The Orioles managed to pack just about everything wrong with this season into one night and still somehow stretch it into extra innings before losing to the Brewers, 6-5, on Friday.
They had chances early, chances late and chances in between. They also had a seventh inning that will sit near the top of any list of why this season has gone sideways, because Craig Albernaz made a series of moves that left the Orioles worse off on the field and still chasing the game.
The most glaring one came with the score tied 3-3 in the bottom of the seventh against former Oriole DL Hall. Gunnar Henderson opened the inning with a left-on-left hit, then moved to second on a ball that bounced. Hall then walked Coby Mayo after a wild pitch, and the Orioles had no outs with Samuel Basallo coming up.
Basallo squared to bunt on the first pitch. Albernaz, presumably, wanted it that way.
Basallo missed the bunt for strike one, then stayed with it and fouled off the next attempt before eventually striking out on four pitches without moving the runners. “It’s not his fault he was asked to bunt!
This is just absurd to even have to describe it.”
To make matters worse, that wasn’t the only questionable choice in the inning. Christian Encarnacion-Strand struck out after that, and then Colton Cowser - a lefty who struggles against lefties - was pinch hit for by Rece Hinds, who struggles against everyone. Hinds grounded out, and the Orioles wasted the opportunity.
The game still had more swings left in it. Milwaukee took a 5-3 lead in the ninth, with Hinds again involved when he bobbled a liner into the outfield that led to a run. It wasn’t scored an error, but it was the kind of play that made you wonder if Cowser would have been the better option out there all along.
Even so, the Orioles answered. Rico Garcia and Grant Wolfram had allowed those two runs in the ninth, but Baltimore rallied anyway.
Henderson led off with a single, Mayo followed with a double, and both scored on sacrifice flies from Basallo and Encarnacion-Strand. Henderson and Mayo each finished with three hits, and all three of Mayo’s hits were doubles.
That pushed the game to extra innings.
The Brewers then did the obvious thing with the zombie runner, bunting him to third. It was a road-team move that gave the Orioles a better shot at escaping, but Wolfram couldn’t stop Sal Frelick from delivering the game-losing hit. Frelick entered with a .618 OPS.
Baltimore had one more crack in the bottom of the tenth, but the 8-9-1 hitters struck out, flew out and popped out. That flyout would have been a sacrifice fly to tie the game if Jeremiah Jackson had advanced the runner beforehand, but he did not.
Before all of that, the Orioles had actually played the start of the night like winning mattered. Albernaz pulled Cade Povich in the fourth inning, seemingly after deciding the times-through-the-order penalty was coming again. That made sense, since Povich had already allowed a three-run homer to Jackson Chourio in the second inning.
The Orioles answered in the third when Pete Alonso hit his 38th homer of the season and 302nd of his career to erase the deficit and tie the game at 3-3. Alonso also extended his AL RBI lead to 105. No Oriole had reached at least 105 RBI in a season since Jonathan Schoop had 105 in 2017.
After that, the game settled into a long stretch of missed chances. Baltimore finished with 12 hits and 13 at-bats with a runner in scoring position, but only two of those turned into hits. The Orioles struck out 13 times, and more than once they simply needed a productive out and couldn’t get one.
The loss stung even more because the Orioles had a path to gain ground. The White Sox blew an 8-2 lead to the Tigers and lost 11-8 in Chicago, which would have left Baltimore just two games back with the head-to-head tiebreaker. Instead, the Orioles are left with another night defined by bad execution, missed chances and the unforgettable sight of Samuel Basallo being asked to bunt.
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