 5-10 on another frustrating night.

“I felt like I was down for the most part,” Beckett said. “I’ve got to pitch better. Can’t put these guys in a hole like that.”

Certain numbers in the Boston box score told a misleading story. Jacoby Ellsbury went 2-for-5, extending his 37-game hitting streak against the Orioles. Pedroia went 2-for-4, as did Ross and Crawford.

Seven of the Red Sox in the starting lineup got a hit. But only one of them scored. Valentine tried to be optimistic after his team fell to 12 1/2 games behind first-place New York in the American League East.

It just wasn’t easy.

“Just have to play good baseball,” he said. “If we play good baseball from here on out, we’ll be exactly where we want to be. We’re playing pretty good. We just can’t get some breaks.”