Trevor Rogers turned in the kind of outing that usually gets remembered for weeks, maybe longer. Instead, it was wasted.
The Orioles left-hander came within a broken-up no-hit bid of something special Saturday at Camden Yards, but Baltimore fell 1-0 to the Brewers because the offense never found a way to answer. Rogers allowed just one run on three hits, struck out 10 and carried a no-hitter into the seventh before William Contreras singled to start that inning. He then erased the threat with a double play.
By the time Rogers walked off after the eighth, the crowd had risen to give him a standing ovation. If this was his final home start of the season, it was a gem. Rogers, a pending free agent, said the thought that it could be his last start at Camden Yards is “something I don’t even really want to think about.”
The only run Milwaukee needed came in the second, and it started with a costly mistake in right field. Joey Ortiz lofted a ball that Rece Hinds lost in the sun, turning what should have been a routine play into a triple. Gary Sánchez followed with a dribbler that brought Ortiz home, and that was the game.
Hinds admitted he never had the right gear for the moment. “I just lost it in the sun,” said Hinds, who flummoxed his manager by not having sunglasses on. “Game started shady, and I just didn’t have them.”
“He didn’t have sunglasses at all. And the sun was in right field.
Pretty frustrating,” manager Craig Albernaz said. “I mean, it was overcast to start, but it was a 4 o’clock game.
I thought he’d have some sunglasses.”
That lone run stood up because Baltimore kept giving away chances. The Orioles finished 0-for-6 with runners in scoring position and left two on with nobody out in the second and the bases loaded with one out in the sixth.
Christian Franklin tried to bunt in the second, backed off, and eventually grounded into an inning-ending double play. Christian Encarnacion-Strand did the same kind of damage in the sixth, swinging at the first pitch and grounding into another inning-ending double play.
Baltimore had more life in the seventh and eighth, but the results never changed. Hinds doubled with one out in the seventh, then Franklin and Samuel Basallo popped up. In the eighth, Leody Taveras opened with a single, but the next three batters couldn’t push anything across.
Albernaz didn’t hide his frustration with the day. “Pete [Alonso] and Coby [Mayo] and Rece barreled up some balls and squared them up pretty good,” he said.
“Outside of that, the at-bat quality wasn’t our best by any stretch, and just the ability to, in a close game like that, you have to be able to move the runner, play some team baseball, get some bunts down, see some pitches when the guy is throwing five, six straight balls. The infield pop-ups.
Yeah, it was a frustrating day.”
The loss pushed Baltimore even closer to elimination. The Orioles are four games behind the Chicago White Sox with seven games left, and their tragic number is four. They could be officially knocked out early next week.
“We’re under the mindset that we’re still in, still have a chance until there’s either an ‘E’ next to our name or we’re in,” Albernaz said. “We still have to go out and compete.
But today’s game was particularly frustrating. Some awful bunt attempts and some interesting swing selections in certain places.
So, yeah, today was frustrating.”
Rogers, for his part, tried to keep the focus on the next one. “Just being able to go out there and do my job every five, six days and give the team a chance to win, that’s what I want to be,” he said. “And the fact that I was able to give the guys a chance today was huge.”
And yet the Orioles still walked away empty. Rogers may have delivered a masterpiece, but Baltimore’s offense left it hanging.
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