The Orioles left their first post-trade deadline series with two wins, and the biggest reason was simple: the pitching held up when the bats didn’t have much room for error.
Baltimore took two of three from the Angels, opening the set with a 3-1 win on Tuesday before backing it up with a 5-3 victory on Wednesday. That gave the O’s their first series win since moving on from Adley Rutschman, Taylor Ward and Tyler Wells, and it also evened the season series with Los Angeles after the Angels had edged them in extra innings back on June 24.
The opener belonged to the arms. Grayson Rodriguez made his return to Charm City after being traded from the Orioles to the Angels for Ward over the offseason, and the former top pitching prospect delivered a season-high seven innings of two-run ball with six strikeouts.
Baltimore answered with Cade Povich, who was even sharper. The left-hander worked six scoreless innings, struck out a season-high seven and earned Player of the Series honors.
Povich has now appeared in five games this year and owns a 3.91 ERA.
The offense did just enough. Pete Alonso drove in two runs with a single in the third, and Tyler O’Neill added a pinch-hit solo homer in the eighth. That made it the third time since the All-Star break that Baltimore scored three runs or fewer and still came away with a win.
Wednesday followed a similar script, only with more power. O’Neill cracked a two-run homer to left-center in the fourth, a 426-foot shot that was followed immediately by Coby Mayo’s 436-foot blast on the next pitch. Reid Detmers was done after four innings, his shortest outing since July 9.
Trevor Rogers then kept Baltimore in control. The lefty allowed two runs on three hits over six innings and struck out a season-high nine.
Since the beginning of June, he’s 5-1 with a 2.28 ERA in 11 appearances. The Orioles padded the lead in the eighth when Leody Taveras went deep for a two-run homer to right, and Andrew Kittredge closed it out with a six-pitch ninth for his fifth save.
Thursday brought the crash back to earth.
Baltimore’s offense went cold in the finale, managing just four hits in 27 at-bats and striking out nine times. The club also stranded eight runners.
It drew eight walks, too, but that wasn’t enough to keep from losing 4-1. Yohel Pozo provided the Orioles’ only run with a 397-foot solo homer, and Nolan Schanuel answered with a sacrifice fly in the seventh to square things up before Baltimore slipped away.
Ryan Johnson was a problem again. The 24-year-old right-hander, who has somehow turned into Baltimore’s kryptonite, held the Orioles to one run in 4 ⅔ innings despite walking five.
Against everyone else, he owns an 8.78 ERA. Against the O’s, it’s 0.84.
That’s just how it’s gone.
The loss was another reminder of how thin the margin is for this lineup. Baltimore has now scored three or fewer runs in seven of its last 11 games. Over the last two series, the club is averaging 2.5 runs per game.
Still, the Orioles did inch forward in the standings. They’re now one game back of an AL Wild Card spot with 47 games left, and next up is a trip to Arlington to face the Rangers, who currently hold the final Wild Card position at 57-58. It’ll be Baltimore’s second three-game set against Texas since the second series of the 2026 season.
A few trends stood out from the series. For one, left-handed pitching has become more manageable than right-handed pitching.
Since July 1, Baltimore is hitting .250/.329/.480 with an .809 OPS against lefties, compared with .202/.321/.311 against righties. Mayo and O’Neill have combined to hit .253 with 18 homers against left-handers this season, and the team’s batting average against lefties has climbed to .233, nearly matching its .235 mark against righties.
There’s also the bench production, which has been both useful and revealing. O’Neill homered after entering Tuesday’s game, and Taveras delivered a pinch-hit two-run blast on Wednesday.
Baltimore’s pinch hitters now rank fourth in average at .248 and lead the majors with 28 pinch-hit RBIs. That kind of production helps, but it also says plenty about how uneven the everyday lineup has been.
And finally, the power dependence is impossible to miss. Seven of Baltimore’s nine runs against the Angels came via the home run. The long ball kept them afloat in the series, but it also underscored how much the offense can stall when it isn’t leaving the yard.
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