The Orioles picked the right time to catch fire.
Baltimore rolled past the Rays 10-2 on Sunday afternoon in St. Petersburg, stacking up a third straight win over the American League’s best team and putting itself on the verge of a four-game sweep at Tropicana Field. The victory also gives the Orioles a shot to climb to just one game under .500 on Monday night for the first time since April 30.
That’s a sharp turn for a club that arrived in Florida carrying plenty of baggage from the road trip before its off-day Thursday. Baltimore had dropped two of three in both Texas and Minnesota, and its AL Wild Card outlook was sliding. Now the Orioles (61-63) are back in the middle of the mess for the third AL Wild Card spot.
The big blow came in the sixth inning, when Baltimore hung a seven-spot on Tampa Bay - its largest inning of the season. The Orioles were already up 3-1 going into the frame after scoring three times in the fifth, a rally highlighted by Jackson Holliday’s two-out RBI single to tie the game and Pete Alonso’s go-ahead two-run double.
Steven Matz got the first two outs of the sixth for the Rays, retiring Christian Encarnacion-Strand on a liner to third and Dylan Beavers on a groundout to shortstop. Then Baltimore kept the inning alive and kept pouring it on, turning the frame into the kind of extended two-out barrage that can break a game open.
Matz and Boyle combined to throw 59 pitches in the inning, the fifth most in a single inning in MLB this season. It was the most pitches the Orioles had seen in an inning since they drew 69 in a nine-run eighth against the Royals on Sept. 8, 2021.
Cowser’s homer was the first of his 11 this season to come against a left-handed pitcher. Holliday, also batting left-handed, delivered left-on-left hits in back-to-back innings in the fifth and sixth.
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