A team that wants to stay in the postseason race can’t lose a game like this one. The Orioles faced a Rockies starting pitcher, in Coors Field, with an ERA over 5. They had their own starting pitcher, Trevor Rogers, set a career high with 11 strikeouts over an excellent start that took him into the seventh inning. They had the lead going into the bottom of the ninth inning. They scored two runs in the top of the eleventh inning. All of these things were true and they still lost the game, and with it the series,
in Colorado.
The only thing that had to happen, when it came down to the end, was for reliever Grant Wolfram, the sixth Orioles reliever used in the game, to get three outs before he gave up two runs. This is not a difficult ask, even for a Wolfram-level pitcher and even when, in extra innings, the Manfred Man starts out on second base to begin each inning. It’s an even easier ask to have Wolfram get the third out when the tying run is merely on first base and two men are already retired.
Wolfram could not do it. He could not get the third out. He could not get the third out even when he got bailed out by the extreme good fortune of having a fly ball hit by Colorado’s Rookie of the Year candidate first baseman, TJ Rumfield, bounce up into the seats for an automatic double, stopping the man on first from scoring. He could not get the third out even when the next batter after this was Brett Sullivan, the stereotypical poor-hitting backup catcher for the Rockies.
Even after getting two strikes, Wolfram could not finish off Sullivan even when he threw strike three, because the umpire missed the pitch and the Orioles had their challenge wasted by Jackson Holliday in the top half of the eleventh inning. Any of these things could have gone differently, would have gone differently for a better team. Sullivan hit a walkoff single, scoring two runs; new Oriole Luis Robert Jr.’s throw in from left field went way wide of home plate as he tried to stop the game-winning run from scoring. A better throw might have at least made it interesting. Robert did not make a good throw.
The result of all of this, of the Orioles scoring a total of nine runs across 29 innings played at Coors Field, of the Orioles going seven straight innings without scoring a run in this game, of all of the other stupid things that happened in this game and on Tuesday night, is that the Orioles are back down to two games below .500, potentially staring down a 2.5 game deficit with 22 games to play, nearly all of which will be against contending teams.
They needed a series win. They needed batters to stop wasting challenges. They needed to score more than three runs off of Tomoyuki Sugano. They needed Mike Elias to not trade away Tyler Wells at the trade deadline. They needed Andrew Kittredge to be up to the task of closing. They needed to not leave ten men on base. They have needed a lot of things that they didn’t get this year. It’s just who they are.
It all could have gone differently. The Orioles had a 3-0 lead at one point in the game! They built this lead up in the third inning, when Blaze Alexander led off with a single. This was one of three hits by Alexander in the game. It’s good to have him back. With one out, Jackson Holliday singled, and Pete Alonso scored Alexander with another single. These guys both ended up scoring as Robert delivered an RBI double in his second at-bat with the team.
The Orioles didn’t score again after this until the eleventh inning. They didn’t manage to get multiple runners on base again until the seventh. This series was such a poor and frustrating output at – and I can’t stress this enough – Coors Field, the stadium that is legendary for its being a hitter-friendly environment, against the Rockies, a team that is legendary for not being able to have good pitchers. It’s bad!
Colorado pulled one of the runs back in the bottom of the third inning. Rogers gave up a leadoff single before getting two strikeouts. Outfielder Jake McCarthy tripled to easily score the runner, Adael Amador. In the course of this play, the throw coming in from the outfield went to third base and bounced past Coby Mayo. McCarthy tried to help himself to a Little League home run. Rogers, backing up the play, threw a strike in to Samuel Basallo, who tagged out McCarthy for the third out. The home plate umpire initially blew this play, though replay review thankfully corrected the error promptly.
The fourth inning saw the Rockies get another two-out run when Rogers couldn’t finish off Cole Carrigg with Hunter Goodman standing on second base. The score held at 3-2 until the ninth inning. That’s when Kittredge got involved.
Perhaps Yennier Cano, who got the last out of the eighth inning, should have pitched to more than one batter. I’m sympathetic to why this was not done, since Cano has fallen down in the ninth in recent weeks. Still, Kittredge. He got two outs without any problems. Carrigg doubled on the first pitch he saw, then Kittredge worked a 1-2 count on pinch hitter Zac Veen. A hanging slider later and the game was tied. Kittredge got the hook. Josh Walker had to finish the ninth, which only ended when Basallo used an ABS challenge to get the inning-ending strikeout.
Nobody scored in the tenth inning. One reason why the Orioles did not score is that Holliday, who was the Manfred Man for that inning, inexplicably chose to run from second base to third base on a ground ball hit to the shortstop. That’s not a difficult baserunning rule. Don’t advance from second base on a ground ball to the left side! But Holliday was thrown out, Henderson wasted a challenge while striking out, and Robert grounded out. The Rockies didn’t score in the tenth either, so the agony continued.
In better pitching circumstances, Basallo and Alexander would have been the heroes of the game for their eleventh inning RBI hits. We did not witness those better circumstances.
The Orioles fly back to Baltimore to start a four-game set with the Red Sox on Thursday night. The O’s have yet to list a starter. Boston is expected to send lefty Jake Bennett to the mound. The 7:15 game will air only on Fox.
