The Orioles had their chance to stop Boston’s surge, and for stretches at Fenway Park, they looked capable of doing it. They traded punches with the Red Sox in a game that had the feel of a playoff night, but four errors ended up burying Baltimore in a 6-5 loss that snapped its seven-game winning streak and pushed Boston to 14 straight.
That’s the ugly part of the story: the Orioles kept creating their own problems. They played hard, they answered back repeatedly, and they even grabbed the lead more than once. None of it mattered enough because the defense kept handing the Red Sox extra life.
Baltimore opened the scoring in the first when Gunnar Henderson and Tyler O’Neill ripped back-to-back doubles off Boston lefty Payton Tolle. The Red Sox answered in the second with a pair of singles and a Jarren Duran sacrifice fly against Shane Baz, and for a moment the game settled into a tight, clean rhythm.
Then came the third inning, and everything unraveled.
Baz had two outs and should have been done with Ceddanne Rafaela, but Jeremiah Jackson’s throw on a grounder up the middle pulled the Orioles into trouble. Pete Alonso couldn’t handle the bad toss, and Boston kept the inning alive.
Wilyer Abreu followed with a double to the wall in left-center, and when the Orioles tried to cut down Rafaela at the plate, Gunnar Henderson fired a throw nowhere near home. That made it 2-1 Red Sox and moved Abreu to third.
The inning got worse from there when Willson Contreras lined a ball to Henderson, who leaped, caught it, and dropped it. Contreras was credited with an RBI single, and Boston had a 3-1 lead.
Baltimore answered in the fifth with an unlikely spark from Christian Encarnacion-Strand, who launched a solo shot into the Green Monster seats for his second Orioles start. In the sixth, the Orioles put together one of their best sequences of the night. O’Neill and Leody Taveras singled, Jeremiah Jackson jumped on the first pitch he saw and drove in the tying run, and Encarnacion-Strand followed with a single up the middle to bring home Taveras and put Baltimore back in front, 4-3.
But the lead didn’t last. Baz helped undo it himself in the bottom half, throwing past first on Abreu’s slow roller near the mound.
Abreu moved to second and scored on a Contreras double to make it 4-4. Baz finished six innings with four runs allowed, though only two were earned.
The Orioles briefly reclaimed the edge in the seventh when Tyler O’Neill drove in a run on a groundout that should have been an inning-ending double play, but Anthony Seigler muffed it for Boston. That set up yet another defensive mess.
With two outs and a runner at second, Yennier Cano hung a two-strike sweeper to Rafaela, who lined a single to left. Taylor Ward then threw home even though there was no play, and his errant throw allowed Rafaela to take second.
It was the fourth error charged to Baltimore, and it fit the night perfectly.
Boston finally broke through for good in the eighth when Caleb Durbin hit a two-out solo homer off Tyler Wells, sending Fenway into a frenzy and putting the Red Sox three outs from their 14th win in a row.
Baltimore still had one last push left. Colton Cowser walked to start the ninth, Henderson ripped his third double of the night, and the Orioles had two in scoring position against Aroldis Chapman. Tyler O’Neill nearly delivered the knockout blow, but Tseng-Che Cheng made a running grab on a hard liner to end it.
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The power was just as loud as the production, with two balls leaving the yard as part of a hot stretch that has already started to improve his season line. For a Baltimore system that has leaned heavily on impact position-player talent, nights like this are the kind that remind the organization why this player was taken so high and why his rise is worth tracking closely. [Read more 🡒]